Stylish Finale at VSA

Release Date: August 07, 2008

The News & Advance - Lynchburg, VA - May 8, 2008

by Casey Gillis

Virginia School of the Arts is ending the school year in style.

"In Performance" is a big celebration of Virginia School of the Arts students," says Adam Sage, VSA's artistic director. In addition to pieces performed by the students, the show will include appearances by four guest artists: Nashville Ballet's Sadie Harris and Jon Upleger, a VSA graduate, and Dance Kaleidoscope's Mariel Greenlee and Christopher Faesi, son of VSA's director of dance Martha Faesi.

Upleger and Harris will perform the balcony scene from "Romeo & Juliet," and Greenlee and Faesi will perform a piece entitled "Nuevo Tango."

The show is a reunion for Sage and Upleger, who went straight to Nashville Ballet after graduating from VSA. Sage was the ballet master there, and the two worked together from 2000 until last year, when Sage came to Lynchburg.

"It's really exciting to watch him grow and become an excellent artist," Sage says. " I wish I could clone Jon," Sage adds. "He is probably one of the most honest and open people that I've known or worked with. He has so much integrity." "I know the girls in Nashville are all fighting over him (to be their dance partner)... He's always open to criticisms and comments, and he always wants to be better."

Sage says it's good for his students to see a former VSA student, who is working professionally - "to see that that's out there for them. There's an actual end result to it."

The rest of the show will be all about the students as they perform the works of Sage and VSA faculty members Dominique Angel and Lisa Thomas, as well as guest choreographers who include Lynchburg resident and former Hong Kong Ballet soloist Robert Philander; Keelan Whitmore from Alonzo King's LINES Ballet in San Francisco; a cutting - edge, contemporary company; Malcolm Burn from the Richmond Ballet; Christopher Huggins, a former Alvin Ailey member; and Jennifer Medina, a professor of dance at the University of Missouri - Kansas City.

"The program is very diverse, movement wise (and) musically," Sage says. "We are really stretching the dancers as far as we can in all different directions."

Sage's two pieces are "Forte" which features 11 male dancers, and "Grazioso" a classical piece. "We had to have some tutu's," he says with a laugh."It's very light and bright, and gives the dancers a chance to show off their classical technique."