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| Send kindness soaring By Stacy Trevenon [ stacy@hmbreview.com ] Published/Last Modified on Tuesday, May 19, 2009 12:56 PM PDT This weekend’s recital by the El Granada-based Michelle McDonald’s Gotta Dance! studio has a Mary Poppins theme, but it’s not just about chimney sweeps and an unusual nanny. It’s about acts of kindness like the “Mary Month of May” food drive the dancers are holding for Coastside Hope. The recital is set for 7 p.m. Friday, June 5 and 3 p.m., Saturday, June 6 in the Half Moon Bay High School auditorium. With dancers Emily Fountain-Larsen, India Bolding, MacKenzie Schuller, Annalise Morris and Niki Walker respectively playing the old bird woman, Mary Poppins, Bert, Jane and Michael, Walt Disney’s classic “Mary Poppins” will be enacted by 60 dancers age 3-15 in tap, jazz and ballet. The characters will meet talking animals and famous artworks like Georgia O’Keefe’s flowers, and become animated toys and lively chimney sweeps. Adults will play parents and suffragettes. A central focus is the old bird woman, who represents kindness as she sits on cathedral steps entreating passersby to “feed the birds, tuppence a bag.” Seeing a televised program on the making of the mid-1960s classic inspired McDonald. “What could we, as a studio, do to show kindness?” she said. “What I wanted to base the recital on was not just dancing and song, but also giving back to the community. It’s not just about ourselves. It’s about others.” She went to Coastside Hope for a list of needs, and her students launched the food drive, collecting nonperishable food items in a “bird woman” bin at the studio. Six boxes of food so far have gone to Coastside Hope, McDonald said. At the shows, the public is welcome to bring nonperishable, canned food items. “It’s a focus on the bird woman’s means of helping one another and thinking of other people first instead of ourselves,” said McDonald. The students also made kites for the finale, “Let’s Go Fly a Kite.” McDonald said she’d like to reunite the cast for the San Francisco Family Day Kite Festival Sept. 19 and 20. “Supporting each other is what I think (‘Mary Poppins’) represents, myself,” she said. Admission to the recital is $15/adults and $12/children age 14 and under. For information, call 726-1489. |