Holiday Tradition Gets a 'Dance-Lift'

A photo from Schuylkill Valley Dance Company's 2010 performance of "the Nutcracker."

Cast from 2010 performances.

Pottstown is trying hard to re-imagine itself as the region's arts and cultural center, both as a means of economic revitalization and also as a way to improve quality of life.

Ironically, this task is probably more about getting the word out than establishing arts and cultural organizations, largely because the region already has so many.

A case in point is the Schuylkill Valley Regional Dance Company, which not only teaches the beauty and discipline of dance to our young people, but also provides some remarkable performances for us to appreciate.

One such performance will be held this weekend at the Hill School Center for the Arts, when the SVDC celebrates its 40th anniversary with a "new to the area" performance of "The Nutcracker."

Two former principal dancers from the Kirov Ballet, in St. Petersburg, Russia -- Andrei Ustinov and Elena Martinson -- have set the choreography based on the original work by Marius Petipa, which was first staged at the Kirov on 1892, according to an announcement from the SVDC.


The performances will take place at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Arts Center, located at Beech and Sheridan streets in Pottstown, and at 2 p.m. Sunday.

There is a specially priced matinee on Friday for school and senior citizen groups and director Michelle Jones Wurtz will be assisting the ballet masters and joining the cast for a cameo appearance.

Tickets are $20 for adults and $15 for seniors and students with a 20 percent discount for groups of 10 or more.

You can purchase tickets on-line by clicking here or at Coventry Pack-N-Ship, Pottstown Dance Theater, The Gallery on High in Pottstown, All That Jazz in Collegeville or at the door.

For more information, call the company at 484-941-0683.

Also, if you're interested in seeing traditions like this continue, you can visit Five Below in Upland Square and print out the invitation below so that 10 percent of all purchases made from Dec. 9 to Dec. 18 will be donated to the dance company.


So if you want to help the arts thrive in Pottstown and start a holiday tradition for the family, consider attending the performance and helping out one of Pottstown's many non-profit arts organizations.

Pottstown Occupied!

POTTSTOWN -- More than 25 people showed up at Smith Family Plaza Thursday evening to be part of a nation-wide protest marking the two-month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street protests, which have themselves spread across the country and beyond.

Dawn Lehigh Wilson, who helped to organize the event with just 36 hours at hand, said 28 people arrived to protest corporate greed.

"This is about the big corporations selling us out, getting bailed out and not paying the money back," Wilson wrote in a post on Occupy Pottstown's Facebook page.

"If I don't make my car payment, they take my car, if I don't pay my mortgage they take my house, so, why should they get away with it? Because they they can..is it fair?"

"The people I met tonight are far from lazy, you can't find work here," she wrote.

"This is so much more than out of work people, it's about people just being fed up. We cant sit back and do nothing any longer," she wrote.

The event staged Thursday is a preview of sorts to the one planned for Monday, from 4 to 7, at the corner of College Drive and South Hanover Street, the southern entrance to Pottstown.

Monday's event was the subject of an article published in Wednesday's paper which generated quite a bit of comment on-line, some of it directed at yours truly and not all of it terribly civil. (Sadly, that includes some of my responses as I had my dander up. So those fans of civil discourse, I apologize.)

In any case, it remains to be seen what will happen Monday. One way or the other, we'll be there. 

(For the record, we were there Thursday evening as well, but few protesters had arrived by then and we did not have the time or resources to devote to waiting to see what would develop. My thanks to Ms. Wilson for understanding sending the photos posted here for this report.)