LCI students get ready to dance this week at the Yates Memorial Theatre. Even better the school’s tenth annual spring dance recital, Team HOPE!, running April 23-25 at the Yates Memorial Centre will be in tune to the music of Vancouver based pop band Jason and the Diatonics, which includes several former members of New West Theatre including frontman and LCI and New West Theatre alumni Jason Poulsen, who is the son of dance instructor Betty Poulsen. 
She has been trying to get her son’s band out to play for the production.
LCI does two major dance productions each year.
Poulsen has been involved with LCI’s annual production for the past 10 years.
“ The students have been working on it for about eight weeks,” Poulsen said.
“This year is really different and really exciting. It’s very exciting. There is this collaborative feel. There is a wide range of different programs and they love the music,” she continued.
They will be performing to Jason and the Diatonics’ original music which is very much influenced by danceable pop music.
“It really helps them to be able to work with and have access to professionals,” she continued.
Not only will they be performing with the band, but over the past two months, they have been training with hip hop dance specialist Tara Wilson and modern/ jazz dancer Joanne Baker, two professional Calgary based dance choreographers. They are part of this year's program thanks to an Artists in Education grant from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.
Poulsen and six of the students did a three day creation residency at the Banff Centre in the fall to prepare this show.
“There will be modern hip hop, some gymnastics and even some tap dancing,” she said.
She said it is a project that has been in the works for a while though it has been difficult co-ordinating schedules especially with that of her son, who, in addition to fronting Jason and the Diatonics, is also a busy actor in the Vancouver area.
Approximately 70 students from Grade 9-12 will be involved in the event this year as well as approximately 15 parents.
“It’s a great thing for kids who are artistic, but it caters to everybody,” said proud parent Lisa Landry, whose daughter is part of the show.
They will be dancing a variety of dances in the genres of hip hop and jazz.
“It’s sort of like what you see on So You Think You Can Dance Canada,” Landry continued.
“Last year they did Michael Jackson, this year is different, because they have original music,” said Lisa Landry, proud parent of one of the 70 students involved.
“It’s great for the kids,” she said adding dancing combines the athletic with the artistic.
Jason Poulsen, who graduated from LCI in 2001, is flattered the students are learning routines to his music.
“I sent them ghetto iphone recordings of the new songs. There has been a lot of prep work on both ends, but the moment of truth is Saturday (April 20 when he and his band arrive in Lethbridge from Vancouver) and we start putting it all together,” he enthused.
While most of the music the students will be dancing to is from the band’s debut CD “Million Miles of Trouble,” he also wrote several new songs for the program including “Hope” which he wrote during Christmas while he was in Lethbridge being part of New West Theatre’s winter show.
“ I went to see them rehearsing and it was very interesting,” he said adding the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting had just happened and was an everybody’s minds, but he was impressed with the Lethbridge kids.
“I wrote the chorus ‘you give me hope,’” he said.
“I was inspired by them, so I can’t wait to see what they have designed. It’s not just random jumping around,” he continued.
“It has definitely came from their side. And what a great thing for an artist to have happen. They have really taken it to heart,” he enthused.
While LCI didn’t have a dance program when he was at school there, he embraced the arts.
“It’s interesting. I was in the choir program and had a big part in the drama program when Sharon Tait was there. It made me decide I wanted to live my life creatively. So it has definitely come full circle,” he said.
He moved to Vancouver six years ago and has since played roles in TV shows like Smallville, Fringe and Hiccups.
“ Acting has taken a back seat since the band has started to take off,” Poulsen said, whose band also includes Jim McLaren, a fellow New West veteran and a member of the band Incura with fellow Lethbridgian Kyle Gruninger.
They were recently in Toronto for North by Northwest and have applied to be part of the PEAK Performance Project, run by Vancouver radio station 102.7 the Peak and Music B.C, a competition where bands compete for a $100,000 prize to help further their career.
Regardless if they win, they are still planning a couple more tours this year and will record some of the music they wrote for the show on a new CD.
“We definitely have enough new music for a CD,” he said.
Tickets are $15. The show begins at 7 p.m. each night.
A version of this story appears in the April 24, 2013 edition of the Lethbridge Sun Times
— By Richard Amery, L.A. Beat Editor
