Expression Through Movement

Aug 16, 2024

Wolf Trap Grants Encourages Students to Find Their Voice Through the Arts; Applications for the 2024-2025 Academic Year Open Through Sept. 15

Each year, Wolf Trap awards grants to performing arts teachers to fund innovative arts projects that help their students develop new skills, learn from arts professionals via master classes, incorporate new technology into their work, or create more expansive collaborations with other schools and artists. The program features projects in music, dance, and theater arts, and it endeavors to provide the grantee and their students an opportunity and a platform upon which they can express their emotions, perspectives, cultural heritages, and backgrounds through their art forms. Several of last year’s grantees chose to accomplish this through dance.

Sharkey Andrews, a performing arts teacher at McKinley Tech High School in Wash., DC, centered her class’s project around capoeira, a powerful blend of martial arts and dance rooted in the Afro-Brazilian tradition. The project immersed students in the history of capoeira and its sister arts and emphasized the importance of preserving cultural traditions and celebrating the resistance and resilience fostered by these art forms.

The project was particularly challenging for her students, who were not traditional dance students, but theatre students. Andrews felt that learning the art of capoeira would help her students become more comfortable incorporating different parts of their bodies into their storytelling on stage. “I hope that they’ve gained some comfort in their own skin as well as confidence in seeing just how much they learned to do–and at such high levels of mastery–in such a short time with consistent practice and challenge,” she said.

Andrews was encouraged at how open and responsive her students were to the exercise. “Many of my students take this class as a requirement, and now they are coming up to me and saying how excited they are to come back next year,” she says.

Meredith Barnes, Dance Director of Fairfax Academy, also tapped into dance traditions as a means for social commentary. Her project, “Dance for a Change,” consisted of a series of choreographed pieces that drew inspiration from American dance icons who used their work to address injustices. Her goal with the project was to help her students learn how to emote on stage and understand that the ability to convey emotions through dance can be a powerful way for students to express themselves and gain confidence in their abilities.

“In today’s dance culture, where competition dance is prevalent and much of the choreography and performance is based solely on skills, I believe it’s important to remind students that they can use their gift of dance in a deeper, more purposeful way,” she says.

Barnes values the performing arts for its ability to convey complex emotions and ideas in a way that is relatable to a wide range of people. “By sharing their art with others,” says Barnes, “artists can help build a sense of community and foster greater empathy and understanding among people from diverse backgrounds.”

Candis Gamble, a dance educator at Suitland High School in Prince George’s County, based her grants project, “Cultural Loops,” on the Dunham technique, a modern dance style with African and Caribbean cultural roots. Because most of her students come from Black and Latin communities, she felt it was important to provide her students an opportunity to learn a dance style that reflected their own heritage. She also wanted to give her students, who were familiar separately with ballet and African dance techniques, an opportunity to combine the styles together.

The goal of Gamble’s project was to explore the intersection of choreography, storytelling, and injustice. “Dance transcends linguistic and cultural barriers,” she says. “It communicates emotions, stories, and ideas in a way that words often cannot. This universality makes it a powerful tool for advocacy, as it can reach diverse audiences.”

With each of their projects, through different styles, the Wolf Trap grantees had a common goal: to demonstrate the ability of dance to bring people together and foster a sense of belonging and community.

“The performing arts are valuable through every phase of triumph and trial in human history because it is both a means by which we express and connect to the world around us,” Andrews said. “There would be no story without experience, no audience without empathy, and no imagination without moments that make us pause to say, ‘what if?’”

The 2023-24 class of recipients also included   Tony Cimino-Johnson (Rock Ridge High School), Patrick Fritz (Stone Bridge High School), Hannah Kerr (Albert Einstein High School), and Barry Moton (Anacostia High School). This year’s inaugural middle school grantees included Jacquima Caulton Burgess and Nicholas Prosini (Friendship Armstrong Public Charter School), Karine Chapdelaine (Groveton Elementary School), Tiffany Hitz (James W. Robinson Secondary School), Sandra Jean (Eliot-Hine Middle School), and Damaris Odebode and Erik Jacobs (Willard Middle School).

Applications for the 2024-2025  grants program are open now until Sun., Sept. 15. To apply visit wolftrap.org/grants.