Dancing Classrooms in Minnesota

By Andrea Mirenda and Ember Reichgott Junge

More than 250 fifth-grade students in eleven classrooms around the Twin Cities are experiencing the benefits of ballroom dance, as Dancing Classrooms debuted this fall in Minnesota. Dancing Classrooms, once featured in the award-winning documentary Mad Hot Ballroom, has a twenty-year history of helping students overcome social anxieties, develop gender respect, and increase social skills, self-confidence, and awareness of other cultures, all while engaging in physical activity.

Heart of Dance, a Minnesota nonprofit founded by Ember Reichgott Junge and Andrea Mirenda, has been granted rights to become the thirtieth international site for Dancing Classrooms, which has served over 500,000 students in twenty-four states and five countries. The ten-week residency for fifth graders of two classes per week is already under way, leading to the final inter-school Colors of the Rainbow Team Match on December 13th.

Heart of Dance is pleased to welcome four schools to Dancing Classrooms for the fall residency, totaling eleven fifth-grade classrooms, and anticipates more classrooms will begin a spring residency in January 2016. Students in participating classrooms learn a variety of ballroom dances from different countries, including merengue, foxtrot, tango, waltz, swing, and rumba. Dancing Classrooms teaching artists collaborate with school teachers to integrate the dance program with subjects like reading and writing, social studies, cultural studies, visual arts, math, and physical education.

"We started slowly with a little resistance from students when we had escort partners. Each week, however, I see improvement and excitement from our students engaged in Dancing Classrooms," said Nell Collier, Arts Enrichment Coordinator at Friendship Academy of the Arts in Minneapolis. "Some fourth-grade students have asked when they will get their turn. It is generating a buzz of excitement, curiosity, and anticipation throughout the building. I am having fun learning right along with the children. It is great discipline, and they learn a bit of history of the dance, and about the country of origin."

The final session of the ten-week residency at each school is a culminating event where fifth graders showcase their new skills for family, teachers, and schoolmates. The semester ends with dancers from across the city competing in an all-school Colors of the Rainbow Team Match, held December 13th at Dancers Studio in St. Paul, sponsored by the University of Minnesota Ballroom Dance Club.

"We want to bring partner dance to young people who may never have the opportunity to experience it," said cofounder Ember Reichgott Junge, Heart of Dance Development Director. "All children are included in each classroom. They learn so much more than dance. These young people learn how to respect others—and themselves."

"When we start, these ten-to-eleven-year-olds step completely outside their comfort zone, do something unknown and scary, and are asked to ... eww, touch each other!" laughed cofounder Andrea Mirenda, Heart of Dance Creative Director and Teaching Artist. "It gets easier with each lesson, as the students are generally eager to learn. It is wonderful to see them stand tall with pride as they enter and leave each lesson in escort position with their partner."

For more information, visit heartofdancemn.org.