When she moved to the Fredericksburg area from Chicago more than a decade ago, Kay Harris didn’t detect much diversity in the local performing arts scene.
Harris recalled being told that Black parents didn’t typically support extracurricular activities for their children.
“Based on my upbringing, I said, ‘That’s not true,’” she said.
Harris set out to disprove that assertion 12 years ago when she opened Umbiance Center for the Performing Arts, located at 1498 Central Park Boulevard in Fredericksburg.
The buzz surrounding Umbiance was slow in the beginning, but the school has grown from 65 students in 2020 to more than 200 five years later. That maturation will be on display this weekend with the performance of “Twelve Dancing Princesses” on Saturday and Sunday at James Monroe High School at 2:30 p.m.
Tickets are available at umbiancedance.com.
“I am so excited for this production,” said Carah McCollum, a recent Colonial Forge High School graduate who plays the role of Billie. “We have spent months and hours and days and weeks on this show and it’s not only just dancing. It’s acting and singing. Everybody put so much hard work into this show.”
The show is based on a fairytale published by Brothers Grimm in 1815. But Harris said this performance is inspired by Debbie Allen’s “Brothers of the Knight,” a contemporary retelling of the original “Twelve Dancing Princesses.”
The Umbiance version was written by Harris’ daughter, Nya Harris, a 21-year-old professional dancer who got her start in her mother’s school. Harris said her daughter wanted to send a message of unity because of “our current government and the climate that’s happening.”
“We were thinking about how our government wants to separate people and divide them and so you’ll see through our plot, that we shouldn’t be divided,” Harris said. “It shouldn’t be the rich people here, and the poor people are down here, or this culture is being attacked. It should be us all coming together to face these challenges together and uniting.”
McCollum said she’s eager to play her role, especially since this is her final performance with Umbiance before she enrolls at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where she will major in psychology on a pre-med track. She’s already been accepted onto Howard’s dance team.
She explained that the 12 princesses in the production are confined to a castle under the direction of their father, the King.
Her character is the most rebellious of the princesses, a resistance steeped in a love for reading books and a curiosity about the outside world.
“Curiosity can be a fantastic thing,” McCollum said. “And being open-minded about other people who may be different from you is very important. That’s kind of my role in the story … I’m informed about other things, and I want to experience other things, but we’re not really allowed to. I take my sisters out on a journey experiencing different cultures, different people and just experiencing the outside world.”
Harris is expecting the performance to be one of the highlights of Umbiance’s existence. She said that 180 students will participate in some way, with 40 people working behind the scenes.
The company has come a long way since its formation. Harris said a breakthrough arrived in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Nya Harris spoke at local NAACP protests, and there was a noticeable uptick in support for Black businesses.
Harris said that while 97% of her students are Black, some are white, Asian and Hispanic. At Umbiance, the diversity she was seeking came to fruition.
“I kind of did it to prove a point,” Harris said. “And to create an atmosphere where children of color could be celebrated.”
