In July 2023, Dance to You! had the pleasure of being able to perform at the Graham School, one of the five early education and intervention schools of the Association to Benefit Children (ABC) in East Harlem, New York City. ABC is a nonprofit organization that has been providing early education to children of lower-income families, as well as children with mental disabilities and delays, other medical fragilities, and those who have experienced homelessness, abuse, and trauma since 1986.
Our session at the Graham School began with a presentation where we gave the children a basic introduction to dance by asking the questions "who, what, where, when, and why" with respect to dance. We explained that dance is moving your body to music, and that we can dance anywhere and everywhere, all the time! We also shared with the children that we dance to perform, show emotion, tell stories, and have fun! In addition, we taught them about the different genres of dance including ballet, modern, tap, and hip-hop, as well as different dance styles from around the world. Finally, to teach them that all people can dance regardless of age, gender, height, etc., we read aloud the story Giraffes Can't Dance by Giles Andreae.
We then performed ballet and hip-hop/K-pop for the children. Our ballet segment included pieces from the ballets Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, and Paquita, and for our hip-hop/K-pop segment, we performed the original choreography of the song "Permission to Dance" by the K-pop boy band BTS. This song helped to further emphasize the message from our presentation earlier in the session that all people can dance, and as the chorus of the song goes: "We don't need permission to dance"!
Finally, we included a variety of interactive activities in our session. We taught the children the five basic positions in ballet, how to leap, and how to twirl. We then concluded our session by having a dance party where we encouraged all of the children to get up and dance, and had so much fun dancing together!
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