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Article: Dance Jam Kids: Spreading Modern.(ODC Dance Jam youth modern dance company)(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- Dance Magazine
- Article date:
- April 1, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Dance Magazine, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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"WHAT KIND of dance do you like?" I ask a few of the 500 kids packed into the Potrero Hill Middle School auditorium for a program by ODC/San Francisco's youth company, the ODC Dance Jam. Though the school is a performing arts magnet, there's no dance in the curriculum. So the kids tell me what they've seen on TV: African and Puerto Rican dancing, swing, hip-hop, ballet, ice-dancing.
Until the Jam skips, slides, lunges, chugs, jigs, and leaps onto stage, these kids have never even seen modern dance. In a pack or in clusters of twos and threes, the dancers, ages 10 to 14, devour space. Their torsos curl and arch. Their arms spring straight out, like arrows released ...