Perkins Students Perform in Annual Spring Festival

By VERNON ROBISON

The Progress

A large crowd of supportive parents, grandparents, family members and friends gathered on the blacktop at Perkins Elementary School on Thursday night, May 4, for the school’s annual Spring Dance Festival.

This time-honored yearly observance has been a tradition for the Moapa community since the school first opened. And by ever indication at last week’s event, the tradition will continue for many years to come.

Audience members beamed with pride as their young students danced to the music in a number of different styles. Each class at the school had prepared its own dance performance to showcase on this special night.

“The teachers and the kids have done a lot of work over the past several weeks to get prepared for this night,” said Perkins Assistant Principal Marianne Ekenstam. “And they have done all of that while we have been doing end-of-year testing at the school. So I’ve got to hand it to them, they have all done a great job!”

The program started with the early childhood classes marching out onto the performing space in colorful dinosaur masks. The youngsters could hardly contain their excitement as the music began and they performed the “Dino Stomp.”

The school dance squad, “The Patriot Rockers” were up next. Wearing red, white and blue, the group performed a well-coordinated patriotic dance entitled “The Presidents Own.”

The Perkins Kindergarten class showed both their mathematical and physical fitness. Dressed in workout headbands, this energetic group performed ten sets of exercises to “Let’s Get Fit, Count to 100.”

The first grade class was up next. Wearing matching blue t-shirts with the words “Take more chances, Dance more dances” printed on the front, these kids busted a groove to the beat of “Better While I’m Dancing.”

The second grade class joyfully danced to the familiar song “Happy.” Their colorful tie-dye shirts and brilliant smiles certainly made the audience happy as they performed.

The third graders marched out as very serious stormtroopers. Well at least their matching T-shirts were in the stormtrooper style from Star Wars. Once they started dancing, though, their mood lifted. They smiled as they performed a vibrant dance to the “Star War’s Cantina” music.

The fourth grade class carried on the tradition of the Tanikling or Bamboo Dance that has been popular over the years. But they put their own twist on it. The students performed the traditional jumping-over-the-poles moves to a more modern groove of “Legendary.”

Finally, the fifth graders came out for the finale of the evening: the braiding of the May Pole. With red, white and blue streamers in hand, the students skipped around the May Pole braiding the top of the pole in beautiful colors. Then everyone ‘about-faced’ and did it again in reverse to unravel the pattern.

First the students completed this task solo. Then, in accordance with tradition, they scattered out into the audience and brought back a family member or friend to join them in a second round of the cheerful springtime ritual. All of this movement was done to the sounds of “Run.”

That concluded this annual festival with the crowd pitching in to help clean up the audience seating and other materials used for the evening and bring it back into the school building.

“I love how the kids and the community keeps up this tradition over the years,” said Perkins Principal Hal Mortensen. “The community gets to end each school year on a good note with their kids dancing to the music. It is a wonderful tradition!”