Trouping Through The Holidays

By Hedy Perna

From St. Patrick's Day to Thanksgiving and beyond, this troupe makes holidays entertaining.

As a young girl, I was in love with movie musicals, often watching them late into the night. I was particularly fond of Holiday Inn, in which Bing Crosby and Astaire put on a show for every holiday. I wanted my own inn where I could say, “Come on everybody, let’s put on a show!”

Though I never got my own Holiday Inn, at Perna Dance Center, Hazlet, NJ, I’m working toward the next best thing. My goal is to have a troupe ready to entertain for any occasion. To date, I have put together Celtic Pride for St. Patrick’s Day, Proud To Be an American for the many patriotic holidays, a Thanksgiving Feast floorshow, and my most successful show to date, the Holiday Troupe’s Yuletide Magic.

Yuletide Magic is no Nutcracker. It includes more than 150 volunteer dancers from our studio, ages 6 to 18, who put on a fast-paced, entertaining 30-minute show. The troupe performs at five to eight venues per season, each completely different from the last and with a unique audience, so the dancers are trained to be ready for anything. I rotate holiday routines in and out of the program each year, combining ideas and using a wide variety of music. Some of these routines are classics and remain in the show every year. Here’s a sampling:

 • “Holiday Rockettes”—High-kicking dancers dressed in red-and-white fur perform to a holiday disco medley.

• “Rudolph & His Funky Reindeer”—Rudolph, with his glowing red nose, performs with his posse of reindeer to a funk jazz routine, set to MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This.”

• “Rag Dolls in Toyland”—Rag dolls wearing wigs and striped socks tap on wooden blocks while spelling out “Happy Holidays,” then flip them to say “Happy New Year” and “Ho Ho Ho.”

• “Frosty & Friends”—Dancers in white fur jumpsuits and full hoods with top hats ham it up to Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby.”

• “Gingerbread Kids”—The youngest dancers in the troupe dance to “Holly Jolly Christmas” in yummy-looking iced-cookie costumes.

• “Dancing Snowflakes”—Dancers in blue and winter white outfits perform à la Radio City to “We Need a Little Christmas.” 

• “Rockin’ Christmas Trees”—Dancers dressed as three-tiered trees (stars and all) swing dance to “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.”

• “Wooden Soldiers”—Dancers do a precision tapping routine to “March of the Wooden Soldier.”

• “Santa’s Little Helpers”—Mini Rockettes, toting holiday garlands and wearing green velvet costumes, strut to “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day.”

• “A Christmas Dream”—A little girl wakes up to find an acrobatic teddy bear, a waltzing ballerina, and a tapping wooden soldier in her room.

In mid-October we send invitations to the students along with a list of the three or four mandatory rehearsals and all scheduled performances. Responses are due back shortly, with payment of a $25 fee that includes rehearsals, practice CDs, and costume rental. Roles are filled on a first-come basis, and students do not have a choice about which routine they will be in. We fill the roles based on age, ability, costume size available, and the classes the students take, since some routines require tap. Most students start as Gingerbread Kids and graduate as Holiday Rockettes or Dancing Snowflakes.

Over 18 years I have accumulated more than 150 costumes, which are cleaned and repaired yearly, for this troupe. Some of them require more upkeep, such as the Wooden Soldiers’ white pants, which we remake every few years. Since we have a good costume inventory, no dancer is turned away—anyone who has the time to devote to rehearsals and can make all the scheduled performances is accepted into the troupe. We provide them with everything needed except the required shoes. All troupe members are required to have a Perna Dance Center Holiday Troupe hooded zipup sweatshirt for warm-ups and to allow easy visibility at outside venues. Since some of our performances take place outside, each student is responsible for their own undergarments. They can wear anything they want (thermals or leggings) under their costumes as long as it is not visible.

Rehearsal time is tight, since a full load of classes goes on each week. We try to squeeze in an hour after classes during the week and do full-day rehearsals on Saturdays. The routines are interesting and entertaining, yet simple enough for the dancers to perfect in a short time. Each routine must be adaptable to multiple venues, so we rehearse various entrances and exits to ensure a polished performance.

Costumes are distributed at the final rehearsal, when all students are taught the finale dance, a hula dance set to Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas,” done as a tribute to my first dance teachers, Gertrude and Willis Wylie. A class parent is assigned to each routine. They must attend all performances and are responsible for everything from proper costuming to performance lineup to student safety at all venues.

Our first performance is always the town parade on the first weekend of December, when Santa drives in on a fire truck. All 150 troupe members march, chassé, jeté, and sway along the two-mile route, which culminates at the local high school. We then give a free performance of Yuletide Magic for the town residents.

Thereafter, our performance schedule takes us from senior centers to shopping malls to grammar schools to the New Jersey State House in Trenton to perform for the governor. We’ve also danced at the Garden State Arts Center’s annual tree-lighting ceremony. Our annual performance at Storybook Land, a landmark NJ theme park that is completely draped in holiday lights, is one of the highlights of the season for us. We have performed on streets and on all kinds of floors and stages throughout NJ, and the invitations keep coming.

For all the effort, planning, and preparation we put into this show, the studio reaps benefits tenfold. Generating community goodwill, offering noncompetitive performance opportunities to the students, and spreading the love of dance and holiday cheer to such a vast audience bring great personal and professional satisfaction to me. Watching the students’ self-esteem and confidence grow with each performance is priceless. Students earn community service hours for their school transcripts and have the satisfaction of knowing that they gave of their time and talent during a hectic time of year. They know that they are part of something special at an important time of year. And they know that they gave to others one of the greatest gifts of all—the gift of love—through dance.   

Photo Captions (from top to bottom):

Members of the Perna Dance Center's Holiday Troupe in: "Rag Dolls in Toyland," "Santa's Little Helpers," "Frosty and Friends," and "Gingerbread Kids."   

All Photos by Les Pierce.