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“Training with the Hartfel Ballet is
not a physical conditioning program to
make us look like dancers and hope that
people like what they see when they come
to watch a performance.
Hartfel is a true process of
transformation that communicates an
honest love, a humble foundation, and a
unique belief in community that begins
in the classroom and culminates for the
audience. If I do not set aside pride
and elitism and replace it with love and
humility, then those watching would see
an empty facade, and not experience true
art. Hartfel is for me more than a dance
company. It has become a family. We grow
and cry together. We struggle with each
other’s frustrations and our own. We are
brought together by a common dream, with
a common goal to share our newly found
passion for life through our dance.
Hartfel’s message
is to fully commit to every aspect of
dance and demand response, and then
apply that intensity to human
relationships and interaction. To
maintain integrity at all levels and in
every situation, not be one person here
and another there, say one thing to one
person and another to someone else. We
learn to foster a genuine belief in the
beauty of human nature, and a desire to
bring it out in others.
You may say this is my drive to honor
the spirit of each individual that is
really one spirit, a summary of all. I now seek truth in places
where I used to want perfection and only
found dead ends. I now find resolve in
the exploration of questions. Through
that experience, I gain knowledge and
growth; the answer not important. The
process now creates purpose instead of
trying to find one.
I have found imagination again,
belief in a dream, reality in the
impossible. I’ve integrated new
perceptions, appreciation for the gifts
I’ve been given, and a desire to honor
those gifts with my actions.
Humans have an innate desire to be
understood. As an artist, I ask for
others to merely have the desire to want
to understand and to seek comprehension.
The growth, the excitement, the
dream, has and will only come to be,
because of John Welch and his
sacrificial and undying commitment to
this art and us. Through his tough love,
extreme patience, and priceless guidance
we are growing towards becoming what we
once didn’t even dare dream to be – true
dance artists.
I now believe dance does not exist
for me; I exist to dance.
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