BUZZ QUEENS FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT www.qns.com FEBRUARY 11, 2016 • TIMES 25 beginning this week Ridgewood designer ‘PROJECT RUNWAY ALL-STARS’ BY ANGELA MATUA [email protected] @AngelaMatua will compete in... Some of Project Runway’s most accomplished designers will compete on the Lifetime show’s All-Stars season next week and one of those stars has ties to Queens. Ridgewood’s Alexander Pope, 40, who competed on season 12 of the show, is back to show off his design skills on “Project Runway All-Stars,” which is set to air on Feb. 11. Pope, who has lived in Ridgewood for the last three years, has a background in makeup and costume design. The Los Angeles native went to school at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising and moved to New York 10 years ago to advance his fashion career. Pope said he had been a fan of “Project Runway” before making a spurof the-moment decision to audition. The designer, whose pieces are “a little darker” and more “couture,” currently works in the costume department for Saturday Night Live, Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Opera. He said competing on season 12 of “Project Runway” taught him time management skills and forced him to make editing decisions quickly. “Defi nitely time management, that is the biggest thing coming from Broadway, coming from theater, you have hundreds of hours to do something,” Pope said. “I learned tweaking my design and designing for an 8-hour look.” Pope said he hopes to build his television career in the future. “It’s fairly new to me,” Pope said. “I’m enjoying it immensely.” The fi fth season of “Project Runway All-Stars” airs on Thursday, Feb. 11, at 9 p.m. on Lifetime. Glendale students shine their own musical BY ANTHONY GIUDICE [email protected] @A_GiudiceReport The fi fth- and sixth-graders of Glendale’s P.S./I.S. 113 took parents, teachers and classmates on an interstellar trip through the cosmos during the performance of their play “The Galactic Dance-a-Thon.” The kids have been working on creating this show since last October in conjunction with Inside Broadway, the city’s leading arts-education nonprofi t organization, and their popular afterschool theater “Create a Musical” program which was funded by the City Council through the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs under the Council’s Cultural After-School Adventures (C.A.S.A.) Initiative. “A vast majority of our public schools don’t have many arts programs, so when you bring a C.A.S.A. program to a school, you hope to enrich the overall quality of education,” said Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley, who helped secure funding to bring Inside Broadway to P.S./I.S. 113. “The kids are excited to come to school, make friendships and learn.” The students began working with Inside Broadway teaching artist Braddon Mehrten on Oct. 8, 2015, and spent two hours after school, two times a week to create their story and learn the swing music and choreography for the performance’s six songs. The 25-session workshop also helped students become more profi cient in their voice and acting skills and they had the chance to work with a scenic designer to create a backdrop for the fi nal performance. “This is a great age group for this performance’s skill set,” Mehrten said. “I’ve had kids that have never done something like this, to kids who felt they were seasoned pros. This is a great project to create a community among the students.” “I learned the most from the acting games that we played,” student Anna Hochenberger said. The performance showcased the 23 students as aliens from the planets in the solar system, each vying to win the galactic dance-a-thon on their spaceship. “My favorite part was the singing and dancing with old and new friends,” said Jack Bonowitz, one of the performers. “The best part was at the end when we all took a bow,” student Ruzhdi Lukolic said. “It was so worth it after all of our hard work.” The educators at the Glendale school had nothing but praise for Inside Broadway’s program. “The program is a great one because it exposes students to the performance arts in a new and fun way,” said Alejandro Megias, principal of P.S./I.S. 113. “It sparks in an interest in students that they previously may not have had.” RIDGEWOOD TIMES/Photos by Anthony Giudice Students at P.S./I.S. 113 in Glendale put on a performance of their self-made musical “The Galactic Dance-a-Thon.” Photo courtesy of A& E Networks
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