Everybody Dance Now
By Alexandra Y. Caluen

I am happy to report that ballroom dancing is alive and well in the L.A. schools.  If we haven’t heard much about it yet, you may be assured that we soon will.

Among the programs already in place are a daytime ballroom program at Welby Way Elementary in West Hills; ongoing dance instruction at the Gabriella Charter School, in the mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles; and the Everybody Dance! Program of the Gabriella Axelrod Education Foundation, which provides a growing selection of weekly dance classes at little or no cost to under-served children in Los Angeles.

The grapevine had it that Russell Adcock, beloved proprietor of L.A. Dance Experience, was interested in working with public schools to establish a program of ballroom dance instruction similar to the Dancing Classrooms program established by Pierre Dulaine in New York.

As it happens, one of Russell’s own students, Martin Blank, is on the board of a local foundation which is devoted to education and research projects.  The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation sponsors, among other projects, a neuroscience grant with the American Federation for Aging Research; a chair in Israel Studies at UCLA; the Posse Foundation, an educational leadership and diversity organization; and the Arts for All Pooled Fund, which supports the restoration of dance, music, theatre, and the visual arts in public school districts. 

Arthur Bernstein was born in 1913 and married Rosalinde Gilbert in 1934, taking her name.  They made a fortune together in England in the evening-gown business before moving to Los Angeles in 1949, where Arthur Gilbert became a successful real estate developer.  Mr. Gilbert was a founder of the Los Angeles Music Center and a trustee of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art until his death in 2001.

This talented and visionary man saw to it that his interests could be carried forward into the future by establishing a foundation, which is now in negotiation with five Los Angeles schools to create a ballroom dancing program as part of the regular curriculum.

Among the schools involved in this project are the Millikan Middle School and the Gabriella Charter School.  The proposal involves teaching merengue, cha-cha, and waltz to the elementary grades, and salsa, tango, and lindy hop in the middle-school grades.  Along with instruction in dance steps would come discussions of history, language, manners, and “people” skills. 

Russell Adcock’s role in this program would be hiring the dance instructors, creating the syllabus, teaching the set of patterns to the instructors, making on-site visits to facilitate the process, and participating in the planning and execution of a year-end showcase and contest.  Russell is already a busy guy: he teaches six group classes a week at L.A. Dance Experience, manages the studio, hosts two studio dance parties each month, and teaches private lessons.  On top of all that, Russell is acting as a judge at the upcoming High Desert DanceSport Challenge!

All those of us who have studied with Russell have high hopes for the Gilbert Foundation program – as yet unnamed.  Those involved hope to finalize the grant procedure and complete the hiring and pre-planning in time to begin the Gilbert Foundation program in the spring term of 2007.  Wish them luck!