Bravo to Brentwood resident Heather Padilla (pictured above), a SLU communication student who was recently named Miss Central States in the 2016 International Junior Miss State Pageant. She will go on to the pageant’s finals in Virginia Beach this summer.
You go, girls! The Ladue Horton Watkins High School Laduettes won first place in the nation for hip-hop at the recent National Dance Alliance competition in Orlando. The talented team also placed No. 9 in the Pom category.
A fond farewell to longtime Dance St. Louis executive director Michael Uthoff, who is retiring after this season. He will stay on in an advisory capacity while the search for a new director is undertaken. Operations and education director Janet Brown will serve as interim director. In addition to presenting internationally renowned troupes, Dance St. Louis is dedicated to educational outreach so children from all parts of the community can experience the magic of dance.
Calling all musical instruments! Lift for Life Academy, the first independent charter school in St. Louis, is collecting unwanted instruments to provide musical enrichment to its 580 students in grades six through 12, most from underserved areas. The school, located in the Soulard neighborhood, provides tuition-free education and enrichment. To arrange for instrument pick up, call 314.640.5211.
Coming to a neighborhood nearby … a vacant lot will soon be transformed into the site of community-based programs and events by this year’s PXSTL winners, architect Amanda Williams and artist/educator Andres Hernandez. The design-build contest is a joint project of Pulitzer Arts Foundation and W.U.’s Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. The project, which explores how small-scale creative ventures can be meaningful catalysts for urban transformation, will emerge in spring 2017, with related programming to take place that summer.
