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09/02/2021 08:30 AMEach September, it’s a delicate dance for Kathryn Contessa—welcoming eager dance students back to her dance school, Shoreline Ballet, while preparing her four daughters to head back to school. But this year, it’s really become quite a production, as she’s also helping to set the stage for the Guilford Performing Arts Festival (GPAF), coming Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 25 and 26.
As a GPAF board member, Kathryn is leading GPAF’s production effort to bring six world-premiere, free performances to the Guilford Green.
“Honestly, this is what I love—I actually thrive under pressure,” says Kathryn. “But it is all at once—my daughters are all going back full time to school, the studio is about to open on Sept. 13, and then, two weeks later, we’ve got our festival performances. It’s full speed ahead, for sure!”
In addition to organizing the shows for six extraordinary performances in dance, drama, and music under the festival’s mammoth, tented stage on the green, Kathryn is helping GPAF to deliver seven free public workshops in dance and drama as well as six free master classes/workshops for students in Guilford Public Schools (dates and times for public school programs will be arranged between artists and schools).
Kathryn’s also working to spread the word—and to sell tickets—to the exciting GPAF benefit event on Friday night, Sept. 24, featuring short performances by all six festival artists. Guests will enjoy a small-plates meal; American arts-themed wine, local beer, and soft drinks; and music by guitarist Steve Shelton’s Scoville Jazz Unit. Tickets, $125 per person, can be purchased at guilfordperformingartsfest.org/taste-of-the-festival.
Signing On to Support GPAF
Held every two years, non-profit GPAF held its first festival in 2017, growing in scope and scale in ensuing years. Kathryn was there to help from the start. Following the 2019 festival, she was asked to join the GPAF board.
“I jumped at the opportunity, because I really felt strongly about the organization and in general bringing the arts to Guilford in a way that was for everyone,” she says. “I love that everything is free and that they have a variety of dance and drama and spoken word, so it brings art lovers and artists alike.”
Due the constraints of organizing the festival in the face of the evolving challenges of COVID, GPAF’s 2021 event may have fewer live performances than past years, but the quality of those performances is, as ever, exceptional. The featured artists are all recipients of GPAF’s 2020 Artists’ Awards, which granted funds to Connecticut artists to create or complete new work and premiere it at the 2021 festival.
They are playwright Emily Breeze of Guilford and her collaborator, writer-musician Marialena DiFabbio; Ruth Lewis of Dimensional Dance of Hartford; writer and actress Julie Fitzpatrick of Guilford; jazz musician Skyler Hagner of Guilford; dancer and choreographer Iddi Saaka of Middletown; and Thomas/Ortiz Dance of New Canaan. There will be three performances on Saturday, Sept. 25, and three on Sunday, Sept. 26 (visit guilfordperformingartsfest.org for more details).
“This festival is a stripped-down version of what we have done in the past. Compared to 70 performances, we’re having six. But in terms of COVID, I think it’s an incredible feat just to put together this much and present it,” says Kathryn. “And I think it’s a beautiful thing that the performing arts festival was able to provide grants to these six artists.”
Part of the offerings of the festival is the opportunity for the public to engage with accomplished artists during free workshops. This year on the green, the open workshops begin with Fitzpatrick creating a community spoken-word piece (Sept. 25, 1:45 p.m.); followed the next day by a dance workshop led by Thomas/Ortiz (Sept. 26, 1:30 p.m.), and closing with Saaka’s West African dance, tradition and culture workshop (Sept. 26, 3:30 p.m.)
Kathryn is also lending her studio spaces at her Guilford Shoreline Ballet studio earlier in the week, hosting two free workshops to be conducted by Thomas/Ortiz (featuring Taylor Technique) and Saaka (featuring West African Dance). Both programs are open to intermediate and advanced dance adult and youth students from across the shoreline (due to space limitations, advanced registration for workshops is required; visit www.shorelineballet.com).
“The workshops at my studio are open to any dance student in the area,” says Kathryn. “The challenge with that, because it is COVID, is everyone has to wear a mask indoors and we’re just limited on the amount of people we can have in the studio at once.”
Like so many other dance studios and small businesses, Kathryn had to adjust to the evolving challenges posed by COVID in order to keep Shoreline Ballet up and running and to continue dance instruction for her students.
A professional dancer, Kathryn and her husband, physician Joseph Contessa, moved to Guilford 11 years ago. She opened Shoreline Ballet six years ago.
“I started small and built it up. It’s been a passion of mine and it’s been very rewarding on many levels that I didn’t anticipate. When I opened, I felt we’d need at least 40 students to keep it running, and that’s really what we started with—and then we grew to over 200 students, when COVID hit,’ she says.
“We had to close our doors in March of 2020 and we went virtual for several months to finish out our spring and we didn’t do any live performances. Last summer was mostly in-person, private, and still virtual,” she says. “And in September, we did come back. We had to tape out the floors—honestly, I feel we were cleaning more than we were teaching, at times! It was a team effort. I have an amazing faculty; they have been with me since beginning. That really helped, because with their support, I was able to keep it going.”
Kathryn also pivoted the school’s year-end annual performance to an outdoor venue.
“It was very similar in what I’m doing for the festival; in that I found an outdoor venue,” she says. “We rented out the Durham Fair Grounds because it had an existing stage. We held a festival; we highlighted every class, we invited food trucks...It was the first time some of the parents had even witnessed their children dancing [all year], because the studio lobby had been closed, so they couldn’t come in to see them through the viewing window. It was great it turned out better than I had ever anticipated, and I’m hoping that’s same thing for festival!”
This year, Kathryn’s also very optimistic about setting Shoreline Ballet back on its pre-COVID schedule starting Monday, Sept. 13, offering about 45 classes a week for kids and adults (due to the Delta variant, students and instructor continue wearing facial masks). In recent weeks, Kathryn’s work on behalf of GPAF has been ramping up, but she’s up for the challenge.
“I just told everyone, look this is what I do: I put on performances, I’m happy to take this on,” she says. “So while it’s been an incredibly challenging time, I’m working with the blueprint of what we decided, which was to use the green as central location, which it always has been in the festival [and] keeping the tradition of the festival where we want the highest quality, providing a space where each of the individual artists feel they can convey their work. We really wanted to put together something solid that everyone would be proud of accomplishing, at the end of the day.”
While Kathryn’s been busy of late with arranging for the arrival of the stage, tent, sound, and flooring as well as communicating with the artists to make sure their needs are being met and reaching out to the community for spaces for performers as they await their curtain call (for example, First Congregational Church has offered space for a green room) “...I’m happy to do it,” she says.
Like so many others, Kathryn can’t wait to see the live performances unfold during this year’s GPAF.
“I’m just excited for live performance, and for each of the performances—the dance, the drama, the spoken word,” she says. “I think it’s very exciting that people can attend a live event. And I honestly feel there is excitement around it, more so than in the years past, because of the lack of live performance that we’ve had. I think we’re all in need of it. And there’s a desire to want to see and support artists because there’s been a lack of it.”