A rather slow and foggy Saturday at Skyline was concealing the first ever Dance Festival on Sept. 27.

Within building 1 there was a commotion of dance, all day long students and enthusiasts had been learning new routines in workshops.

Professional dance teachers used their expertise to create master classes for the event. The types of dance were diverse from different cultures and ranging technique. Classes offered included salsa, hip-hop, break dancing and contemporary among others.

The festival was an all day event starting from 10 a.m. and ending with a social dance until 8 p.m.

“Skyline dance classes used to be more diverse,” Heike Mansel said. “But in budget cuts we lost a lot of them.”

Mansel is a teacher at Jefferson High School and taught Afro-Brazilian and Afro- Cuban dance classes at Skyline for 8 years. Her class was one of the ones to go during budget cuts.

Many of the students involved were volunteers from the campus dance programs.

“[The class] was fast but it was fun,” Student volunteer Jen Bates said. “It all helps, learning new things always helps.”

In the middle of the day students showed off their newfound skills in a showcase. The energy in the gymnasium was fun and supportive, when students took a misstep they laughed it off and got high fives regardless. It was inclusive and ultimately beneficial to learning.

“I had a blast,” Gary Ferguson said. “Skyline doesn’t have tap so this was a way for students to learn about all the various teachers and dances and to get the kids on campus.”

Ferguson teaches dance to students at Mercy High School and according to him 86 percent of his students continue to participate in dance after graduation in some fashion. He felt this was a great way for his students to stay connected to dance programs and to network with professionals.

Amber Steele, Skyline dance professor, created this event with networking in mind, she wanted to allow high school students from the area to meet her and get introduced to her program as well as her current students to meet teachers from four-year institutions for when they move on.

“What I really wanted was to start what will hopefully be an annual event,” Steele said. “It will create a dance pipeline essentially. So a lot of the time folks who started dancing in high school go to community college and never dance again and since they don’t know the dance program then they don’t have those connections and won’t sign up for classes.”

Steele also expressed how instrumental the Presidents Innovation Fund at Skyline was to allowing her to experiment with starting this event.

“One thing that I think is really special about Skyline College is the Presidents Innovation Fund because it would have been so scary to have put on something this big.” Steele said. “Normally if you were to try to do something like this you’d have to make it really tight and small and pay for it out of your own budget. If it doesn’t go very well then you take that big risk and I love that our college really cares about good ideas.”

Steele plans to continue this event every year and works to expand the dance division with a new hip-hop class starting in Spring 2015.

“I feel like putting on a festival like this where we can have all these amazing teachers come is nice for having a pretty small department,” Steele said. “It’s a good way to bring variety.”