A Midsummer Night's Dream 2014

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DanceVision, Inc. is a not-for-profit corporation (501(c)(3)) founded in 2005 by Susan Jaffe and Artistic Director, Risa Kaplowitz. DanceVision's mission is to enrich the community with quality dance experiences, including performances, school residencies, and dance festivals. DanceVison has two components: professional-quality performances and outreach.

Performances
DanceVision Performance Company currently performs two full-length ballets each year at The College of New Jersey's Kendall Hall Theater. The Company made its debut in December 2007 with a production of Susan Jaffe’s The Nutcracker, and followed in 2008 with the first of Risa Kaplowitz's original ballets, The Secret Garden, based on the beloved novel. Ms. Kaplowitz embarked on her second original ballet, The Snow Queen in 2011. This premiere played to sold out audiences at The College of New Jersey's Kendall Theater and has since become a new holiday tradition for many families and girl scout troops. In May 2013 The Company debuted a new spring ballet double feature: A Midsummer Night's Dream, with original choreography by Ms. Kaplowitz and set to Mendolsohn's lush score, and a bonus feature, Graduation Ball, a ballet choreographed by David Lichine and set at a 19th century girls' school dance. The Company has also danced several times with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, most recently in the spring of 2013 in the youth concert series Dancing Around the World.

Outreach
August 2013 marked the first DanceVision Dance Camp (DVDC), a week-long free dance camp for children from Trenton's HomeFront. Campers were exposed to different genres of dance including ballet, tap, hip hop, and modern. Other activities included crafts, lectures on dance history, lessons in stage make up, and costume creation. This camp was made possible due to a generous grant from the Church & Dwight Employee Giving Fund, and will be repeated this August.
In January 2011, DanceVision partnered with The Parkinson Alliance to bring free dance classes for patients with Parkinson's Disease and their caregivers. Over time these classes evolved to serve patients with various physical disabilities and are currently offered at the Merwick Care and Rehabilitation Center in Plainsboro, New Jersey.
DanceVision successfully completed its first pilot program of D.A.N.C.E. (Dance As a Necessary Component of Education) in February 2006 at Montgomery Township's Lower Middle School with a two-week dance program called Water Dance based on poetry from a book of the same name. In April 2008, a similar D.A.N.C.E. program was completed at Millstone River School thanks to a generous grant from the West Windsor-Plainsboro Education Foundation. The residencies help schools meet the New Jersey Department of Education Core Curriculum Standards and introduce different learning modalities. To learn more about bringing the D.A.N.C.E. program to your school, visit the Community Outreach Page.

The two founders of DanceVision have a great deal of dancing, teaching, and outreach experience. Susan Jaffe is a world-renowned, former principal dancer with American Ballet Theater and Risa Kaplowitz, a former principal dancer with the Dayton Ballet and Manhattan Ballet, also danced with Houston Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, and the Metropolitan Opera Ballet. Risa Kaplowitz is the Artistic Director of DanceVision.

DanceVision and Princeton Dance and Theater Studio (PDT) are financially separate organizations that share an artistic soul. PDT donates studio space to DanceVision so that it may hold its outreach classes and rehearsals for DanceVision productions. Risa Kaplowitz, the owner/director of PDT, serves as the Artistic Director of DanceVision. DanceVision Performance Company auditions are open to the public and many PDT students are members of the Company. The mission of PDT is to provide exceptional dance training in a warm and nurturing environment; the mission of DanceVision is to provide the community with exceptional performance and outreach experiences.