Dana Jolly
Founder & Director of VIProductions &
Music Theatre Mentorship Programs
Dana has been passionate about teaching and mentoring students in the performing arts and Music Theatre industry, for the past 25 years. Her focus is, and has always been about nurturing and respecting the students to enable and encourage creativity and free expression in dance. She strongly believes you must feel comfortable and supported in your environment in order to take risks and challenge yourself, without fear. By training this way the student can discover and embrace what it is to be an artist, and take their dancing to greater heights. Strong technique is crucial to sustain a long career in Musical Theatre, along with an understanding of how the body functions to produce optimal performance. Focus on finding your intrinsic style, and performance quality, along with adopting different styles, and genres, are also key points that Dana is passionate about.
The Mentorship Program has been developed to provide such an environment to students where they can challenge themselves in all 3 disciplines of singing/acting/ and dancing just as it would be in rehearsals. Dana wanted to get quality professional creatives currently working on Musical Theatre shows to collaborate with her to achieve this objective, providing an aspect in the market that she felt was missing between full time training and professional employment. You can take dance classes, and/or singing and acting classes, but rarely, if ever can you work with all three creatives in the room at the same time, as it would be in a professional show. This is what the Music Theatre Mentorship Program aims to provide our students.
Dana’s choreography credits include 10 musicals for The Production Company including, ”Anything Goes”, “Kiss Me Kate”, “Thoroughly Modern Millie”, “Follies”, “Little Me”, “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels”, “Grey Gardens”, “Show Boat”, “Nice Work If You Can Get It”, “Curtains”, and “Gentleman’s Guide To Love and Murder”.
Other choreographic credits include “Fiddler On The Roof” with Anthony Warlow Melbourne/Sydney, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” Australian Tour, “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” Sydney’s Theatre Royal, “Jumpy” (staring Marina Prior and Jane Turner) and “Last Man Standing”, both for Melbourne Theatre Company, “You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown” for The Alex Theatre, “Adelaide Cabaret Festival”, “Everybody Loves Rhonda” for Rhonda Burchmore, “So You Think You Can Dance”, The AFL “Grand Final Entertainment”, “The Royal Variety Performance” London, “Miss World Competition” London, International Festivals in Malaysia and the UK, numerous television shows and commercials.