Local Dance Non-Profit on Prioritizing Dance Education for Adults
A Conversation with the Directors of Dare to Dance Seattle
By Nicole Barrett, DWC Blog Editor
Photo by Zheng Wang
The dance world has come a long way in recent years for the acceptance of everyone. Gender norms are being broken and traditional ways of training are being pushed aside. One gap that is still working its way through the realm of dance is the gap for adults starting to dance at an older age. This is something that Dare to Dance Seattle is trying to tackle with their yearly performances. We got the opportunity to speak with Administrative Director Cindy Jacobs and Artistic Director Zheng Wang about their upcoming performance on November 18th and 19th! Read on to learn more about the mission of Dare to Dance and details for their upcoming show!
Zheng shares that he was not a dancer when he was growing up. He says that he never considered himself a dancer until he found a group that participated in flash mobs in 2010. The flash mob was performing at Westlake Center in Seattle and he says that he went with a friend and was a part of the big crowd dancing together. “That was just really fun, really exciting, so I just kept going back,” he recalls.
While participating in the flash mobs, he met a group of people that were very passionate about dance, but they weren’t “professionals.” He credits meeting this group of people as the true beginning of starting Dare to Dance and his reason for creating a show with the flash mob community.
Cindy started taking dance classes when she was five years old and shares that back when she was training, there were no performances or recitals. There were just strictly classes for technique. Her father was in the military so she says that she moved around a lot and learned different dance styles such as tap and hula. She continued to dance throughout high school and shares that she took a little break after graduating.
Photo by Zheng Wang
Later on, in her adult years, she started dancing again in some community-based performances and stage musicals. She then started dancing with a community show choir and later on choreographed for them. Cindy and her choreography partner Sue have worked together for many years and have choreographed numerous pieces in various locations. “I just love to dance,” she shares, smiling.
This new upcoming show will be held on November 18th and 19th at Broadway Performance Hall in Seattle at 8 pm. Dare to Dance’s shows started in 2010 with the first show simply called Dare to Dance. These shows aim to get people who don’t have a lot of dance training but want to start dancing on stage and perform. To include people who are dance enthusiasts and just want to dance. These dance pieces specifically are meant to showcase different dance styles and the utter joy that the people onstage have when performing.
Dare to Dance encourages group performances to share the joy of dancing together. Each specific piece showcases a dance style and choreographers from various locations bring these pieces for the dancers to perform. This organization just wants to share dance with everybody.
Cindy shares that when she joined the team in 2018 she was very impressed with the organization of the company and loved the mission. “It was extremely welcoming,” she shares. She says that something that surprised her was the amount of diversity between the dances and the dancers. “It’s really a fun show!” Cindy says.
The goal of Dare to Dance as a non-profit organization is to provide professional-quality opportunities for dance enthusiasts of all ages and skill levels to create, perform, connect and grow. “It’s really about providing that opportunity to people that don’t get it otherwise,” Zheng shares. He emphasizes the fact that “non-dancers” don’t get the opportunities to perform onstage like dancers that train at a studio do. Zheng believes that the audience can see themselves onstage when they are watching these performances that they might not with other shows.
When coming up with this idea, Zheng shares that he thought that this was a very out-of-the-box concept to create. He says that he disguised the first show as a big birthday celebration for his 35th birthday to ensure that people would turn out and want to celebrate. “I figured that if it was a total disaster, we could just write it off as having fun for my birthday!” Zheng shares, laughing. What surprised him the most was how successful it was and it allowed him to continue doing these shows from then on.
Something that makes Dare to Dance stand out amongst other organizations is the fact that every idea is open for discussion. “‘Hey, you have a good idea? Sure! Can you get some dancers?’” Cindy shares, smiling. She elaborates that there aren’t the boundaries that typical dance organizations have and they focus their time on allowing adult amateurs to have the opportunity to dance onstage. Cindy states that the most important thing about Dare to Dance is that there are no pre-existing rules for what kind of dance or dancers they need. “We are willing to look at everything,” she shares.
Photo by Zheng Wang
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