Gold Coast Dance Festival set to take the stage at Morgan Park

This Saturday, a high-class dance festival will take place at Glen Cove’s Morgan’s Memorial Park. The inaugural Gold Coast Dance Festival, presented by the dance company Moving On, will celebrate culture through dance. The festival was originally scheduled for last Sunday, but was canceled because of the storm.

Nicole Loizides Albruzzese, co-founder of Moving On and a professional dancer, has been the driving force behind the creation of the event. Growing up in Huntington, Albruzzese began performing with the New York City Ballet at age 17, and began touring the world at 18. She choreographed part of the opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and worked on performances for Abu Dhabi’s 44th National Day.

“I wanted to bring my expertise back home, specifically to Glen Cove, but overall to Long Island,” Albruzzese said, “where I think dance is very misunderstood and under-represented.”

With support from the Glen Cove Youth Bureau, Moving On teamed up with Cove City Arts and the Glen Cove Arts Council to stage the event. It is free of charge, and is focused on bringing top-notch dancing to a wide array of people. According to Albruzzese, attending an event like the festival would typically cost $150 and up. She said she hoped it would offer every demographic access to the arts. 

“Nicole wanted to make sure that people weren’t forgetting about the arts on Long Island,” said Ask la Cour, principal dancer with the New York City Ballet and artistic director of the Ohman School of Ballet.

According to Albruzzese, Glen Cove Councilwoman Marsha Silverman — a former music student at La Guardia High School in Manhattan — has been an ardent supporter of the festival. “To me,” Silverman said, “giving people an opportunity to see things that maybe they’ve never seen before — especially youth — and exposing people to different things can create a positive environment where people may be able to become aware of things that they just never knew about before, and find passion that they didn’t even know existed, and fall in love with something like dance or other forms of art.”

Both Albruzzese and la Cour described dance as a vessel of communication, the sharing of a story by way of a performance. “Language is an art, it’s a science, it’s something that we all aspire to achieve, the basis behind any artist,” Albruzzese said. “It all comes from a place within, and to be able to share with the public what that place is . . . each artist has their own discipline or genre of art that they’re drawn to. For me, it’s dance and movement.”

La Cour will perform a piece he choreographed called “Change of Heart,” which tells the story of two people who have repeated changes of heart but eventually get together.

“Sometimes you don’t necessarily need to yell to get your point across or say something — you can do it through movement,” he said. “I think we all can relate to that. As soon as we hear music or a rhythm, everyone starts dancing. It’s in our body, it’s in our DNA.”

Albruzzese said she hoped the event would help people unplug for a moment, answer their questions about dancers and show the beauty of dance without the magic and flair of things like television. “The Gold Coast Dance Festival I am happily naming after our North Shore shoreline, which I always seem to return to after years of traveling,” she said. “I just always seem to find my way back.”

The festival will showcase a variety of dance disciplines and include performances by professional dancers, including Albruzzese, la Cour, former members of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, a finalist from the Fox series “So You Think You Can Dance” and performers from NBC’s “World of Dance.” It is scheduled for 6 to 8 p.m. on Sunday, with a rain date set for the same time on Aug. 28.

The show will also serve as the launch of Moving On’s mentorship and scholarship fund. Albruzzese hopes the fund will help aspiring dancers make contact with, and help fund their time at, performing arts institutions.

“I aspire to be a household name on Long Island and in the region — not necessarily [with] a large touring company, but something to give back to my community and where I’ve grown up,” Albruzzese said. “So many dancers and artists alike are dependent on touring schedules and leaving their homes or leaving their families. It’s time that we bring that home.”