Onam Lansana, 10, and Arden Balis, 11, are among the fifth graders taking a ballroom dancing class at Alcott Elementary in Lincoln Park. The final competition is scheduled for this weekend.
Bonnie Trafelet/Chicago News Cooperative
Nicole Erickson strode across the floor of the Edwards Elementary School gym, her high-heeled dance shoes clicking authoritatively against the hardwood floor.
“Heads up!” she commanded, and 50 fifth graders raised their eyes from the floor to fixed points on the wall, poised to begin the Cha-Cha. “Fingers together, strong frames … no talking! And … one, two, three …”
Welcome to week 18 of “Having a Ball,” a 20-week ballroom dancing course in 15 Chicago public schools. The program, which provides in-school instruction three times a week, began five years ago at the suggestion of Michael Scott, a former school board president who believed dancing could achieve something extraordinary: peaceful social interaction among hordes of youngsters.
Ms. Erickson, whose ramrod posture speaks of a lifetime of dancing, darted from couple to couple, correcting postures and adjusting arms. She worked at one end of the gym, while another instructor, Kimberly Schomburg, patrolled the other. They are two of 13 instructors who are charged with putting 950 fifth graders through their paces on the dance floor — and whose jobs hang in the balance.
Since 2007, “Having a Ball,” which costs about $250,000 annually, has largely been financed by a three-year, $360,000 federal physical education grant, which is about to expire, and supplemented by money from the school district. Both sources are uncertain; the cash-strapped district cannot finalize its allocations until the stalled state budget is approved, and the competition for federal grant money is particularly stiff this year.
Maliwan Diemer, the director of “Having a Ball,” said she was cautiously optimistic that the curriculum, which expanded last year to include after-school and summer programs, would get its financing. Ms. Diemer said the dance program was “attractive to people who are looking to fund, especially with what’s going on with the youth right now, keeping them healthy and active.”
The benefits of the classes extend beyond physical health, Ms. Erickson said. “They learn how to look silly, get over it, and then look good. And they learn how to do it in a room full of peers, which is huge,” she said.
“At the end, they’re so confident,” she added. “It’s so good to see them at competition, when they look over at you and they’re so proud and smiling.” Some students continue dancing through the Elementary Dance Scholarship Program, which provides advanced dance instruction for middle-school students.
“Having a Ball” focuses on five dances — the cha-cha, waltz, paso doble, tango and jive — and the classes will culminate in a two-day final competition on Saturday and Sunday. Although 950 students participate in the dance curriculum, 300 will be invited to compete, and only six couples will remain by the final round.
As the young couples practiced on a recent Friday morning in the Edwards gym, they circled the room with varying degrees of grace, and many of the girls stood at least a head taller than their partners. The boys wore looks of pained resignation.
With just two weeks left before the competition, everyone seemed anxious to perfect their footwork. Well, maybe not everyone. Possibly just the instructors. The students appeared to be focused primarily on tearing through the rest of the dances in the hopes of finally hearing the words they had been waiting for: “O.K., everybody! Take your places for the jive!”
“Yessssss!”
That announcement prompted an identically enthusiastic response later that afternoon at Alcott Elementary School, where Ms. Erickson also teaches dance classes. As the students scrambled into their starting positions, the first notes of Elvis’s “All Shook Up” filled the gym, and suddenly dozens of feet were moving in a blur, more or less in time with the music.
Watching them, it is impossible not to think of the students in “Mad Hot Ballroom,” the 2005 documentary about a similar dance program in New York City schools. For these students, however, the relevant cultural reference is “Dancing With the Stars.” While the popular television show has undoubtedly amplified children’s interest in dance, Ms. Schomburg said, the show has been less helpful in other ways.
“The kids watch it a lot, and they get really excited because they think they’re about to do splits and lifts in the air,” she said. “And the girls think they’re going to wear all glitter and sequins.”
Judging by the mass of 10-year-olds shuffling around the gym like a slightly discombobulated school of fish, it seems safe to assume that no overhead lifts or spontaneous splits are imminent. Sequins do not appear to be a factor, either. Today, the dancers are wearing their school uniforms. They will wear similarly basic outfits to the final competition, thanks to a rule change two years ago after the pressure to wear increasingly sparkly, and expensive, costumes got to be “insane,” Ms. Erickson said.
Sequins or no sequins, the students certainly seemed to be enjoying themselves. But Miliana, a soft-spoken student at Edwards, said the dance classes were not an instant hit. “At the beginning,” she said, “I wasn’t excited about it. Some people were scared they had to touch other people. But then they got used to it.”
And as Patrick, another Edwards student, pointed out, these are good skills to have in your back pocket. “Because,” he said, “you might get to go on ‘Dancing With the Stars.’”
It’s wonderful to see they are also in school uniforms.