Setting the stage for warmer times at Juneau Dance Theatre’s Winter Showcase

Since it’s a Winter Showcase it’s fitting the show will be something of a warmup act.

More than 50 performers ages 5 and up are scheduled to participate in two Juneau Dance Theatre shows at 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. Saturday at the Juneau Douglas High School: Yadaa.At Kalé auditorium. Many of the dancers appearing in the annual production are students preparing for subsequent out-of-town events, in particular next week’s JUMP Dance Convention in Houston, Texas, on Jan. 25 and 26.

“What we try to do is we go to two competitions a year,” Bridget Lujan, executive director of Juneau Dance Theatre, said Thursday. “Usually one in Anchorage because it’s a good first competition. If you’ve never been on stage, you’ve never been in front of the judges Anchorage is a great place to do that. And then we go somewhere else. This year it’s Houston. Last year it was Honolulu.”

The Winter Showcase is one of three annual mainstage productions, with the first being the holiday season staging of “The Nutcracker” and the finale being the Spring Showcase in May. Lujan said the Winter Showcase will feature about 30 routines — including the JDT Fusion Dance Team’s season lineup, along with other individual and choreographed works of various styles — during a show expected to last nearly two hours.

“What the team is performing are the same routines they’re going to take to competition in Houston next week,” she said. “So this is their chance to have a local performance.”

Members of the Fusion Dance Team commit to a full year of training and performances with Juneau Dance Theatre, according to the organization. Participants typically audition in early summer and immediately start working on choreography for two out-of-town competitions per year, which in the past have included San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Upland, California.

“Students have full plates with ‘The Nutcracker’ and our other performances — plus competition prep — all while managing a full ballet schedule and their team classes,” Christa Baxter, one of the team’s coaches, said in a JDT press release for the Winter Showcase performances.

The full group of performers started to work on their routines in mid-August, with some soloists participating in the Anchorage competition in November, Lujan said. She said selecting an out-of-state competition for the dancers is a challenging mix of limited space for a large number of people nationally seeking to participate as well as the programs offered at the events.

“We’re less about the awards and more about the development of the dancer,” she said. “So that’s what coaches look for first and foremost — its schedule. It can’t be when ‘Nutcracker’ is happening. It can’t be when winter break is happening. So there’s all kinds of date restrictions that our coaches have to work around, and then they look at whether it’s just a competition or whether there’s some good convention aspects to it with guest artists, renowned teachers and things like that.”

This year’s Winter Showcase will also include new choreography by Viktor Bell, Alisha Falberg and Janice Hurley, who are JDT staff who teach classes outside the ballet portion of the school, Lujan said.

“They’re what we call the recreational division,” she said. “So anybody who just wants to take a class for an hour a week — they don’t want to commit (to be) ballerinas, they don’t want to pay thousands of dollars — they just want to do something fun for exercise and hopefully get good.”

• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.

Know and Go

What: Juneau Dance Theatre Winter Showcase.

When: 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. Saturday.

Where: Juneau Douglas High School: Yadaa.At Kalé auditorium.

Tickets: $20 adults, $15 youth/seniors. Reserved seating. Available online and at the door.

Website: www.juneaudance.org.