Happy New Year...Now let's talk about Halloween.

We'd like to wish you all a very Happy New Year! 2010 is here. New Year's Eve has come and gone. The ball has dropped and the confetti has landed. What now? Why, Halloween, of course!

You may not think that January is the time to think about Halloween. So let us prove you wrong and explain why we seriously have Halloween on the brain and why you should be seriously excited.

On December 19, we had an encore performance of our latest show, Simcha. It was about family, tradition, love, history as tangible and true to life as an old photo album.

Now it's time to turn over a new leaf and start a brand new show. And this one will take us in a whole new direction. We have begun the first steps of work and choreography for our upcoming show, A Vampire Dinner Party, which should be ready by October 2010, in time for Halloween.

And where Simcha was all about a loving tribute to real life, A Vampire Dinner Party will be a departure into a much more fantastical world.

It's a world we've just begun constructing,

a world that will be deliciously decadent, imaginative, mystical, funny, spooky, wild, mysterious, bold, carnivorous, and breathtaking. Imagine a mansion on Halloween night where the real, the imagined, the living and the not-so-living come together to toast to the wildest night of the year. Imagine a grand ball. And imagine yourself as a guest and a voyeur, catching a peak into the many rooms of this mansion, each holding different stories, secrets, and surprises. Any proper mansion — and especially one on Halloween night — has a good ghost story, a good love story, a skeleton or two in the closet, deadly thrills and lively music. It's a Vampire Dinner Party. And your invited — as dinner.

We wanted to share with you some of our first ideas, impressions, and images of the choreography and the costumes for the show that's already got us possessed. Take a look at the photos of our first steps towards putting this show together.

View the first preview photos of A Vampire Dinner Party

Enjoy the photos and of course, we'll keep you posted with more spooky developments. In the meantime, Happy New Year... and Happy Halloween.

So You Think You Can Dance Embraces Russian Dance with Open Arms

Fox's So You Think You Can Dance has always been known for the wide variety of dance styles that if features. But in the past, ethnic dance has not had a presence on the show. This season, however, saw the first steps of international world dance on the main stream American national stage. The first was a Bollywood style Indian dance, but it was the finale's Russian Trepak dance that really brought the audience and the judges to their feet. The two male finalists, Twitch and Joshua were impressed and challenged by the beautiful, vibrant, and acrobatic tricks that Russian and Ukranian dance has to offer.

The dancers and staff of Firebird Dance Studio were happy and very proud to see Russian dancing being so well-received by American audiences nationwide. But we were not surprised! We have been teaching Russian Dance to students of all ages, as well as performing to audiences around the bay area, California, and internationally for 17 years. And we couldn't be happier that America's love of Russian dance is spreading! Below, you can see the routine that Twitch and Joshua performed, and compare it with photos of our own Firebird male dancers of all ages doing some Russian Dance tricks.

Welcome to the Firebird Blog

Welcome to Firebird Dance Studio's Blog where you will find our thoughts, news, events, articles, and photos of Firebird Dance School and Theatre, world dancing, and the bay area dance community.

As summer comes to a close and the days are growing shorter, we are excited to welcome in the fall, and with it, the official opening of Firebird's 2008-2009 season. Look forward to new classes, new choreography, new performances and, in December, our brand new show, Simcha. For more information on Simcha, you can visit the show's official site.