A State College-based musical theater troupe for people with Down syndrome will host a free dance and movement workshop Tuesday evening at Eisenhower Auditorium on Penn State's University Park campus.
One of the For Good Performance Troupe's big annual events is the "Let’s Dance" workshop. It will begin with a performance by the troupe, followed by movement exercises and improv activities. The workshop will end with a Mardi Gras parade on stage.
Michele Dunleavy, a dance professor at Penn State, is the For Good Performance Troupe’s choreographer, and will be teaching and leading exercises during the workshop.
"One of our longtime troupe members gave a Ted Talk last weekend where he talked about assumptions, and how people make assumptions about him when they look at him and see a person with Down syndrome," Dunleavy said. "And I think that happens a lot. And the For Good Troupe and their performances break down those assumptions and let the community see them through a wider lens."
Dunleavy was the 2024-25 Penn State Laureate, an annual faculty honor meant to bring greater visibility to the arts and humanities at Penn State. Dunleavy’s theme for the year as laureate was that anybody can dance.
"The message is that dance is for every body," Dunleavy said. "That everybody can dance, and that it doesn’t have to look any a certain way, that it’s a means of expression and a means of building community."
The For Good Performance Troupe started in 2012 with Krista Wilkinson, a speech pathology professor at Penn State.
"There were not a lot of opportunities for folks with Down syndrome to be involved in local theater," Wilkinson said. "Especially once they graduate from high school, those opportunities are really limited. So, we started up in 2012 and have been going ever since."
The "Let’s Dance" workshop is from 5:30-6:30 p.m. Tuesday evening in Eisenhower Auditorium. The event will be wheelchair-accessible, live-captioned and ASL-interpreted.
The Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State is a financial supporter of WPSU.
