‘Twas a month before Christmas and all through The Colorado Conservatory of Dance, creatures of all kinds were stirring, including a Mouse King, fairies, sheep, angels and, of course, a nutcracker as the Broomfield dance school continues to prepare for its annual performance of the holiday classic, The Nutcracker.
For Sandra Shih Parks, Executive & Artistic Director of CCD and her team, the upcoming productions of the timeless ballet are another opportunity to give back to the community via her life’s passion, dance. While Parks hopes that the everyone will enjoy attending a performance of one of the most famous ballets in history, it is the work she is doing with some of the youngest dancers in The Nutcracker that truly makes her light up like a glittering holiday display.
With as many as 20 children in this year’s cast, some as young as seven years old, Parks is tapping into her love of helping the next generation of performers find their voice through dance.
“We are born to move,” she said. “You look at babies, even when they are sleeping, they move and it’s just a way of how human beings are.”
Expressing herself through movement and dance has been a life-long pursuit for Parks, who began dancing at the age of three in her native Taiwan. After earning a formal education as a dancer and performing in New York City, she then transitioned to teaching dance and a powerful moment early in her instructional career helped her realize how much of an impact dance could have on young people.
While teaching at inner-city schools in Boston through a non-profit organization, Parks saw what happened when kids from different parts of the community and who came from different cultural backgrounds worked together for the common goal of putting on a performance.
“I remember the first couple of classes,” Parks said, “they would not talk to each other.” She even recalled how the kids initially wouldn’t even stand next to peers from different backgrounds. “I told my teaching partner, ‘We need to break this.’ Even just putting them in formations.”
Eventually, because of the shared goal of dance, those cultural divides melted away. “We were doing a dress rehearsal and one of the African American kids forgot his black socks and I wasn’t going to let him go on stage without black socks. Unfortunately, he didn’t have anyone to turn to, his household was a very difficult household. And a Vietnamese boy said ‘Hey, I have an extra pair.’ It was a very lovely experience.”
Parks has never forgotten that moment, one when she realized that dance is more than just an artform. Rather, it is a transformative experience that can help young people find their place in the world and develop many of the skills needed to thrive as they mature.
“It was a very rewarding five years,” she said, “just seeing how dance influenced how they view themselves. They started to gain more self-confidence, they started to understand accountability.”
Abbey Sterling experienced first-hand the way that Parks can impact a young person’s life. Now a freshman studying Dance at Texas Christian University, Sterling returned to Broomfield for Thanksgiving break and one of her first stops was CCD where she couldn’t wait to work with her mentor once again.
“She’s very good with all ages,” Sterling said. “She’s amazing.”
Sterling (who has been dancing since she was two years old) credits Parks with helping her to become a more well-rounded and disciplined performer over the past three years since Parks took over at CCD.
“She cares about making sure you dance in a healthy way, making sure you’re not going to hurt yourself. She also cares about you more than other teachers. She’ll ask if you’re ok, make sure that you’re in good condition and she really cares about each dancer, and I think that separates her a lot from other directors. She cares about the person and how they’re doing.”
Sterling credits Parks with helping her find the right college dance program and said that Parks’ guidance through the application process was invaluable. That is the type of care and attention that Parks has given to so many young people throughout her career, a passion that now makes her an invaluable member of the Broomfield community.
Parks continues to share her love of dance with the next generation in the hopes that the lessons and disciplines learned through the art form will help make each young dancer she works with come into their own, not just as a performer, but as a person.
However, Parks is quick to attribute her students’ success to their hard work more than her guidance. That’s why she says she isn’t surprised when the young people she has trained go on to work with larger dance companies.
“Of course they are,” she said with a wry smile. “But not because of me. It’s because I know they can be there. It’s just exciting to see them believing in themselves and wanting to continue with dance.”
As the hustle and bustle of the holiday season begins to ramp up, so too does the work that CCD is doing in preparation for this year’s productions of The Nutcracker (December 11-14 and December 20-21). While the magic of the season is sure to wash over audiences as they take in this timeless ballet, the true magic may not be what happens on the stage, but rather, what happens within each of the performers who have poured so much into this labor of love.
With each plie, pirouette, and sauté, there will be more than just Christmas joy being spread. In fact, thanks to Parks and her team, the greatest accomplishment will be found in the growth and development of a new generation of performers who are finding themselves one movement at a time.