Crafterina: Arts and Crafts for Young Dancers
By Laura Di Orio of Dance Informa.
As a young child, Vanessa Salgado was always creating. In fact, some of her earliest memories are of sitting at the kitchen table, where she, her mother, sister and friends would paint, doodle, glue and color.
Meanwhile, she also studied dance. She trained in classical ballet and performed with a pre-professional ballet company in many classics, including The Nutcracker, Swan Lake andCinderella. After high school, Salgado followed her artistic passions to New York City, where she earned a degree in Dance Performance from the Ailey/Fordham B.F.A. Program. She began work as a professional dancer in various concert dance groups and commercial work and continues to dance with CONTINUUM Contemporary/Ballet. She also teaches dance to young students and is on faculty at the Joffrey Ballet School.
About four years ago, Salgado had an experience that would make her realize it was possible to fuse all of these artistic loves – visual art, dance and teaching – into one endeavor. At a taping of a Halloween episode ofThe Martha Stewart Show, Salgado had created costumes for herself and her friends. Following the taping, an editor from the show took great interest in Salgado’s artwork and encouraged her to delve into illustration, especially of children’s books.
With this thought, Salgado decided to couple her love of crafts and dance into what is now known as Crafterina.
Crafterina is a series of dance-related crafts and activities – storybooks, downloadable printable crafts, coloring books, puppet theaters and more. The crafts are suitable for boys and girls of all ages and often encourage parent and child to work together to create at home. Salgado uses her talents and knowledge as a dancer, artist and teacher to provide these educational and creative activities.
