The first Kids Make Dance pilot project took place in Queens, New York from July 27-31, 2009. You can learn about this project, watch videos and view pictures on this Kids Make Hip Hop website and blog.

Project Overview

Selected students from Public Schools in Queens worked with dance educator Kathleen Isaac and dancer and teacher Carlos Cordova from Souljerz Crew to learn new hip hop skills, review moves they already knew, and create their own moves and movement sequences.

The structure of the lessons, developed by Kathleen and Carlos, wove hip hop history into personal life experiences for each dancer, which were incorporated into dance sequences and performances.

Throughout the program, Internet educator and consultant Doug Fox taught students how to use the Internet, multimedia production tools and social media to create and share videos and photographs of their practice sessions and performances.

Kathleen, Doug and Carlos worked collaboratively with students as they learned, explored, created and documented their process and their final dances.

Key Dance-Making/Dance-Learning Modules

During this week-long pilot project, a number of opportunities were created for kids to create and delve into hip hop dancing:

• Building blocks of hip hop
• Daily warm-ups and exercises
• Hip hop technique and skill-building
• Culture and history of hip hop
• Dance-making/creating routines/choreography
• Improvisation – combining hip hop moves
• Poetry jam with improvisation
• Graffiti writing
• Final class performance