One of her brightest light former students, now studying dance in Vancouver, will open Slava Doval’s seventh annual Dance Fusion Showcase at the Capitol Theatre this weekend with a solo piece. And a group of young dancers and their fathers will close it.
In between, 250 dancers will perform hip hop, ballet, acrobatics, breakdance, contemporary dance, tap, musical theatre and jazz.
Oksana Maslechko, 21, who has just finished her second year of intensive training at Lamondance in Vancouver, grew up in Nelson and danced with Doval’s groups starting at age 12. Her opening solo piece at the showcase is entitled “Mercurial.”
She was not only one of Doval’s star performers but an effective mentor and teacher of younger dancers.
“She speaks so quietly but everyone listens,” Doval says. “She has this quiet power about her. I gave her her own hip-hop class to teach when she was 17 for Marketfest. Usually hip-hop kids tend to be more energetic, but it was the quietest class, no one talking over her. The kids were so responsive to learning from her. And the dance was so great.”
| Oksana Maslechko.Photo submitted |
“She went into her parents’ basement, cleared out a little spot among the storage boxes, and choreographed something. I did not see it until production week, and she came onstage, just living inside of her movements, took this choreography she created in a tiny space and put it up on stage, and it was larger than life.”
When Maslechko left Nelson for Vancouver two years ago she was nervous because, in addition to contemporary dance, a large part of Lamondance’s repertoire is ballet, in which she’d had no training.
“I got thrown into the deep end because of my lack of technical training, but I have improved so much just being around people who have been training since they were really young, and this has really pushed me. My self confidence has skyrocketed.”
Maslechko thought this would be her last year at Lamondance but now she’s been offered a full scholarship to go back for a third year.
“I’m so lucky to be doing something I am so passionate about,” she says, “and so grateful to Slava and everything she has done for me.”
| Slava Doval. Photo: Louis Bockner |
Another highlight of Doval’s upcoming showcase is what she calls the Dad’s Dance.
A men’s group in Nelson has a project of regularly doing things they’ve never tried before. So one of them organized a dance class with Doval.
It went so well that she suggested they might want to perform with their daughters in the Capitol Theatre show.
“I was hoping for five dads to step forward, and we got 15, and 18 kids, and some are step dads, which is so sweet, some bringing two daughters.”
The fathers and daughters prepared for seven weeks.
“The dads start, then the daughters take over the stage, and then there is a beautiful moment when they all come together, in an authentic but incredibly tender kind of way. I just can’t explain it. It’s one of those things where we won’t know how sweet it is until we look back later on it.”
Doval, who is the City of Nelson’s official cultural ambassador for 2018, did her first Dance Fusion showcase at the Legion in 2011 with 25 dancers. This year she’s got 250 dancers age five to adult, and six teachers working for her.
Why should people go to her showcase?
“You will see everything from community members that you may know in another context who worked hard to develop their dance as a joyful part of their week,” Doval says, “and you will also see professional dancers on the stage.
“You will feel connected to it. It won’t feel too far away, because it is theatrical. There’s a lot of attention to detail, with a professional stage manager, and we spent a lot of time with lighting, so it is really smooth and entertaining and emotional.”
The showcase runs Friday, April 27, at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2:00 and 7:30, and Sunday at 2:00. Maslechko will not perform on Sunday, and the dads will not perform at the Saturday matinee. Tickets are available at the Capitol Theatre.
