PORT ANGELES — “Dance Happy,” the Port Angeles Dance Center’s spring show, will bring about 65 dancers to the stage at the Port Angeles High School Performing Arts Center this weekend.
Dancers will move to Pharrell Williams’ hit “Happy,” of course, to a song by Irish vocalist Mary Black and to a lot of music in between.
“It’s very entertaining. It moves really fast,” Dance Center founder Mary Marcial said of the show, which will start at 7 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at the high school, 304 E. Park Ave.
Tickets are $15 at the door for adults, $8 for students and seniors, and free for children 6 and younger.
The dancers range in age from 4 to 18 and do everything from ballet and pointe work to jazz dance, Marcial said.
Her middle school students have “Happy” as their piece. “It’s the chant of the year,” she said, adding that they rock out and set the tone for the show.
For Marcial and a particular five performers, it will be a bittersweet time out there in the limelight.
Longtime students
Five young women are graduating this month from high school — and from the Port Angeles Dance Center, after studying with Marcial since they were preschoolers.
Abby and Karina Bohman, Jackie Gipe, Sydney Rauch and Salina Harmon, all 18, will dance to Black’s song “Past the Point of Rescue,” a song from Putumayo’s “Best of Folk Music: Contemporary Folk” album. In addition, each woman has choreographed her own solo dance, to perform this weekend.
As for Marcial, she’s seen many seniors take flight on stage. She has run the Port Angeles Dance Center, now located at 124 E. Front St., for 23 years.
For information about the center’s weekly ballet and jazz classes for youths, phone 360-452-8746.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
