A New Group of Dancers: 2 Direction!
Broadway for Arts Education leads a large dance program in The Bronx, with four sections of dance meeting every day throughout the school year led by teaching artists Sabrina Joseph and Bismillah Ba’th. By pure coincidence, one of the sections this year was populated by all young men. Check out their story of transformation, as told by Sabrina, as they prepared for their performance at BAE’s Art Share in April.
I was very excited when I found out that we will have a class with all freshman boys! They entered the room with lots of energy on day one. The room never had a silent moment as they would bond over sports and invite me to kick around the soccer ball with them as we started to get to know each other. Within the first few weeks of school, we talked about what our classroom and personal goals would be for the year. Some things mentioned were learning how to do a backflip, injury prevention, improvement of flexibility, and how to dance on beat. I loved the goals they came up with! I couldn’t promise that I could teach them how to do backflips, but expressed that their other goals were very tangible. I shared some of my goals for the class as well, including doing a performance at the end of the year. Everyone was in shock. At this point of the school year our class had more of a “Dance Cardio” and strength conditioning approach in hopes to ease into more difficult choreography down the road. The idea of performing seemed untouchable to them. They only wanted to dance in the classroom and were very hesitant to be seen by others. So much so that they would stop dancing if someone came to the room. To slowly get the students to feel more comfortable with performing in front of others, we would sing karaoke during class parties. To my surprise, they would invite their favorite teachers to join us. Turns out, this group of boys love to sing!
It took all year to convince the boys to perform at the Art Share, but my co-teacher Ms. Bibi found a way to get them excited about what’s to come. The excitement grew as they picked their song, tried on their costumes, and personalized their jackets. A great amount of leadership was shining through them as we observed the boys holding each other accountable in rehearsals, taking initiative to teach choreography to those who missed class, and sharing rehearsal recordings. When the day finally came, they were a ball of nerves. For most of them, this was their first time performing in front of an audience. Ms. Bibi and I cheered them on all day in hopes that it would help build morale. When their group name “2 Direction” was announced, they put their game faces on and did a great job! Ms. Bibi and I were so proud of them! It was 8 months in the making to practice sequencing of movement, to foster a supportive dance environment, to find the beat to music, and to gain comfortability in dancing in front of others. The Art Share gave these students the ability to discover a new form of expression.
A student I would like to highlight is our Dance Captain! Soccer is his passion, and he has dreams of traveling abroad to play professionally. He has really grown over the school year in his leadership skills and dance ability. As he became more comfortable in the dance space he became one of the people the others would go to for help with the choreography. As Dance Captain, his job was to help me run rehearsals as I would get their costumes prepared and set the formations during tech rehearsal. He was inspired by seeing the other students having fun singing on the mic so he stayed for the post-show Karaoke session. To see him push himself through new experiences was wonderful to witness. He now seeks more performance opportunities for the future. He plans on singing more often by joining the vocal club at his school, led by BAE teaching artist Ms. Megan. He also plans to continue his dance training next school year.
-Sabrina Joseph
NYC Teaching Artist
