From the Classroom to Avenue of the Americas

At Dance Parade, our year always begins out of public view. Before the glamorous floats, captivating performances and joy hit the streets of New York City, you can find our work in classrooms, older adult centers and community sites across the city. Last year, nearly 30 teaching artists led 27 programs at 25 sites across Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Manhattan, and this year we’re aiming even higher.

The artists at the forefront of our community engagement are what make our programs special. Approximately 90% of our teaching artists are BIPOC, many of them immigrants or children of immigrants, who carry their cultures’ dance traditions into rooms that often have no dance or arts teachers at all. Running from October through June, our programs help fill a need in New York City, as our Community Engagement Director Carlye Eckert explains: “Even in New York City, which some would say is the dance capital of the world, there are schools that do not have arts programming. We are trying to fill a need, fill a gap.”

And our teaching artists are how we fill that gap. “They are keeping alive forms of dance, many of which the mainstream has never even heard of,” Carlye says, “so we’re bringing that to the schools.”

Teaching artist Funmilayo Chesney leading a Cultural Residency at PS/MS 34 in the East Village. Photo: Adele Fornet for FUSHA Dance.

With our new season in motion, teaching artist Funmilayo Chesney has been leading about 25 students at NYC iSchool in Soho through Dances of the African Diaspora five days a week since September 14, with styles including hip hop, samba and Kuku from Guinea, plus drumming. Come November 9, students will have the opportunity to show what they’ve learned at a final presentation held at the school. As for what’s to come, a renewed Classical Indian and Bollywood residency at Hawtree Creek Middle School in Queens is on the way, plus a new partnership in East New York and returning programs in Soundview in the Bronx, Bushwick, the Lower East Side, Astoria in Queens and many other neighborhoods.

What it looks like in the room

Heidi Ford, now in her second AmeriCorps year with Dance Parade, working as our Community Engagement Coordinator, gets to see our impact up close and personal. Her role focuses on matching teaching artists with schools and centers, and she personally visits these schools throughout New York City. On her most recent site visit, she watched high school students form a dance circle, or cipher.

“Often high schoolers are a bit shy to do something different,” Heidi says. “But a lot of students were entering the circle and improvising, and I think that’s so empowering to see.”

Ageless Action at HANAC Angelo Petromelis Older Adult Center in Flushing, Queens. Photo: Greg Miller.

But dance is ageless, and so are the spaces we share it in. Through Ageless Action, we send our teaching artists into seven older adult centers, where older adults dance together each week and commemorate their work with a performance for their families. “It’s so cool to see them get all nervous for it and then feel so proud after,” Heidi says.