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Little Girl, Big Imagination – local dancer produces dance web series

November 17, 2022   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

A local teen dancer is taking on a big assignment as she is producing a series of short dance pieces on video.

Thirteen-year-old Andrea Matei, a Beeton resident, has been dancing since she was just three-years-old. She currently is training with Canadian Dance Unit in Bolton.

As a competitively trained dancer with experience in a variety of genres, Andrea’s goal is to help bring stories to life and please the audience through artistic movement and expression.

The assignment was self-directed as Andrea decided to produce the video series to not only showcase dance as an art form but provide other dancers with the experience to dance on camera. The series is titled, Little Girl, Big Imagination.

“I do pretty much most styles of dance except ballroom,” Andrea explained. “I do jazz, tap, ballet, hip-hop, contemporary, and I also work with little kids. I like to dance because it’s like my safe zone. Whatever I’m feeling, I know that dance can help with it. It’s my comfort thing to do – I know that dance will never let me down. My passion for dance just keeps on growing – it’s a beautiful thing for people to do. I love ballet but I also enjoy doing hip-hop and contemporary dance.”

Andrea came up with the idea of producing videos that showcased dance and created the concept of having her younger sister, five-year-old Gabriela, as a younger person, see her imagination come to life through dance.

“After that first video, I thought of doing it with other people to give other dancers the experience of dancing on camera,” Andrea explained.

Of the original concept of using her sister in the videos, she said “It was like her envisioning her doll coming to life and becoming a dancer.”

She worked with videographer, Kareem Byfield to produce the videos.

The original video was shot at Woodbine Beach in Toronto.

“I’d like them to become a series,” Andrea said. “When I did the first one, I really enjoyed doing it. I’d like to expand on it and have more dancers doing it. We started off by looking at the idea. For the first video we had the idea of the doll coming to life and becoming the ballerina.”

Once she had the idea, the next step was to decide on the concept of how to translate the idea to video and choose the music, the costumes, and the dance moves that put it all together.

Choreographer Merey Ismailova was her movement coach in the first video.

With the success of the first episode, featuring ballet, they planned a second episode that takes Gabriela on a walk through the forest where she finds a tiny creature that sets off her imagination, and is interpreted through Andrea’s dance in a meadow surrounded by trees.

You can view Andrea’s dance videos at her YouTube channel at AndreaMateiDance.

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