The teens went to go see Different Voices on Friday, and I thought it was amazing to see what other people from around the world show for dances and to tell stories of their life through movement of the body not lips. The Finale which was tonight was AMAZING!!!!!!! I thought Healthy Hoopla(YAP), Twenty, Dance Without A Title, Accents And Rebounds, Come And Gone (Oh To Be Not Anyone), Hip Hop Repertory, were amazing and each one showed a different style of dance. I hope to tell you more next year but for now Farewell!

The Little’s (students ages 6-8 years old) went to a Lots to Gardens site today at Franklin Pasture.  They did different things like, picking horn worms from tomato plants, Japanese beetles from plant leaves, and weeded and composted!  They also learned about what plants are edible in the wild. Lots to Gardens has loads of cool community activities like cooking classes and community food projects.  We learned that anyone can get involved by volunteering and people who don’t have yards use part of the gardens to grown their own vegetables like cucumbers and eggplants!  It was pretty cool.

The YAP group had a rigorous practice run of the final show we will be doing on Saturday, but tomorrow we will be working on dances and music numbers to show tomorrow at 2:30pm at Olin Arts Center at Bates College it’s free to the public.  I would at this time like to thank our amazing interns who I totally hope come back next year: Scotty, Keyla, Rika, and Christine, and our amazing teachers Patrick, Dana, Terrence, Priscilla, Yvvone, Rose for a wonderful 3 weeks at YAP this year. I can’t believe the three weeks is almost gone!

Today each group at YAP started showing their dances and Dana Reed used her magic to start piecing the show together inch by inch, the teens after YAP got to go see Jennifer Archibald’s Rep. class and it was amazing!!!  Jennifer is doing a piece in the different voices show and we’re psyched to see it!

The Youth Arts Program is starting to piece together their final show and it looks amazing if I say so myself.  On Friday the YAP will have a free showing at Olin Arts Center at Bates College  at 2:30 for parents and friends to see what YAP is all about.

The students from YAP went to see another Festival class today and the teacher, Kathleen Hermesdorf was amazing! She does lots of handstand and the guy who plays her music is like a spaceship.  The teens and middles had a substitute teacher for hip hop. The substitute was Ryan, a former YAP student from many years ago!  I was still a little kid when Ryan was in the teen group.  He is a great hip hop teacher and he said it was totally weird teaching the teachers who taught him hip hop all those years ago at YAP!