The Newtown Centre of Classical Ballet & Voice will present Coppelia & The Toy Shop, a Comedic Ballet on Sunday, June 12, at noon and 3 pm, at Edmond Town Hall, 45 Main Street.Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty, which are more serious ballets set in castles and with more of a tragic theme even though they have happy endings in our productions. So this year I wanted to do something a little more character dance oriented and fun."Coppelia "because it's a really funny ballet, unique to stage, and set in a village, so I thought it would be a completely different flavor for the dancers and the audience."

Admission is complimentary. Guests will also have an opportunity to enjoy a flower sale, raffle, and concession stand. The whole family is invited for a fun afternoon.

Centre Director Tory Gozzi said this week, "The last two years we focused on doing

Ms Gozzi chose

During a recent dress rehearsal, ballerinas of all ages wore colorful costumes and made final adjustments to their roles in the play - many as townspeople or village children. Ms Gozzi worked with the dancers to perfect their poses and make final adjustments.

Dancers will act out a plot focused on a girl named Swanhilda who tries to make friends with a "girl" named Coppelia reading a book in the Toymaker's window. Coppelia completely ignores her attempts at friendship and Swanhilda then plots with her friends to sneak into the girl's house later that night to find out why she won't come out to play. Once inside the toy shop, they discover many dolls that start to dance when they use a magic key to wind them up. Coppelia is one of the dolls.

Swanhilda next angers the toymaker and pretends to be Coppelia when he returns. The ballet concludes with everyone making peace and celebrating together with many special dances that their town has gotten a new bell.

Dancers Julia Reczek will play Coppelia and Katerina Ringes is Swanhilda.

Ms Gozzi said, "The girls and I have had a lot of fun delving into the comedy and finding little ways of inserting comedic elements into the whole ballet, especially Act 2."

With a rich plot and comedy before them, the girls and Ms Gozzi "really tried to exploit that in coming up with each one of their characters," the studio director said.

In Act 2 each of Swanhilda's friends has a different element that they highlight: ballerina Lizzy Delp is the worry-wart who constantly worries about getting caught, as opposed to ballerina Riley Smith, the trouble-maker who comes up with all the ideas that get the girls in trouble.

Ms Gozzi said she especially had fun working with Katerina Ringes, one of two seniors, as Swanhilda.

"She had to figure out how to get 'frustrated' at Coppelia in her Act 1 solo," said Ms Gozzi. "She is such a sweet person that she had some trouble being a bit snotty in her attitude towards Coppelia."

Commenting on her dancer's effort, Ms Gozzi said, "It took a lot of work to get that emotional flavor and energy into her dancing. Julia Reczek, another senior who is playing the doll Coppelia, "had a lot of fun exploring how to be a doll in her motions-she cannot be graceful and elegant but rather has to be sharp and doll-like at all times." Playing as a doll "is not as easy as it looks especially when that type of sharpness has to be so overdone that people as far away as the balcony can see it"

Preparing for the performance has been a "great experience, very different from our last two shows, and I can't wait to present it," Ms Gozzi said. She believes the audience will enjoy the dancers, some as young as three years old, she said.

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