Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School | Dance | Arts & Culture | New Haven Public Schools
Nikki Claxton's students dance to Dinah Washington’s “This Bitter Earth." Lucy Gellman Photos.
Strings filled the room as students pressed their backs flat to the stage, their breath rising. The instruments trembled, and their bodies lurched to life. In unison, they began to rise from the floor. Ten pairs of arms lifted slowly, as though they were bursting into bloom. Shoulders rolled back. The strings dipped, and suddenly it sounded like a violin was coming from the inside of someone’s rib cage.
In the front row, dance teacher Nikki Claxton watched every move. “Listen to the music!” she urged. “Take your time!”
On the stage and in the classroom, fifth through eighth grade dancers at Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School (BRAMS) have taken this year to reconnect to their bodies and their minds through the art form. On the eve of an end-of-year concert last week, several of them spoke candidly about what it means to be back in front of an audience for the first time in three years—and for some students, the first time ever. For many of them, this has marked the first full year in person since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020.
“Everyone’s like a big family to me, and they help you get through your problems no matter what,” said eighth grader Timilia Thomas, who entered BRAMS when she was in the sixth grade. “When we first got back in the building, it was hard for me to cope with the dancing. But after a while, I got back to it. When I’m dancing, I just feel like myself.”
Around her, the school’s gym-meets-auditorium buzzed with activity. In the front rows, Claxton and fellow dance teacher Hannah Healey knelt in front of a laptop, checking a set list as students queued up in the wings. In the bleachers, young dancers in leotards and bare feet found their friends and chatted amongst each other, waiting for their turn on stage.
Every so often a burst of music escaped through the speakers, and dancers poked their heads out from behind the curtains, their eyes blinking over face masks as if to ask whether they should be on stage.
When it was time for them to take that space, the room transformed. As seventh and eighth grade students came out to Beyoncé and Walter Williams’ “He Still Loves Me,” the bleachers quieted. On stage, dancers looked out at the empty rows of chairs, soon to be filled with their friends and families. They took a beat, then seemed to give a collective exhale. Then they raised their knees in unison, bent into themselves, and exploded outward.
The quiet middle schoolers who had been there moments before were suddenly electric.
Top: Fifth graders in "Loyal Brave True." Bottom: Seventh and eighth graders.
See I've been picked out/To be picked on/Talked about! Out my friend's mouth!, Williams’ voice rang from a speaker system. In a language of wide eyes and outstretched arms, turning hips and pointed toes, dancers arranged themselves in four rows, the lyrics washing over them. A dozen left arms extended at once, hands raised as if to stop a person in their tracks. Right arms rose into the mix, and for a moment it seemed as though the young bodies were preparing to take flight.
The stage, which had been silent and empty just moments before, pulsed with their energy. Knees bent. Backs arched. Legs extended into leaps as students swung to the beat. Footfall after footfall landed softy, without a single thump.
“All right,” Claxton said, her eyes dancing above a black medical mask. From the bleachers, a cacophonous cheer pierced the silence, classmates applauding as they checked their place in the set list, and headed back toward the stage. In the middle of the gym, a fifth grade class slipped in to watch, students scurrying to their seats.
That sense of momentum flowed through each number, working its way through students’ fingers and toes as they cycled through 10 months of learning in a two-hour stretch. It slipped past the lip of the stage and right into the audience. In Todrick Hall’s “Black & White,” which Healey’s students debuted earlier this year for Black History Month, it became all-encompassing, hard not to cheer on from the audience.
In a tie-dye shirt and black sweats, seventh grader George Villalobos spun onto the stage, his head snapping around as he turned. He leapt into a practiced, swift fall, stretched out, and then lifted himself from the floor. As his peers took the stage in formation, he and dancer Natalie Jambor fell into lockstep, then flew past their peers to the beat of their own drums.
In an interview after rehearsal, Natalie said she was excited—and ready—for what would be her first-ever dance showcase with an audience at the school. Prior to this spring, she has only performed for a virtual audience.
"It feels nice to have an audience, cause it feels like people are helping you and giving you encouragement when they're watching you,” she said. “It feels really good, because especially with the other dancers that rehearse, they all encourage each other.”
It also served as a reminder of all students—and their teachers—have been through and overcome in the past three years. Several students have lost family members. Some have struggled to show up at school, Healey said; others have missed class because they are quarantining from a Covid exposure at school or at home. For many of them, the very act of getting up on stage is one of resilience.
The audience can feel that when they move. In Yolanda Adams’ “I Believe,” which Claxton’s students first performed for Black History Month this year, young dancers gave into an unbridled, restless and vast kind of joy, their bodies free as they gathered in two wide circles and danced around each other, fists pumping. Their feet touched the floor, and then lifted off for an umpteenth time. On his first day back from an injury, seventh grader Dakarai Langley exploded into an exuberant tap solo, his feet flying off the ground.
It pulsed through George Kranz’ “Din Daa Daa,” as Claxton’s eighth graders went from high kicks and leg extensions to jumps, spins, and fast, syncopated floorwork. It tittered and sang through “Good Morning,” a throwback to the schmaltz and theatrics of Singing In The Rain as delightful as it was unexpected. It became a heartbeat by the final number, as seventh and eighth graders sprang into exuberant West African dance as a sort of goodbye to a strange, trying, hard, full year.
It was a finale that felt, at times, also very much like a beginning. When Claxton’s fifth graders swept onto the stage to Christina Aguilera's “Loyal Brave True,” they moved together, tender and careful as they bent into V shapes, rose, and held out a single finger each. In Imagine Dragons’ “Believer,” which Healey choreographed with her seventh graders, students dipped into their reserves, constantly in motion as reverb and fuzz drenched the stage. It was a kind of stamina that felt right on time for 2022.
Even Lea Michele’s cover of “Auld Lang Syne,” which Healey’s students first performed for a virtual Winterfest last year, slipped into the lineup easily, as if it had been written for school graduations and long summer months. Seated on the stage, dancers used the song to embrace slowness, stretching their bodies out before they cupped their palms and gestured in supplication toward the sky. Gradually, they rose, taking time to absorb each word.
To cheers and applause from the bleachers, two dancers watched as their peers padded off to the wings, then performed identical leg holds. Healey later said that she wanted to capture “the feeling, the essence of the holiday,” and bring some of that joy, togetherness and calm into the summer months.
In between the pieces was a story of re-learning how to be in physical space together, step by literal step. When in-person classes resumed last fall, Healey found that many of her students—mostly those who remained online in the spring of last year—took time to reacquaint themselves with movement in the classroom. For the teacher, a BRAMS alum who is now in her fourth year at the school, it was a readjustment.
“It still doesn’t feel like we’re back to normal,” she said. “I feel like we had to get a lot back that we lost.”
Both she and Claxton added that it felt momentous to be able to end the year in front of an audience. Since 2020, BRAMS has presented all of its concerts virtually, with pre-recorded segments from teachers across all of the school’s art forms (some things haven’t changed: students are still masked). Meanwhile, both Claxton and Healey have made time to check in with students about their mental health, discussed their dances, and worked to hone focus and attention when students are in their classrooms.
In Dinah Washington’s “This Bitter Earth,” for instance, Claxton and her students have crafted a powerful reminder to care for the only world that students have. Moving slowly, seventh and eighth graders make space for all of Washington’s words, letting their bodies do the talking. They spread out, then rise slowly, taking stock of each movement they are able to do.
“We forget that we’re on something that’s alive,” Claxton said of the choreography. “Do we realize how beautiful it is? Do we believe in it? Do we believe that it gets to survive?”
That’s true for many of their students, too. Through their classes, they are using dance as a platform to talk to their peers about the moment they are living in, from the urgency of the Black Lives Matter movement to toxic masculinity to the realities of climate change. Eighth grader J’nel Negron said she’s grateful to be back, particularly as she bids farewell to Betsy Ross. The last time she was in front of a live audience was in the sixth grade. Now she gets to offer a goodbye with the art form she came to BRAMS to do.
Like J’nel, seventh grader Jaida Brown struggled when school was remote. For over a year, she and her classmates kept their routines going in bedrooms, kitchens, and offices. She said she’s excited to be back at school—even if performing live makes her nervous. At a final rehearsal last week, she glided across the stage, taking in everything around her with each step.
“It’s nerve wracking,” she said. “You find a spot to focus on and you control yourself. It makes me happy. It’s kind of like—on stage, I feel calm. It makes you forget them [anxieties] as soon as you hit the stage.”
Back in the audience, Timilia Thomas was putting her shoes back on before heading to dismissal. She said she loves dancing to Blessing Offor's "Brighter Days," because she can feel the lyrics to the song acutely.
"It's like, after what we go through, there's always gonna be brighter days," she said. "And it's a joyful dance. It's happy. That's why I'm excited."
Vanessa Serrano, who is also in eighth grade, said that dance has helped her process her emotions, including during remote school. She’s glad to be back in person as she does it.
When she's up on stage dancing, "I feel free," she said. "I feel like myself. I kind of just get into the music, and I kind of just think about things that help me to express my feelings."
Watch more from a recent rehearsal above.