AFTER SCHOOL ARTS
Empowering Youth Through the Art of Dance
No matter what age, race, body type or economic background every child should have the opportunity to experience the benefits of dance. Dance teaches discipline, responsibility, collaboration, creativity and self awareness and can help with overall cognitive skills. Our After School Arts Program focuses on dance as a means to enriching lives of youth and teens who are at risk or who live in underserved areas of the community. Our After School Arts program focuses on providing outreach and educational programming to those youth and teens who may not otherwise be able to afford dance education.
Currently, we are partnered with Somersworth Youth Connection (SYC) where Somersworth elementary and middle school students are transported to our facility and offered free dance instruction with members of our educated and experienced faculty. In addition, every student receives dance wear, dance shoes, and a costume for their final performance. This program runs in two 12-week sessions. Session One students perform at Dance Northeast in March and Session Two students perform at our Annual Student Dance Concert in June. In our first year we provided dance instruction to 20 students who may not otherwise have been able to afford it. Currently, we are in our sixth year of After School Arts and are looking forward to continuing to grow our program! Students can choose from Ballet, Jazz, or Hip Hop classes and learn technique, skills, and choreography.
Our After School Arts program has been made possible by support from the following organizations:
The Rock On Foundation
New Hampshire State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts
New Hampshire Charitable Foundation’s Piscataqua Region Community Fund
The Oleonda Jameson Trust
The Cricket Foundation
If you are interested in supporting our After School Arts program, feel free to reach out to see how you can help in our mission of bringing quality dance education to every child in our community.
