Lightning Thief Rescheduling Form

Please complete the form to help us pick the best date possible to move the Lightning Thief show.

Once we have all responses, we will communicate the new plan.

Dear Lightning Thief families,

It is with a heavy heart that I write to you today. After a serious discussion with my team, I’ve made the very difficult decision to postpone The Lightning Thief.

This was not a decision I came to lightly. It was painful and weighed heavily on me. But in my heart, I believe it is the right choice—and here’s why. Your children’s safety and well-being are, and always will be, the most important priority for myself and my staff. It has become clear that if we push forward to open the show this Friday, we would be compromising not only on safety but on the quality of the experience—both for our students and our audience. And that is not acceptable.

Let me begin by saying that regardless of the circumstances that brought us to this point, this is my business, and I take full responsibility for everything. As many of you know, the original plan was for our new space to be open well before now. Unfortunately, we’ve faced a series of delays along the way. I won’t go into all the details here, but I’d be more than happy to host an open Zoom session in the coming weeks to walk through the full timeline and answer any questions for those who are interested. In the past few days, it has become clear that while the space may meet the city’s basic operational requirements, I am not confident it will meet our standards in time for opening night.

• More importantly, the safety precautions that were taken to make the space safe for kids last night were not what the contractor and I had agreed upon. I have made it very clear to him that this was unacceptable, but I believe it will take several days to bring the space up to my standards of safety. I will settle for nothing less.

• This does not give us enough time to put the show up this week. Thus the postponement.

• I am sincerely and deeply sorry that anyone set foot in a space yesterday that I am responsible for that could have at all been unsafe.

These students have worked incredibly hard and created something we’re deeply proud of. They deserve a performance that reflects that effort and talent.

Here’s the plan moving forward:

We have three potential weekends we can shift the performance to:

• May 23–25 (Memorial Day Weekend)

• May 30–June 1

• June 6–8

Please visit www.dancewithstarlight.com/lightningthief to complete a quick poll indicating which weekend(s) your family is available. This will help us do our best to accommodate as many schedules as possible.

I’m devastated that we have to make this change, but I’m confident it is the right call. Thank you for your continued support and trust—it means the world to me.

As for this week:

We are canceling the tech week schedule. Please take today off to rest. However, we will still be holding our regular Teen rehearsal this Thursday from 6–8 PM at the old space, and all Juniors are welcome to join us. Once we’ve reviewed the poll results, we’ll follow up as soon as possible with a revised rehearsal schedule moving forward.

Anyone who has purchased tickets will be notified as soon as we have gathered response to the poll and made a new plan so we can arrange moving their tickets or handling refunds. Thank you for your patience.

With deep love for this community and a promise to do better,

Chelsea Gaskin