Studio needs volunteers to make Dance Day video

Ceylan Gentilella, founder of the Desert Sun Performing Arts Studio, is hoping to help residents celebrate National Dance Day.

The day was created by the Dizzy Feet Foundation, a nonprofit organization helping to fund or support dance education through programs for underserved communities, scholarships to dance students and working to improve dance education nationwide.

Every year since its founding in 2009, the foundation posts two instructional videos of two different dances and encourages supporters to submit a video of themselves, a class or a group of people performing the dance. This year, the dances include a hip-hop routine and a Zumba Fitness routine.

Once submitted, selected videos are featured on the Foundation’s Facebook page.

Gentilella will be hosting free lessons for the two routines July 23 through July 26 and said she is hoping to record the students performing them July 27.

The dance instructor said lessons are open to “all (fitness) levels, all levels,” although she did add that “a novice will probably want to come all four days.”

Nevertheless, both routines can be learned and mastered within the four days with an hourlong lesson each day, she said.