Start a Hip Hop Dance Crew – Bucket List Item – Check.

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Start a Hip Hop Dance Crew – Bucket List Item – Check.

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Well, kind of. It was on my life list to start a hiphop dance group. For the past year, I have attempted to find friends to get together to dance. While there was interest, nothing ever came from it. I looked around for hip hop dance classes for adults, looking to work on my dance moves, but I didn’t find much. And what existed wasn’t my style – they were too serious, they were performing in recitals. I kept looking.

If you look at my project list, toward the bottom, you’ll see that one of my ideas was to start a hip hop dance studio. I figured that it would be hard to make a living at this. This isn’t necessarily true, but it would certainly be time consuming – so I passed.

A good friend proposed that I approach a community center about having hip hop lessons there. They loved the idea and so did I. It wasn’t a hip hop dance crew, but it could become even better! So I began the search to find others that shared the vision and that could teach. After a friend referred a friend, who referred a colleague, who referred an acquaintance I found someone who caught the vision.

With that we set our first date. I got nervous as we approached the first class, as I couldn’t reach the teacher (we’ll call her teacher 1). The next day I got her. She hadn’t backed out on me, it was because of no cell phone service. Whewww. Feeling better.

Teacher 1 got nervous the day before class because she couldn’t reach her friend that she had recruited to assist (teacher 2). Teacher 2 actively teaches and was going to make teacher 1 more comfortable. She reached teacher 2 the morning of the first day and they went over the routines. Teacher 1 was now comfortable. Whewww. Feeling better.

After the first class, teacher 2 informed us that she was completely nervous because she didn’t know what to expect. She thought it would be mostly women, but the men were representing! But it went completely smooth. Whewww. All parties feeling better.

But the first lesson went flawlessly – it was awesome! Well, as long as if you don’t count the fact that the amp that they’ve had for 30 years decided to end its life during our first lesson [oh the timing].

I want to share the vision for this class; we see it as more than just a class that teaches hip hop.

We want to have an IMPACT.

Here is The Vision.

1. To give the children of this neighborhood a safe place to dance and let loose

2. To subject the kids to dance music with positive undertones

3. To bring together a diverse group to share the common bond of dance

4. To have a ‘Pay what you can’ box so that person is denied the fun activity of dance

5. To bring in a local dance crew to perform and do workshops

6. To develop a special local line dance specifically for our city [Mobtown Stomp?] that can be performed in the community

7. To work in conjunction with a local DJ to create the music for this

8. To take part in a flash mob dance locally

9. To increase awareness of the Dumas Wesley Community Center and the services they provide

The Dumas Wesley Center is providing the venue so it’s a very low overhead operation. Our only main cost is going to be paying a teacher each session for their gracious time. I am in the process of working on grants in order to fund the operation while we are growing the number of dancers each week that can provide donations. As the number approaches 20-30 paying dancers, the program will be able to re-invest further into the hip hop program as well as help further support other programs at Dumas Wesley.

I can’t wait to share where we are 6 months from now.

Any thoughts or suggestions for our program? We’re all ears. Cheers.[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]