American Ballroom Theater Dancing Classrooms
New York City-based American Ballroom Theater’s (ABrT) Dancing Classrooms is the nonprofit organization that has been providing instruction in American-style ballroom dance to currently over 60 public schools in New York City. The program was introduced in two schools 10 years ago. In 10 weeks (20 one-hour sessions) the kids absorb a repertoire that includes the merengue, foxtrot, rumba, tango, swing and a couple of line dances thrown in just for fun.
The schools are then given the choice to compete. These competitions (quarterfinals, semifinals and final) are called Rainbow Team Matches. About 48 schools choose to compete and only nine (one representative from each borough) make it to the final competition. Each dance team is made up of five couples, one for each of the five dances, and one alternate couple who must know how to do every dance well in case a couple is absent.
Read more about this topic: Mad Hot Ballroom
Famous quotes containing the words american, theater and/or dancing:
“Louise, something in me tightens when an American intellectual’s eyes shine, and they start to talk to me about the Russian people. Something in me says, Watch it, a new version of Irish Catholicism is being offered for your faith.”
—Warren Beatty (b. 1937)
“Will TV kill the theater? If the programs I have seen, save for “Kukla, Fran and Ollie,” the ball games and the fights, are any criterion, the theater need not wake up in a cold sweat.”
—Tallulah Bankhead (1903–1968)
“We have dancing ... from soon after sundown until a few minutes after nine o’clock.... Occasionally the boys who play the female partners in the dances exercise their ingenuity in dressing to look as girlish as possible. In the absence of lady duds they use leaves, and the leaf-clad beauties often look very pretty and always odd enough.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)