March 2021 | News & Updates
A MESSAGE FROM NDI’s BOARD CHAIR
This year, National Dance Institute celebrates its 45th Anniversary. As we reflect on NDI’s extraordinary achievements of inspiring children through the arts, we look ahead to the promise the future holds. We salute NDI and recognize that many exceptional individuals have made our remarkable success possible. Traci Lester, NDI’s Executive Director, has guided NDI for the past four and a half years with great skill, clarity, and dedication, especially as we navigated through the impact of an unprecedented global health crisis. Today, we announce that Traci has shared she will be stepping down from her role to pursue another professional opportunity. We are grateful for Traci’s many contributions. We wish her all the very best and we know we will continue to see her in the audience cheering on NDI. Thank you, Traci Lester.
And, dear friends, please stay tuned for more information about an exciting year of activities we have planned to mark NDI’s 45th Anniversary, including our virtual Annual Gala on Monday, April 26th! Please join us…we appreciate all you do for our beloved National Dance Institute.
Harlem’s Mott Hall Danced Through 2020!
Educator Spotlight: Mott Hall’s Judith De Los Santos-Pena
When the pandemic began, Mott Hall Principal Judith De Los Santos-Pena was determined to keep National Dance Institute in the lives of her sixth graders.
“NDI is part of our curriculum,” she said. “We would never question ‘Why Math?’ or ‘Why Science?’ The only question is ‘How?’”
Harlem’s Mott Hall and NDI have enjoyed close partnership since 1984. One key to the longevity is NDI’s special role in helping sixth-graders acclimate to their new school, which serves nearly 300 students across the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades.
“NDI has been a bridge in transitioning our students,” explained Ms. De Los Santos-Pena, adding that as sixth graders advance to the upper grades and a new class comes in, NDI becomes a shared experience that helps define the school’s identity.
In additional to socialization, NDI gives children a way to find success in an area beyond academics. “There has to be a place where we are learning in a different way,” said Ms. De Los Santos-Pena.
During the pandemic, the question of exactly how to deliver that different way of learning was a challenge met as Mott Hall’s staff and NDI collaborated closely and transferred classes to Zoom.
NDI Teaching Artist Dufftin Garcia (pictured above), who attended Mott Hall as a child and now teaches NDI in those same classrooms (and serves on NDI’s Board of Directors), said Mott Hall’s leadership is deeply committed to education. And they are advocates of programs that bolster the education of their students. “They set their expectations high and go for what works,” he said. “They always find a way to enrich their children.”
During Mott Hall’s many years of partnering with NDI, challenges aside from a pandemic have arisen. Chief among them has always been the question of where the students will have their rehearsals or performances. “We don’t have a gym or an auditorium. We don’t have the things NDI needs to have a stage,” she said.
Academic classrooms are often reconfigured for NDI class. And for many years, students traveled to nearby schools to give their performances. But when the NDI Center for Learning and the Arts opened in 2011, our Howard Gilman Performance Space became Mott Hall’s performance venue, where families gathered to watch and celebrate the sixth-graders onstage.
NDI and Mott Hall also work closely to find funders, so that dance and music education are affordable for the school, Ms. De Los Santos-Pena said: “If it were only up to us, we could probably not do it.”
NDI’s Artistic Director, Ellen Weinstein (front center), in 1989 teaching Mott Hall students including Dufftin Garcia (far left)
and Jermaine Jones (center), both now NDI Board members.
NDI at Mott Hall is generously supported by Helen Stambler Neuberger and Jim Neuberger with additional support from the West Harlem Development Corporation. With this help, children at Mott Hall have been dancing with NDI consistently since 1984 — a long partnership that reflects years of collaboration, creative solutions, and joyful dancing.
“NDI has always understood who we are,” said Ms. De Los Santos-Pena.
NDI Alumni Homecoming
DREAM Project: New Students, New Videos
NDI thanks the William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust, the Billy Rose Foundation, the GKV Foundation, and the Julie Rice DREAM Project Scholarship Fund for supporting the DREAM Project.
Join NDI’s Virtual Gala on April 26
We invite you to celebrate 45 years of NDI with our Virtual Gala on Monday, April 26th! This special evening will honor two dear friends: NDI Board Chair Helen Stambler Neuberger and Jim Neuberger. We will also share a tribute to NDI champion and Board Member Shirley Young. The program will feature performances by the exuberant children of NDI.