The Lehigh Valley Dance Exchange The 10th Annual SpringUP Dance Festival, April 9-10

The Lehigh Valley Dance Exchange (LVDE), in partnership with Cedar Crest College, celebrates the tenth year anniversary of the Lehigh Valley’s first and only professional dance festival this spring. The tenth annual SpringUP Dance Festival will take place April 9-10, 2022, uniting the dance community in the building of a stronger presence for dance and the arts within the Lehigh Valley.

The annual festival has grown from a small gathering of local dancers into a cornerstone of the professional dance scene in the Lehigh Valley, welcoming over 200 participants, guest artists and audience members each year. SpringUP connects some of the dance industry’s most in-demand choreographers and artists with the Lehigh Valley community for a weekend of master classes, performances and networking to nurture the physical and artistic potential of the valley’s established and emerging professional dancers through a supportive, inspiring festival environment within the spacious performing arts facilities of Cedar Crest College. .

Highlights of the festival include a Guest Artist Concert called SpringUP LIVE! featuring works by the festival faculty and their companies; the Freshly Squeezed choreography showcase where festival participants have the opportunity to present their work; and a full schedule of master classes in a wide array of dance and movement disciplines.

Previous festival faculty have included artists from Broadway Dance Center, Koresh Dance Company, Trisha Brown Dance, Ballet X, Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal, Kun Yang-Lin/Dancers and more. The focus of the festival is to unite the Lehigh Valley community with renowned artists who have developed successful, sustainable careers in the field of dance, creating an opportunity for established and emerging artists to learn from these guest artists and their experiences, and also to provide a platform for participants to showcase their own work.

Registration for the full weekend of events is kept at a low fee of $60 for an all-access pass to the festival, or participants may choose to drop into a single class for $20. All concerts and showcases throughout the weekend are open to the public: tickets to the SpringUP Guest Artist Concert on Saturday, April 9 are $10, and the Freshly Squeezed Showcase is a $5 suggested donation. The 2022 faculty lineup promises to be the biggest and best yet, including nationally and internationally renowned choreographers, teachers and dancers from New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and more. Faculty members on this year’s festival roster include:

Dinita Clark | Street Styles Derek Crescenti | Modern
Ricky Dieter | Musical Theater Jazz
Megan Flynn | Ballet for Contemporary Dancers Carmen Garrison | Belly dance
Ramel Harold | Krump Anthony LoCascio / Tap
Shannon Murphy | Contemporary (Franklin Method) Dana Nichols | Ballet
Lynn Weiner | Yoga

Registration, showcase applications and tickets are available through the Lehigh Valley Dance Exchange’s website at www.lvdanceexchange.org.

This project was supported by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency, through the Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts (PPA), its regional arts funding Partnership. State government funding comes through an annual appropriation by Pennsylvania’s General Assembly and from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. PPA is administered in this region by PPA Partner Lehigh Valley Community Foundation. This project was also made possible through partnership with Cedar Crest College.