For their end of year recital, Amanda’s Dance Academy (now Sunflower State Dance) printed a 5.5” x 8.5” program. This program was designed with clean simple lines giving it a professional look and feel. The new owner of the academy, Rachel W, spoke with me so that I could learn more about the project.

We started by discussing her role in the organization. She had been a teacher at the academy and had recently purchased the organization. Now, the dance academy is known as Sunflower State Dance.

Since this was the end of year recital all classes and dancers participate in the event. In the program Rachel used eight pages to list all 52 songs and the dancers that would be performing over the course of two days. She didn’t include pictures of all the dancers which helped keep her page count down. Fewer pages = cheaper printing price. She also included a thank-you page, upcoming events and advertisements.

When designing a program there are many things you can include.

• Schedule of events
• Message from the director
• Teachers biographies
• Individual or class pictures
• Advertisements
• Thank you page
• Autograph page
• Upcoming events

Depending on your organization you may want to include some or all of these pages.

Rachel designed the program and gathered the information that she wanted to include. Then she hired a graphic designer to put together the print-ready files. When they were choosing colors they decided to use a magenta that matched the t-shirts that they had made for the dancers. When everything is color coordinated it really gives an event a professional feel.

For someone considering a print project like this, Rachel advises “give yourself a lot of time”. Things like collecting the images, and making sure that you don’t forget any of the participants are very important and can be time consuming. When you give yourself a lot of time to complete a project like this you lessen the chances that you will make an error or forget something important.

Rachel likes having these programs printed because the audience really likes them and the dancers get to keep them as a keepsake. This makes it especially important that the design looks good and the quality of the paper and print materials is top-notch.

Printing a dance recital program shows that you really care about your event and that you want to provide a professional experience for your participants.  A dance program can have as much or as little information as you want to share with your audience. Just remember the basics, like the schedule of events and you will have a great program for your dance recital.