ARTS

'Snow Queen' 25 years of magical memories for Center Dance Ensemble

Kerry Lengel
The Republic | azcentral.com
Center Dance Ensemble's "Snow Queen" celebrates its 25th season this December.

For countless little girls through the years, “The Nutcracker” is the gateway drug to a lifelong love of dance.

They see Tchaikovsky’s Christmas ballet and immediately beg for lessons. And though few will become professional ballerinas, they never forget the moment that transported them into a world of movement and beauty.

In Phoenix, though, there’s another holiday stage tradition that almost rivals “The Nutcracker.” “Snow Queen,” choreographer Frances Smith Cohen’s modern-dance retelling of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, marks its 25th season this year at the Herberger Theater Center, where Cohen’s Center Dance Ensemble has been a resident company since the venue opened in 1989.

Dozens of kids perform in the show each year — a whopping 148 this time around, divided into three casts, one per weekend.

After a quarter-century, that adds up to a whole lot of magical memories.

“I was a bunny, a sprite, a reindeer, a flower, a villager and an eagle,” dancer Madison MacDonald says of her childhood career in “Snow Queen,” which started when she was 9. Now, she’s a 14-year veteran of the professional troupe, but she still cherishes the memory of her first experiences dancing onstage at the Herberger.

“You got to be with the grown-ups backstage, and they would sign your ‘Snow Queen’ book,” MacDonald says. “Some of the people in the company, I have their autographs from 1996 when I was a kid, and now I’m dancing with them. It’s really cool. Although I out-‘Snow Queen’ everyone in the company, because this will be my 20th ‘Snow Queen.’”

Madison MacDonald, whose 2015 "Snow Queen" performance will mark her 20th year of dancing in the annual holiday  production.

Fellow Center Dance member Katie McDowell started taking lessons at Dance Theater West, the studio that Cohen runs with ballet teacher Susan Sealove Silverman, at age 6. She was just two years behind MacDonald.

“We both danced in the school, the studio that the company rehearses out of, so as a kid I would watch these professional dancers, and just think, ‘Oh my gosh!’” she says. “To me they were like movie stars…

“I think I was in third grade the first time I was in ‘Snow Queen’ and had a little part, but the following year I got to be a Rosebud, and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. It’s the best part in the show, and I got to dance with the professional dancer who was the Rose, with legs up to here, and I just thought she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. And it’s crazy, because now I’m the Rose, and some of my own students are Rosebuds, so it’s a full-circle part and show for me.”

The very first “Snow Queen” was a 20-minute modern ballet about a girl named Gerda and her quest to free her friend Kai from an evil enchantress who commands the power of winter. Production values were basic, and it was paired with a performance of the Menotti opera “Amahl and the Night Visitors.”

Frances Smith Cohen, Center Dance Ensemble's artistic director, is pictured here at a dance rehearsal in 2014.

“Not very many people come to see repertory modern dance,” says Cohen, a spry 84-year-old with a perpetual twinkle in her eye. “So somebody on my board said, ‘We need a “Nutcracker.”’ You know, we need that thing that’s going to bring in the audience and maybe use children. So that was the impetus. We were going to have something that would become an annual. It was crass commercialism, it truly was. Who knew that it was going to be so accepted and so magical?”

Over the years, Cohen added scenes, scenery, characters and narration until “Snow Queen” became a full-length ballet at 90 minutes. For the 25th anniversary production, an anonymous donor has funded a face lift, including a new throne room for Lady Autumn.

“Some of the costumes are the original costumes,” McDowell says. “The Rose costume that I’ve been wearing was the original from 25 years ago. So when I was Rosebud, the Rose was dancing in the costume that I now wear. But I’m getting a new one this year!”

Aside from the pretty dresses and the thrill of the spotlight, what really made McDowell fall in love with “Snow Queen” was the experience of working with Cohen, who she says has a particular gift for communicating with young children.

Katie McDowell will be dancing in a new costume in the 2015 production of "Snow Queen" thanks to an anonymous donor.

“She creates such a safe, loving environment for these kids who come in,” she says. “It’s something the studio does that I have not seen anywhere else. You come in, and you feel like you’re coming home. You’re safe, you get to be creative, no one’s going to yell at you if you use the wrong foot. It’s just magic. And it comes through in the shows, because you sit and watch these kids dance, and you can’t help but smile, because they’re all having so much fun.”

Cohen, though modest by nature, also has the grace to take the compliment.

“I do have a gift, and I think it’s because I really love them,” she says. “I think 4 and 5 years old is the most special time of their lives. I like to use singing and the imagination. I love to take them to the realm of fairy tales. We’ve lost the fairy tales. We have lost the magic of imagination and creative. I hate these things that they do with their little machines, because it’s just canceling out everything I think they should be looking for. And I’m able to bring that to them.”

Reach the reporter at kerry.lengel@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4896. Follow him: Twitter.com/KerryLengel and Facebook.com/LengelonTheater

Center Dance Ensemble: ‘Snow Queen’

When: Dec. 5-20. 2 and 7 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 5 p.m. Sundays. Lunch Time Dance Theater (shortened performances), 12:10 p.m. Fridays, Dec. 11 and 18.

Where: Herberger Theater Center, 222 E. Monroe St., Phoenix.

Admission: $14-$28 ($6 Fridays).

Details: 602-252-8497, herbergertheater.org, centerdance.com.