AT THE DANCING CLASSROOMS LA GRAND FINALS, LAUSD STUDENTS MERENGUE, RUMBA, FOXTROT, WALTZ, TANGO AND SWING THEIR WAY TO WIN AT THE COCOANUT GROVE
Mandy Moore, two-time Emmy nominee, choreographer for So You Think You Can Dance, Phillip Rhee, martial artist, actor, director, producer, and creator of Best of the Best, Joe Tremaine, founder and president of Tremaine Dance conventions and Leonardo Bravo, Director of School Programs at the Music Center of Los Angeles County together with scores of LAUSD fifth-graders from seven schools representing a cross section of LA talent, chutzpah and grace were cheered on by friends, classmates, teachers and family at the famed Cocoanut Grove Ballroom in Los Angeles for the Dancing Classrooms LA Grand Finals.
Ambassador School of Global Education (Koreatown); Community Magnet Charter (Bel Air); Fullbright Elementary (Canoga Park); Hawthorne Elementary (Beverly Hills); Manchester Elementary (South Los Angeles); Rio Vista Elementary (North Hollywood), West Hollywood Elementary (West Hollywood) were all part of Dancing Classrooms Los Angeles’ inaugural year’s Grand Finals competition.
The mission of DCLA is to help build social awareness, confidence, self-esteem, and other essential life skills in young people through the practice of social dance, while at the same time, eliminating bias and promoting positive human relations by teaching them how to respect themselves and others who are different from them.
Dancing Classrooms Los Angeles (DCLA) was launched in the fall of 2011. In its first year alone, DCLA has reached more than 1300 students, 600 parents and educators in 19 elementary schools across Los Angeles, including Boyle Heights, Canoga Park, Chinatown, Highland Park, Hollywood, Koreatown, Monterey Park, and South Los Angeles, and West Hollywood.
Through a ten-week and twenty-session standards-based, in-school residency, Dancing Classrooms uses social dance as a vehicle to change the lives of both the young people who participate in the program and also the teachers and parents who support our students.
A curriculum-based teaching approach utilizes the vocabulary of dance to break down social barriers, teach students to honor and respect each other, and promote self-confidence, communication, and cooperation.
Students are taught the vocabulary of various ballroom dances in a classroom setting. Each class in the series introduces new steps, reinforcing what has been previously learned through practice and repetition.
Mad, Hot Ballroom. Dancing Classrooms was started in 1994 in New York City and has since expanded to more than 500 schools and 24 cities around the world.
The acclaimed documentary, Mad, Hot Ballroom follows a ten-week program at three Manhattan neighborhood elementary schools from introduction to the classroom through the Grand Finals.
