Dance Dance Evolution Arts with a Heart

Photo credit: Finn Smith

Dance Dance Evolution ARTS WITH A HEART 2021

Dozens of teenagers, bundled in warm jackets, set up cones in Half Moon Bay before sunrise in preparation for filming. Today, the beach would be their stage. Tomorrow, a skate park. impact filming.” In the fall, it became clear that a second COVID wave was on the horizon, so the producers had to act fast and speed up their production timeline.

For 17 years, Arts with a Heart (AwaH) has been a revered allschool tradition. This year, students ran with the saying, “The show must go on.” They embarked upon producing the first ever virtual AwaH, benefitting The Maven Project, a telehealth nonprofit that enables volunteer physicians and primary care providers to care for uninsured or underinsured patients.

Knowing firsthand the challenges of learning on Zoom, the four senior executive producers decided to reimagine the traditional two-hour show to create an engaging at-home audience experience. Instead, they developed three separate hour-long live-streamed shows, each exploring a subtopic of the theme: telehealth in medicine. In addition to bringing awareness to a timely and critical topic, “We wanted people to have as much fun as they could, and something to look forward to watching at home,” said Ali Dimitreli ’21.

Planning and executing a production involving a ninety-member cast and crew in the midst of a pandemic, while prioritizing health and safety, is no small feat. When describing the Senior Producers’ process, Director Georgi SheaHA explained, “They created a really important twelve-page health and safety document with Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C, because we didn’t know how COVID would Still, senior AwaH executive producers were determined to make the best of a challenging situation. “We were able to bring perspectives from all over the world because of Zoom. It also helped us explore areas of AwaH that had never been touched on before,” explained Alia Singh ’21. Students collaborated with talented Ukranian artists Sofiia and Vasyl Safriuk, who choreographed and edited a variety of dances. Additionally, each show opened with a panel featuring doctors and healthcare professionals speaking about COVID, inequities in healthcare, and the future of medicine.

This year’s show taught the producers valuable life-long lessons. “Be flexible (pun intended),” mused Ciara Bean ’21, as she reflected on the importance of shifting expectations when circumstances change. Emilia Smith ’21 chimed in, “Even in a lot of uncertainty, you can create plans, and you have to try your best.”

The producers truly made the world their stage in this year’s production; the show reached over 12 countries, 30 states, and 1,000 households. In a year that has brought much isolation, art continues to inspire, unify, and spread joy.

WATCH TWO DANCES!