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Dance group going intercontinental
By SALLIE BARR PALMER
Article published on Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2007 |
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![[Image]](/content_images/081407_lle-01.jpg) |
| The Tutterow Dancers |
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LARGO - The Tutterow Dancers will learn to pirouette like a European pro.
And while they’re at it, they’ll learn that the French word for body is corps but does not mean they have enlisted in the French marines.
Actually, The Tutterow Dancers already know that.
But the Largo-based company will get up-front opportunity to show off their skills and learn from a famous ballet company in Germany.
This summer the Tutterow dancing competition team won first place at U.S. National Championships.
“We also won for best choreography, four of our students won titles, and three won full scholarships to attend national workshops,” said Debbie Kennedy, Tutterow director.
Now the team has been invited to a 2008 summer performance tour in Europe, touring parts of Germany and the Czech Republic, including a performance for U.S. troops stationed in Heidelberg.
This will be the first overseas tour for the group since visits to Russia and the World’s Fair in Spain in the 1980s. A proposed visit to China in 2001 had to be canceled after 9/11.
“The students will be able to observe a company class and meet some of the dancers of Germany’s famous Unter den Linden ballet company. They will take a class with one of the company members and also attend one of the company’s performances. The families will get to visit Prague and visit beautiful castles in both countries,” Kennedy said.
The Tutterow Dancers is affiliated with the Largo’s recreation, parks and arts department.
The Tutterow dancers group was started in 1976 by professional dancers and instructors Gayle and Phyllis Tutterow who came to Largo to retire. Finding that they weren’t quite ready to retire, they approached the city about starting classes.
“I started as a student in 1976, the first year of the program,” said Kennedy. “Eventually the Tutterows asked me to assist with classes and when I was 16, they asked me to choreograph a dance. They took my choreography to a national team competition, where it won.”
After Gayle Tutterow’s death in 1997, Kennedy took over as director in 1999.
“The program has been like a big family for me,” she said.
She has been coming to the community center longer than she has been married, longer than she has lived with her parents.
Her husband is the master of ceremonies at every performance and takes care of props. Her 18-year-old daughter graduated this year from the program and will be assisting classes, and her 8-year-old daughter attends lessons, too.
Her sister, Darlene Turner, was on the competition team in 1996 and is now back teaching adult tap.
“It’s been wonderful to be able to pass on the legacy of Gayle and Phyllis,” said Kennedy.
In addition to Turner, staff includes two other former students, assistant director Mandy Beamer and administrative assistant and instructor Michelle Alfred. The ballet director, Mary Frangione, who moved to Largo when her husband was transferred from New York, is a former Radio City Music Hall Rockette.
The program has an annual enrollment of 275 to 300, with students ranging in age from 3 to adults. Fifty dancers, aged 7 to 18, are selected each year for the competition company.
Classes, which include tap, ballet, jazz, lyrical, hip-hop and clogging, plus a boys-only hip-hop class, are Monday-Thursday and Saturday in three venues: Largo Community Center, Southwest Recreation Complex and Highland Recreation Complex.
The dancers give an annual performance at the Mahaffey Theater in St.
Petersburg, said Kennedy. The group also performs its holiday spectacular every December at the Largo Cultural Center with local choirs, vocalists and musicians.
For the past three years, the profits from the Christmas show have been split between the program and a donation to the Make A Wish Foundation. This year, however, all the profits will be going toward fund-raising for the tour.
Kennedy wants to raise enough money to allow each child who wants to participate to be able to take advantage of the European trip.
Fall registration for the program begins Saturday, Aug. 18, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., at the Largo Community Center, 65 Fourth St. N.W.
Call 585-1232.
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Article published on Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2007
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