Dear Dancers and Parents:

As most of you have either seen or heard by now, but over the past few months, we have been building a website to help promote our school and share our love of dance. We are pleased to announce that is now live, online, and ready for each of you to use. Keep in mind, this is our first attempt at a website and improvements will be made regularly. We hope that down the road, we'll use the site for ALL of our communications with you our dancers and parents. From this point forward, the monthly newsletter, and various updates will be posted here. We recommend you visit our site at least weekly to stay informed on whats happening at TMDA. In an effort, to promote our school, we would like to post pictures of our dance classes in a photo gallery starting in March. We are asking that each parent sign an authorization form allowing pictures of the dancers to be posted on the site. We will not use any names whatsoever, only pictures. Please pick up your authorization forms at the studio and return them as soon as possible. Once again, take a few moments to browse the website and make suggestions that you feel would make an improvement and allow our site to be more useful.

Maine’s Junior Miss: Our MJM delegates are coming in on the 10th of March and the program is set for Saturday, March 13, 2004 at 7pm at C-PAC. Because of these conflicting dates, Wednesday (March 10th) and Thursday (March 11th) classes will be held in May and if we can, we will reschedule these classes before then. We have 3 our own girls from TMDA trying out for Maine’s Junior Miss: Betsy Davis, Gillian Gelder and Shannon Marquis, all from PresqueIsleHigh School. We certainly hope the TMDA family will come out and support these 3 ladies. We are organizing a “County” gift bag for each of our girls in Maine’s Junior Miss and we are hoping that any of you who work or own companies that pass out “freebies”, with their company logo on it, can donate 20 of those items to our MJM program. We collect things like t-shirts, mugs, baseball hats, and pens etc. If you have items that you would like to donate, can you please drop them off to the studio this week. Thanks so much for considering this donation, and I can tell you, these county bags are always a big hit with the girls!! A note to the Tiny Troupe Group, you will be performing COPA COBANA March 13th at CPAC for the MJM program. You need to be at CPAC ready to dance at 8 pm.

Studio Pictures: Duane will be here on March 15th through the 18th taking pictures of all of our classes. Remember, you do not need to purchase any pictures but all dancers must participate. Group pictures will be taken in the studio and individual pictures will be shot in the lobby. All pictures must be paid for in full at the time of the sitting. Please pick up envelopes at the studio next week for package pricing. You must have an envelope for every child and for every individual picture but you need only have one check. Make sure to mark on the envelopes which envelope has the check. Below is a listing of each group and which costume you must wear for group photos:

Tharpe: Gotta Get Thru This tap/jazz costume

Temple: Scooby Doo jazz costume

Jackson: Beat Goes On jazz costume

Mini-Troupe: Both Reached For The Gun tap costume

Barishnakov: Pointe Costume with CLEAN pointe shoes

Troupe: Chicago costume with hats and gloves

Allen: New Locomotion Orange costume (It arrives this week)

Rogers: Lion King tap costume

Tiny Troupe: Chicago Tap costume

Nureyev: Pointe costume with CLEAN pointe or ballet shoes

Fosse: Purple Tap “Kill Bill” costume

Morning Adults: Jeans, dance sneakers and white t-shirts

Night Adults: Jeans, dance sneakers and black t-shirts

Astaire: Mickey Mouse March Costume

Kelly: Boy from New York City Costume

Hines: Celtic Costume

Reinking: Pink and Black Chicago tap costume

Instructor photo: Purple Nike Top and Nike Jacket with black dance pants

JR Instr. Photo: TMDA tank top with black pants

Recital Tickets: Recital tickets go on sale March 15th for all classes. Please see the home page of the web-site for your class and for which dates you may purchase your tickets. You will have until April 18th to purchase your tickets and after this, all tickets will be sold on a first come first serve basis. Any left over tickets will be sold at the door for $7.00 each. Make sure you pick up your tickets by April 18th as we will not hold your tickets any longer than that. Tickets will not be passed out until your tuition and costume bills have been fully paid. Please take care of your outstanding bills this week. Thanks for your cooperation.

Finale Costumes: All dancers will be required to wear their studio tanks and/or tshirts with black pants. No colored pants of any kind will be worn. Younger dancers may wear their studio t-shirts directly over their black leotard and tights. If you need pants or black tights, order them now so as to have them for recital. Please do not wait until the last minute!!

Congratulations: I totally overlooked a wonderful young lady last month in the newsletter and I do hope she forgives me for this. Congratulations to Molly Bouchard of the Reinking Dancers on her performance at Star Search. Molly we are so proud of you for again reaching for the stars and for proving to all of us that dreams do come true. Never stop believing in yourself, Molly, because I know that one day, I am going to see you performing on Broadway and I will be your biggest fan!! YOU GO GIRL!!

Big Thank You!!: Sometimes you have parents that just go beyond the call of duty, and I just want to thank a few of them this month for making my life at the academy so much easier. Thank you to John Hamilton and Steve Sager for somehow, always knowing how to make my 11 VCRs work!! You may not know this, but it is the brain child of John Hamilton that has those 11 VCRs synchronized so well, and he has taught Steve how to operate them as well. Thank you gentlemen for taking care of this huge headache and for always doing it with a smile. To Shelly McHatten for keeping our studio always decorated so nicely for every holiday, we all appreciate your kindness. To Jana Shaw who purchased some extra garbage cans for the studio in hopes that our dancers will use them instead of the floor for their trash. Thanks Jana, that was so sweet of you!! These are my 4 parents of the Month!!

Dance Camp: Mark your calendars! We are going to dance camp on July 31st thru August 2nd, 2004 in Boothbay Harbor. Dancers 10 years old and older can attend. This is a fun filled weekend for dancers and their parents and I hope that TMDA is well represented. I should have the paperwork by our next newsletter which will detail all costs associated with camp and additional information needed to register. We have always learned a great deal from this experience and it’s a great opportunity to enhance your dance skills.

Shoes in Studio: Tis’ the season for messy shoes, therefore, no parents will be allowed into the studio with shoes on until May!! Our schedule for our classes is tight, and we cannot spend our time between classes cleaning up the mess coming in from outside. Students are slipping on the wet floors with their taps and I am not going to chance any one of them getting injured. This is a precaution to protect your children, please respect this and help keep our studio clean.

Special Performance: On March 19, 2004 7pm AT Wieden Hall on the UMPI campus, Hines and Troupe will be dancing at a women’s conference. Hines will perform their Celtic dance and Troupe will perform Chicago. You must be at Wieden Hall by 6:45pm in costume and ready to dance.

Little Miss Fort Fairfield Pageant: Mini Troupe will perform their Chicago Tap song at the Little Miss Fort Fairfield pageant on April 2, 2004, at 7pm. Please be in costume and prepared to dance by 6:45pm.

Jr. Miss and Miss Fort Fairfield Pageant: Tiny Troupe and Jackson will dance in Fort Farifield at the Jr Miss and Miss Fort Fairfield pageant on Sunday afternoon, April 25, 2004 at 2pm. Please be ready and set to dance by 1:45pm. The Pageant committee decided they only wanted 1 song, so we wont be using the Reinking group.

Congratulations: Congratulations to Ashley Martin of the Kelly dancers for winning Little Miss Van Buren 2004!! We are so proud of you!!

Taping of Classes: Please know that we tape our classes to help our dancers and this is an extra thing we do at TMDA for our dancers. We continue to get complaints that your tapes are not being taped, we are doing the best we can. Please do not get upset, this is a privledge not a right! I don’t’ know of any other studio that provides their dancers with this benefit and I would like you all to know that. Our DM’s do a wonderful job taping for the instructors each week, you might want to tell them that!

News: If you have news that you would want to share with the TMDA dance family, i.e., pageant winnings, new births, birthdays, awards etc., please email your news to and we will attempt to get this news on the website on a weekly basis. But, be patient with us, we have a lot of dancers!!

Auditions: For the 2004-2005 season and going forward, there will be no open auditions at TMDA any longer. We will only audition new dancers that have not been a member of TMDA before. All dancers currently enrolled at TMDA should consider this entire year your audition for the upcoming year, as current dancers will be placed in the class that best suits their talents. Current students will have to register on audition day but will not have to audition.

Costumes: Your final costumes will be arriving this week. They were shipped on Friday the 27th of February so they should be here any time. Just ask your DM’s if they have been priced and ready for pick up. Thank you for your patience.

Enjoy the new website. I would love your comments and suggestions. Have a safe and wonderful Spring and let’s keep dancing!!!