By Tim Hadac
Managing Editor
Southwest Chicago Post
Managing Editor
Southwest Chicago Post
If you agree that exposing children to the performing arts is important--and you want that for your child (ages 4-9)--then please attend Growing Minds, Going Green...A Kaleidoscope of Dance, a presentation set for 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. Saturday, July 19 at the Clearing Branch Library, 6423 W. 63rd Place.
The event will feature a performance by students of the acclaimed Madam Elizabeth Boitsov, founder and owner of the Boitsov Classical Ballet School & Company.
The Boitsov students will be joined by young adult performers from the Bray Ballet Company and Main Stage Academy of Ballet (of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin).
The performance will include selections from Cinderella (music by S. Prokofiev), romantic classical interludes like Dying Swan (music by Saint-Saëns), and more.
There is no admission charge.
Background
Madame Elizabeth Boitsov was born in the old Soviet Union and started practicing ballet at age 4.
As a young adult in the 1970s, she left home to teach ballet in Poland and later Sweden, before coming to the U.S. and eventually setting up shop in Chicago in early 1980.
With her husband, Vladimir, she founded her school in the South Loop, along with a ballet company. Both thrived and drew critical acclaim until Vladimir died from lung cancer in 2000.
The company shut down, but Madame Boitsov maintained the school.
In 2013, she closed its downtown location and relocated to the Midway area—a move she called “a dream” she and her husband shared, to make classical ballet more accessible to communities not normally exposed to it. Today, she lives in Garfield Ridge.
The school teaches the Vaganova Technique of Russian classical ballet. “This technique is practiced around the world,” according to a statement on the Boitsov website. “It is the highest standard by which a professional ballet dancer is trained.”
The school accepts girls and boys as young as age 4 and teaches them all the way to adulthood.
Here are a few Southwest Chicago Post photos of a Boitsov School ballet presentation held last year at the Clearing Branch Library, taken by SWCP photographer Kelly White.
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