Organization Details:

Since 1996, the Uptown Dance Academy (UDA) has been dedicated to providing high-quality dance training to disadvantaged, Black and Latino youth ages 3-19, most of whom reside in the community of East Harlem. Our mission is to train students in the art of dance performance while instilling cultural enrichment, self-discipline, and self-confidence.

Description and/or History:
For the past 13 years, Uptown Dance Academy has been a force for the advancement of arts and culture in the community of East Harlem, fostering the artistic development of fledgling dance enthusiasts and emerging dance professionals. Ours considerable record of success is measured in the demonstrated talent and maturity of hundreds of boys and girls who’ve passed through our programs. UDA operates a Recital School; a Summer Boot Camp; a Pre-Professional Training Program, and a dance theatre company. Our productions, including The Black Nutcracker and The History of Black Dance, are culturally relevant, universally appealing, and widely acclaimed. Our deeply discounted tickets and high profile local venues such as the Apollo Theater and Hostos Performing Arts Center in the Bronx (our primary performance space at which we’ve staged 3 productions annually since 2002) help to make our productions hugely popular.

No other theatrical dance school in the City offers its students as many dance disciplines, means to advance, and performance opportunities as does UDA. Students are taught ballet, tap, modern, jazz, acrobatics, hip hop and African dance by top professional dancers and choreographers, including Robin Williams, UDA’s artistic director, who brings 45 years of experience and strong ties to the City’s dance community to bear in UDA’s operation. All UDA instructors are professional artists/performers; Hanan Hameen trained since childhood with Ms. Williams and has been with UDA for 12 years, and Roderick Stokes, who is the acrobatics instructor and drummer has been with UDA for 13 years.

Training takes place at the UDA’s 2,000 sq. ft. dance studios at 167 E. 121 Street. (Plans are in place to relocate to a larger facility within two years.) Members of UDA’s youth dance company perform about 40 times a year outside of their annual production season, reaching an audience of over 50,000 people annually. The dance company recently performed for Governor David Patterson and has performed for numerous other dignitaries. This demanding schedule of customized presentations of our company repertoire provides our dancers with invaluable experience and an engaging means of escaping many of the risk factors that undermine the health and well being of their idle, misguided or under-challenged peers. Past UDA students have been accepted to performing arts high schools and colleges and have appeared in Broadway shows, on television, in commercials and videos, and as models. UDA has won numerous competitions, the most recent of which was the prestigious 2009 McDonald’s Gospel Fest in June 2009.

Contact people:

Robin Williams, Principal, (917) 202-1601, (email) Marcia Lawrence, Development Consultant, (718) 437-5737, (email)

Address:

167 East 121 Street New York, NY 10035 (See a map)

Directions:

Easily accessible by public transportation.