Teens Break it Down with Dance
About 100 dancers and their parents kicked off the inaugural event for Breakdance Project Santa Barbara on 1/16 at Harding Elementary School, a monthly dance event hatched by South Coast teens for teens. The program emerged out of Everybody Dance Now! (EDN) a teen-led dance program entering its fifth year. EDN has spread to 11 cities throughout the U.S., in a program in which older teens go to schools, homeless shelters, and affordable housing projects to teach the art of hip-hop dance to younger kids. Here, weekly sessions take place at one of 15 sites on the South Coast, and area dance teams have competed successfully in MTV dance contests. Breakdance Project Santa Barbara hopes to focus the dancers at a more central location once a month. There, dance teams will not only compete, but all the dancers will be treated as both students and teachers, sharing moves with one another.
