Earlier this month, Nazareth College made an ambitious leap into the Rochester arts-festival circuit with the Nazareth College Arts Center Dance Festival, which ran July 10-17. The event took place on the Nazareth campus and several other locations around Rochester, and featured both local dance troupes and national headliners like Inlet Dance Theatre and STREB Extreme Action Company.

After drawing an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 people for the inaugural event, Nazareth is planning to bring the festival back in 2011, says Rachel DeGuzman, marketing and publicity manager for the Nazareth College Arts Center.

Since many of the events were free it was difficult to get solid attendance figures, but DeGuzman says that the 5,000 to 6,000 estimate is probably on the low end. The festival's ticketed events were all successful, she says, especially the sold-out STREB performances and the Elizabeth Streb-Garth Fagan discussion.

DeGuzman said that while the college learned some lessons from the first festival - the non-event-related discussions did not draw as well as hoped - the Naz staff was especially heartened by the educational opportunities that were embraced by festival goers. More than 400 people attended at least part of the STREB group's six-hour open rehearsal, and 100 city children attended master classes with Inlet.

DeGuzman says that with arts education so imperiled, that kind of outreach is crucial.

"If we can expand upon it in the next festival, we will," she says. "For people who ignore that, there will be no future audiences."

Dates for the 2011 festival haven't yet been set, and DeGuzman says the staff is working on picking a headliner.