By Frank Mustac, Special Writer
Nancy Warner, owner and founder of the Pennington Dance school, wants the community to see her students perform twice more before the school closes for good after more than three decades in operation.
About 60 dancers enrolled at the school, from preschoolers to age 16, will be at the annual Pennington Day event at noon Saturday, May 21, performing ballet, jazz, and hip-hop and more at the “Crossroads” entertainment area at the intersection of Main Street and Curlis Avenue.
“There are lots of costumes. It’s very exciting for the students,” Ms. Warner said. “The founders of Pennington Day invited Pennington Dance to provide a performance for the first Pennington Day 36 years ago and we have provided one annually ever since.”
The dance school’s last annual recital performance will be on Sunday, June 5, at 1 p.m. at Rider University’s Yvonne Theater in Lawrenceville, where former students will also be performing a tap dance routine.
“The skill and camaraderie they have after so many years just blows us away,” Ms. Warner said about the alumni dancers. “They just kill it.”
Since its inception, the Pennington Dance school has been all about teaching, learning and performing the art of dance. But its instructors and students have also reached out to help others locally, nationally and internationally.
The Pennington Dance Company has toured annually, performing for the benefit of various organizations, including the Philadelphia Thanksgiving Day Parade; the Lambertville Shad Fest; Homefront Family Preservation Center in Trenton, as well as various senior centers and assisted living nursing homes. Any honorariums the company received were donated to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Pennington Dance has also donated recital tickets to participants in the HomeFront Joy, Hopes and Dreams program; the Rescue Mission of Trenton; and the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen. Every year, a portion of the school’s profits have been donated to charity.
During one summer in the middle of the first deace of the century, students and alumni along with Ms. Warner traveled to Nairobi, Kenya, to share American dance forms and participate in humanitarian work in a city slum community, including distributing books collected with the help of individuals and businesses in the Pennington area.
“The kids have done a lot to really help out on a tangible level,” Ms. Warner said. “Sharing the art of dance is a powerful way to communicate to groups of people you normally would not have access to.”
About closing the Pennington Dance school, she said, “It’s bittersweet because I love it. I’ve been doing it forever, really my whole adult life, from age 20 to 57.”
“I have a lot of students now whose parents were students,” Ms. Warner said. “It’s been awesome to have a connection with the community for that long.”
“It’s time for me to semi-retire, plus a lot of the staff have had changes in their lives, too,” Ms. Warner said. “My staff has just been phenomenal, just a pleasure to work with.”
One of her most gratifying experiences over the years, she said, has been supervising the Pennington Dance Company with her long-time colleague and associate director, Crystal Moore. Despite not having to run a dance school any longer, Ms. Warner said she will remain active teaching Pilates classes at her home studio in Titusville, at another studio in Princeton and in New York City.
“Now I have more time to spend with my husband, who is also semi-retired,” Ms. Warner said about her spouse, Patrick.
For more about Pennington Dance, visit penningtondance.com.
