On Saturday, the historic Marietta Square will be invaded by girls! The 7th Annual Go Girl Festival benefiting the Georgia Metropolitan Dance Theatre takes place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Go Girl, a daylong event, celebrates girlhood. Events will include pointe shoe decorating, face painting, games, inflatables and a live DJ.

Dance demonstrations will be performed by classes from the Georgia Dance Conservatory and by company members of the GMDT, formerly known as Ruth Mitchell Dance Theatre and housed in the studios of Georgia Dance Conservatory. The older girls who dance with GMDT will even lead impromptu dance lessons on the stage.

“This will be my sixth year participating,” said 13-year-old Joelie Lepp of Marietta. “For the past two years, my dance group has performed at Go Girl on the Marietta Square stage.”

Older girls such as Lepp are encouraged to take a leadership role in planning and running Go Girl activities. “Now that we are at the Apprentice Theater IV level, we are given the opportunity to run the Crazy Hair booth, which is the most popular attraction at Go Girl,” said the seventh-grader at St. Joseph’s Catholic School in Marietta. “My friends and I will work shifts all day and create these silly hairdos with washable hair paint, glitter, pipe cleaners, flowers, and other hair doo-dads.”

Lepp also serves as a Saturday morning teaching assistant to Irene Berens, a ballet teacher for younger dancers ages 3 to 8. “I will help get our five-year-old class into their costumes and help Miss Irene line them up and walk them over to the Square to perform their upcoming recital piece on Saturday morning as Go Girl gets underway. The little girls are always a big crowd pleaser,” she said.

“I love Go Girl because I like seeing the little girls have fun when they wearing their costumes and performing, and I like watching the expression on their face when big girls do their hair at the Crazy Hair booth. It’s great seeing so many girls with “Crazy Hair” up at the Square,” she added.

GMDT is a nonprofit organization that has provided dance performances in metro-Atlanta for 50 years. Located at 49 West Park Square, their dancers range from 7 to 18 and older. Visit www.georgiametrodance.org or call (770) 426-0007 for more information.

The admission is free for this rain or shine event. Tickets are sold for concessions and games.

For more information on the festival, visit www.mariettagogirl.com.