NEWS RELEASE
MOVING ART
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Students representing Moving Art earned recognition at the 2025 Junior Theater Festival Atlanta (JTF Atlanta).
The monumental weekend dedicated to rewarding and celebrating excellent student-driven musical theatre programs happened Jan. 17 to 19, 2025, at the Cobb Convention Center in Atlanta.
Moving Art received the Excellence in Dance Award. Moving Art’s Maya McNair and Summer Fallis were named Junior Theater Festival All-Stars, a select group of outstanding performers. Summer Fallis, Chase Mlinaric, and Molly Brown made it to the call-back to a yet-to-be-announced special project promoting musical theatre in schools, and Marcus Ngo earned an award for Outstanding Individual Performance.
At the festival, each group performed 15 minutes of a Broadway Junior musical for adjudicators. Moving Art presented Disney Newsies Jr. to Beau Harmon (he/him), So You Think You Can Dance; Marissa Davis (she/her), K-8 music teacher and theatre director at The Gateway School; and Ernie Nolan (he/him), director and playwright.
Said Beau Harmon, "The cast was comprised of fantastic dancers, singers, and actors that all cohesively came together to put on a great show. Moving Art clearly shows love and care to all disciplines of musical theatre.”
Added Marissa Davis, “Marcus Ngo as Crutchie was heartbreaking, inspiring, and memorable, a standout amongst an equally memorable ensemble. This presentation showed this program’s commitment to excellent musicality and precision in dance.”
Ernie Nolan noted, “The singing and dancing from these students was sharp and precise, and these young actors gave beautiful performances. You could tell how much time and effort that went into creating such a strong, sharp piece.”
We are Moving Art. We are not just a dance studio. We are a performing arts training facility placing equal emphasis on technique and performance quality. We welcome everyone into the Moving Art family. Moving Art offers everyone from ages three to 103 the opportunity to experience, train and perform drama and dance at an affordable price and in a comfortable professional environment.
The group attended the Junior Theater Festival for the first time in 2018 in Atlanta. Moving Art was the first Canadian group ever to attend JTF. At 2024 JTF Atlanta, the group won a Freddie G Excellence in Acting award. Marcus Ngo won a Freddie G Outstanding Individual Performance award. Meghan Stirpe and Maya McNair made it to the call-back to a yet-to-be-announced special project promoting musical theatre in schools. Marcus Ngo and Meghan Stirpe were named Performance All-Stars, a select group of outstanding performers.
In 2021, young performers from Moving Art took part virtually in the JTF Online Edition (JTF OE) and were awarded a Freddie G Excellence in Music award. In 2020, with their performance of Beauty and the Beast Jr. the group won a Freddie G Excellence in Dance award.
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