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With new awards, new hires and returning alumni, it’s shaping up to be an exciting year at Halestone Dance Studio, now in its 47th season as a local arts educator.
For the 2024-2025 season, the city of Lexington awarded $4,500 to Halestone as a recipient of the Creative Communities Partnership Grant from the Virginia Commission on the Arts.
This partnership grant will provide opportunities for cross-generational residents, from toddlers to teachers to grandparents, to dance together in locations that are meaningful to local communities.
Lorelei Pisha, Halestone’s executive director, said, “Teaching artists and staff from local early childhood and elementary programs will collaboratively design responsive movement opportunities that represent the interests and lived experiences of each programs’ participant, staff, and families. To date, partnering programs will include the Blue Ridge Outdoor School, Lexington Office on Youth, and Yellow Brick Road Early Learning Center, as well as homeschooling groups and family child care programs.”
Halestone also looks forward to providing free dance performances and audience participation opportunities for the greater population of Rockbridge at a variety of outdoor events, including Buena Vista’s Mountain Day, Lexington’s downtown Halloween, and Boxerwood’s Pumpkin Walk.
For the upcoming season, Halestone has hired one of its own, Kathleen Gale, as the new artistic coordinator for studio curriculum.
“Over the past few years, I realized not only do I have a passion for dance and performing arts, but specifically for Halestone’s environment,” said Gale. “We have such a deeply rooted community that has raised me in all aspects of life, and I feel like it’s time for me to give back.”
A student of the Halestone approach for 15 years, Gale has participated as an interdisciplinary artist in modern and contemporary styles. She’s worked under the direction of past Halestone artistic directors and artists Nancy Saylor, Chanel Smith, Julia Vessey, Bailey Anderson, Mauri Conners, Molly Smith, and Kaitlin Pennington.
Over the past few years she has taught clogging and elementary modern, and directed “Obscure Sorrows” and other pieces for Halestone’s recitals.
Supporting Gale, past artistic directors will return to teach and help set work with Halestone’s three dance ensembles.
Nancy Saylor, one of Halestone’s founding artistic directors (1996-2016), will not only teach the Adult Ensemble, Creative Movement and Baby and Me classes, she will also train an assistant in her particular approach to developmental movement.
Said Saylor, “I have a uniquely original way of introducing youngsters to movement and I want to be sure to pass my technique forward. Liz Kuehner, already an amazing local artist and dedicated adult student at Halestone, is the perfect person to train as the creative movement teacher for the children of this community. She and I are already working on a children’s book about dance, and we’re excited she’s accepted the challenge.”
In addition to offering morning dance conditioning classes, Saylor is continuing creative work with adults.
“From its beginnings in 2002, Halestone’s adult ensemble has provided a space for women and men to explore movement and find themselves in the process,” she said. “I love how joyful and fulfilling it all is — who wouldn’t want to return to teach it?”
Previous artistic director and alum Mauri Connors will also join Halestone this fall to choreograph new work with the Senior Company for a fall outdoor showcase Nov. 9.
Since 1978, the Halestone Dance Studio has provided a place where anybody … and everybody in Rockbridge can dance. In 2017, the Halestone Foundation became a nonprofit organization to support the studio’s mission.
