The task dancers Sunny Reichert ’09 (Broadcast Journalism) and Evan Rosenblatt ’09 (Kinesiology/Dance) set for themselves was ambitious at best, exhausting at worst. For their 2008-09 Presidential Scholars project, the two mounted a full-throttle dance production with a mix of high school students, CSUN students and professionals.

“We were trying to do something on a really big scale,” said Reichert, whose background in journalism fueled the team’s public relations campaign.

Their idea was to expose high school students to “the sense of community found in the great dance companies,” to different dance forms and ideas, and to the experience of working with professional dancers. Not least, Reichert and Rosenblatt wanted to bring the thrill of dance—including the CSUN dance program—to new audiences.

Mentored and inspired by kinesiology professor Paula Thomson, who heads Northridge’s dance option, they began their year-long journey. Working with about 20 students—many of whom were dance novices— from Northridge Academy High School, Brentwood and Harvard Westlake, the duo put in long hours teaching both fundamentals and more advanced concepts.

“From the beginning, there was huge growth, not just in movement and comfort, but in focus and openness to new ideas like contact improvisation,” said Rosenblatt, co-director with Bethana Rosenthal of the Dreamscape Dance Theatre. “The students were pretty rowdy in the beginning…But by the end, it was moving to see how the whole class responded. When we said goodbye, there were tears.”

For high school students, it meant giving up after-school time for rehearsals. Their commitment deepened after the death of Roger Nunez, the Northridge Academy student originally cast as the lead. Nunez died Feb. 17 in a car accident.

For Reichert and Rosenblatt, it meant cramming in time to choreograph nine original dances, plan and lead classes and rehearsals, organize lighting, staging, costuming, sound, publicity and venue. Not to mention their kinesiology and journalism coursework.

“By the final week before the show, I was a train wreck,” laughed Reichert. “But I learned that I can have ‘ginormous’ goals and get them achieved.”

As conceived by Reichert and Rosenblatt, the production of “Snapshots” revealed the struggles of today’s high school student, from the athlete to the aspiring artist, from Mr. Popularity to the loner.

Sponsored in part by the Kinesiology Department and dedicated to Nunez, the March 2009 performance took place in CSUN’s Plaza del Sol Performance Hall. The cheers that night were rewarding, but for Rosenblatt and Reichert the big payoff already had occurred: the joy of the young protégés who had learned what it is like to be part of a real performing arts experience, from the rigors of rehearsal to show time jitters.

The two will pursue careers in dance, choreography and—in Reichert’s case—sports broadcasting.

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Presidential Scholars