Kevin Iega Jeff grew up in New York Metropolis, viewing previous musicals starring the likes of Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire and the Nichols Brothers.
So it was no shock he fell in appreciate with dance.
“All of individuals extraordinary male dancers motivated me so significantly,” Jeff stated.
In his early teenagers, he joined then-New York Town mayor John Lindsay’s “Teenage Performing Arts Workshop” system. It uncovered a whole new globe to him, he mentioned, exhibiting him it was attainable to have a occupation in the performing arts.
‘We don’t have quite a few establishments that uphold the traditions of Black dance or Black theater. So all those traditions can swiftly fade away if we really don’t develop institutions to maintain the details and to move it on.” Kevin Iega Jeff, Deeply Rooted Dance
He went on to study at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Middle and The Juilliard University and later on executed on Broadway.
In the mid-1990s, Jeff was employed as the artistic director for the Joseph Holmes Chicago Dance Theatre. All-around the very same time, he decided he required to create a new place to clearly show “the ability of dance and how it can entertain audiences but also renovate lives.” So he co-founded Deeply Rooted Dance Theater.
For 25 several years, it is been a firm exactly where he suggests the Black aesthetic can prosper by means of Black dancers — combining fashionable, classical, American and African American traditions in dance and storytelling.
Kevin Iega Jeff, co-founder and imaginative govt director of Deeply Rooted Dance Theater, started off the business 25 yrs ago in hopes of upholding the traditions of Black dance and theater.
Anthony Vazquez / Sun-Situations
“We really don’t have numerous establishments that uphold the traditions of Black dance or Black theater,” Jeff reported. “So those traditions can speedily fade absent if we really don’t increase establishments to maintain the information and facts and to pass it on.”
Deeply Rooted Dance is based mostly downtown at 17 N. Point out Avenue, but most of its programming has been on the South Aspect. Now, the corporation has started featuring workshops at the Mayfair Arts Heart, 8701 S. Bennett Avenue. in Calumet Heights on the South Side.
The purpose, in accordance to Jeff, is to support build fascination in one of the company’s big objectives — opening what will be named the South Side Heart for Black Dance and Inventive Communities in 2024.
Classes at the MAC will address introductory ballet, modern day, hip-hop and African-centered dance methods. Whilst some workshops will be led by Deeply Rooted Dance instructors and corporation associates, there will also be visitor choreographers.
The new workshops will consist of a few youth systems, for young ones 3 to 6 several years outdated, for these 7 to 12, and for teenagers.
Deeply Rooted Dance also is expanding what it calls its Experienced H.O.T Gals application — which stands for “health-acutely aware, optimistic and triumphant” — providing specialized and power education for dancers 25 and older, a program which is been popular at the company’s main location.
Susan Trice, 68, commenced performing that method 7 many years back. Her spouse not long ago had died, and it was a really hard time for her. She claimed she uncovered a perception of group in the dance program.
“It is just a way to be witnessed,” Trice stated. “It’s a thing that we can embrace into our possess encounters in existence and be able to then convey in our dance.”
Tracey Franklin, who is Deeply Rooted’s dance education and learning director, explained the women’s system is for “the neighborhood to know that currently being expressive and getting an artist doesn’t end when you’re a specified age.”
The enterprise also has started out a new “Men Moving” workshop, artistic director Nicole Clarke-Springer reported, to present a “safe space” for adult males who want to dance.
“There is a stigma, if we had been going to be fairly truthful, with gentlemen dancing, especially among the African American neighborhood,” Clarke-Springer reported. “Making this art and this technique of present day dance and ballet obtainable to young African American gentlemen is interesting to me.”
Nicole Clarke-Springer, artistic director for Deeply Rooted Dance Theater, claims the company’s new “Men Moving” workshop at the Mayfair Arts Centre aims to support erase the stigma some have about men dancing.
Anthony Vazquez / Sunlight-Situations
Breaking that stigma is accurately why Jeff arrived up with the Males Shifting workshop. He said even while “our culture pushes males absent from dance,” when he went to South Africa he observed near to 50 youthful boys “dancing their heads off” in a college gymnasium.
There also will be male mentorship alternatives for youngsters 10 to 17 yrs previous and a plan called Artistic Communities, led by Jeff, that will incorporate singing and acting workshops as properly as dance.
Deeply Rooted also ideas to ship writers out into the group to acquire people’s stories and use those to create a overall performance. Jeff mentioned he’s done identical plans all around the state and aims to develop ties with people today that could possibly aid foster neighborhood improvement.
“I just hope it opens up the chance of human engagement and growing one’s scope for their have life and that it seriously can help to enhance the community’s health,” he stated. “When you’re doing work as a result of the arts, you are getting challenged to have interaction with persons in a way exactly where you have to difficulty address, and, in that approach, come across options wherever we can come to be far better folks jointly.”
Cheyanne M. Daniels is a staff members reporter for the Chicago Sunlight-Occasions through Report for America, a not-for-revenue journalism program that aims to bolster the paper’s coverage of communities on the South Facet and the West Side.
