Katherine is a seventeen-year-old senior at Hood River Valley High School. She has been dancing at CGDA since age four, beginning with the studio’s “Ballet, Tap and Tumbling Class.” She has taken ballet ever since and has loved every minute. She added jazz in sixth grade, hip-hop as a freshman, and modern her junior year. CGDA is an amazing place to learn and dance, and her dedicated teachers and enthusiastic peers have been truly inspiring.

Katherine has expanded her dance knowledge through summer workshops, going away to Whitman College’s Summer Dance Lab for two weeks in the summers of 2007 and 2008. She hopes to pursue dance on the side of academics wherever she ends up next year.

This is Katherine’s third and final year with the CGDA Company. Dancing at CGDA has filled the majority of Katherine’s extracurricular time and the studio has become somewhat of a second home. She would like to thank her teachers for their amazing support throughout her life and dancing career and all of her dance “sisters.” I love you all!

Sara is seventeen and a senior at Hood River Valley High School. She has enjoyed dance since she started taking ballet at the age of eight. Besides ballet she loves hip-hop and jazz. Her favorite part of dancing is performing, and feels honored to be a company dancer for the third year. For two summers she studied at Whitman College’s Summer Dance Lab. After having ankle surgery this past January, she was unable to dance for nine months. It was a difficult time, but now dance is as big a passion as ever. The wonderful support that her teachers and fellow dancers gave her made this hard time an easier one. Sara looks forward to attending design school next year, and hopes to continue dancing through school and for the rest of her life. She is sad that this will be her last year at CGDA, but looks back on a great experience. She gives thanks to her teachers and peers at CGDA for their wonderful support- it has meant so much to her. She couldn’t have done it without them!