C.R. & Co. Dances Into Summertime

Top: Chelsea Little-Hughes. Bottom: Some of the magic she is creating at summer camp. Lucy Gellman Photos.

In the basement of Bethel AME Church, lunch had just ended, and it was time for stretch and strength.

Across the room, 35 dancers between the ages of 5 and 13 lowered themselves to the ground, pointing their toes and reaching their arms towards the ceiling. On one end of the room, strains of Ciara and Missy Elliott took it back to the early 2000s. On the other, a radio edit of Beyoncé’s “Cuff It” raised the energy.

In the middle of it all, Chelsea Little-Hughes soaked it all in for a moment before helping a young dancer who was tired after playing outside in the summer heat.

Little-Hughes is the owner of C.R. & Co., a dance studio and hub for competition that has grown out of the owner’s vision of creating a safe space for young female artists, particularly Black girls and young women of color. Once a dancer just starting out herself, Little-Hughes now tries to create that welcoming environment for other young people. She knows firsthand that it can change, or even save, a life.

“Owning a dance studio has always been a long-held dream for me and now it feels like a dream come true,” she said.

This summer she is running a camp for 35 young dancers between the ages of 5 and 13 years old, split into three age groups for social and developmental continuity. At the same time, she is preparing for a move from the studio’s current home in Hamden to a new space at 715 Boston Post Rd. in West Haven. Bethel AME, which was Little-Hughes’ childhood church, was the perfect space to fill the gap.

As dancers filled the basement at 255 Goffe St. last week, the church felt like a logical fit. During weekend worship, the sanctuary is home to praise dancers, and has hosted events like stagings of Black Nativity with propulsive music and dance in past years.

Born in the Bronx and raised largely between New Haven and Bridgeport, Little-Hughes started dancing when she was six, a student at the legendary Miss Dee Dee’s School of Dance. As that studio moved—first from Goffe Street to Fitch Street, and then to Dixwell Avenue—Little-Hughes followed teachers like Dee Dee Handy-Morris and Christine Kershaw, growing into the artist she is today.

Alongside movement, she nurtured a love for education and community care, which she now pours into her job as a social worker as New Haven’s Engineering and Science University Magnet School (ESUMS). The two passions have woven in and out of each other for as long as she can remember.

“Dance was my favorite from the beginning,” she remembered. So as she got older, Little-Hughes always made room for dance, even as she aced her classes at Hill Regional Career High School, and then pursued her studies in social work at Virginia State University.

Top: Ra'mya and Rain. Bottom: Campers come back in from lunch. Little-Hughes joked that the youngest ones are "my hungry buddies."

For a while after returning to New Haven, Little-Hughes taught in other studios, including with fellow Career High School alum James Brockington at Tia Russell Dance Studio (now Tia Russell Arts Center). Then in November 2020, and with pandemic precautions still very much in place, she took a leap of faith.

In her studio’s first year, Little-Hughes recruited 10 dancers, and practiced social distancing, mask etiquette, and frequent Covid testing alongside the fundamentals of movement. From there, and across multiple moves, the studio has continued to expand: she now teaches 150 dancers during the academic year, and 35 during the summer months. Earlier this year, 50 of those dancers competed for the first time at the large-scale dance competition StarPower International, held this year in Toronto.

In the spirit of mentorship, many of the instructors are still early-career dancers themselves, not even out of high school and still taking classes at C.R. & Co.

The camp, she said, is a natural extension of the work that the studio does during the year. Currently, she has nine 5-to-7 year olds, 18 8-to-10 year olds, and nine 11-to-13 year olds, the oldest age group she’s ever offered during the summer session. In the morning, students do enrichment activities and choreography, followed by an afternoon studying different genres of dance.

The enrichment goes hand-in-hand with Little-Hughes’ love for education: she works with her students to prevent what’s often called the “summer slide,” where students may lose some of the progress they’ve made academically during the year.

Students in the middle age group build their strength. Teachers Liani Johnson and Amaya Jordan, still both students themselves, are pictured at the right. 

The beating heart of the program is still movement. Mondays, for instance, are for “Stretch and Strength.” The other weekdays alternate between African dance and hip-hop technique. When it’s nice out, she makes sure students are able to play across the street at DeGale field, where there is a park with a playground, basketball courts, and a splashpad.

Last Monday, that system was in full swing as students returned from lunch and prepared to ease into afternoon stretching. Spreading out across the basement, they split into three age groups, each with multiple mentors watching each move.

Edwards: “Dance is where I can be myself."

On one end of the room, instructor Tiyana Edwards looked over a gaggle of 8-to-10 year olds that had spread out across the floor, and were now reaching down to their feet, their legs outstretched and toes pointed. A rising senior at Eli Whitney Technical High School, Edwards teaches ballet during the year, and is happy to stay onboard as an instructor in the summer.

“I love it,” she said. “I’ve always loved kids, and Ms. Chelsea taught me how to start taking on more responsibility.”

For years, she danced as a kid, but then stopped around middle school because of the Covid-19 pandemic. When she came back to it, C.R. & Co. became a kind of home away from home.

“Dance is where I can be myself,” she said. “Dancing beside people makes me feel connected to them. It’s a sisterhood. It makes me feel really happy … there’s not really room to be petty.”

Nearby, teachers Liani Johnson and Amaya Jordan handed out a dozen violet-shaded foam bricks, in preparation for cobra pose. Miming it for their students, Johnson stood over Jordan, taking the block as she handed it upwards. Before long, the smiles seemed to be contagious, as dancers slipped into formation and began to pass the blocks back and forth.

Jordan, who is 13, is what Little-Hughes classifies as a counselor in training—a student who is still learning from her peers, but wants to become an arts educator within the C.R. & Co. family. After starting to dance at just 2 years old, Jordan has gravitated towards hip hop, with an appreciation for the ways dance has taught her about her body (“keep stretching everyday so you can be flexible” is one lesson she holds fast to, for instance).

At some points with a heavy school schedule and a full day of dance practice, she said, it can be difficult finding the energy to move past her midday weariness. But inspirations like Little-Hughes, as well as the dancer and choreographer Debbie Allen, keep her going.

“Debbie Allen inspires me to keep going,” she said. “She encourages me with every step I make.” Jordan loves to dance so much that she plans to continue it in the future, she added.

“My dance sisters inspire me to keep going,” chimed in fellow 13 year old Brooklynn Diggs. Because of back issues, Diggs doesn’t know yet if she’ll pursue professional dance—but she plans to teach for as long as she is able to.

“What Chelsea has created here is so amazing that I want to be a dance instructor just like her,” she said. Diggs loves to move her body to the beat of the music. “Doing dance takes real commitment and it really tells a story.’’

Students Ra’mya Swilling and Rain Rivera, who are both going into the fourth grade, are learning how to be part of that story. Both began dancing with Little-Hughes as kids: Rain was in her “Mommy and Me” classes from just 18 months old, when Little-Hughes taught at a different studio, and Ra’mya started when she was 5 years old. She’s now nine.

“I love jazz,” Ra’mya said. “because it's the sassiness of all the dancing styles. It’s a little bit of everything. With an added attitude to give that dance a little edge.”

Brooklyn Diggs.

Across the room, a group of teens stretched to a mix of upbeat pop, arms reaching out into the air with fingers stretched forward as far as they would go. Next, they wrapped their hands around their feet, holding each pose for a few seconds. They focused on their breathing, a quiet momentarily filling that part of the room. Every so often, Little-Hughes walked by, and they lit up seeing her.

It was clear that she is a real inspiration to these girls, who are very much members of an artistic family. These girls who practice and work hard on their routines together look amazing when dancing as one unit when on stage performing for an audience—and it shows, even when they’re practicing in a church basement on Goffe Street.

Little-Hughes said in that moment, when students are in their costumes and in step together moving to the music, “I feel such pride and relief. Every moment spent teaching them is worth it to see them smiling, and in their own element telling the story of the song so beautifully through dance.”

C.R. & Co. will present its summer performance next week on July 29 at the LAB at ConnCORP, 496 Newhall St. in Hamden. This article comes from the ninth and current cohort of the Arts Council's Youth Arts Journalism Initiative (YAJI). From June 29 through August 21, YAJI students pitch, report, write and edit stories with Arts Paper Editor Lucy Gellman, Program Assistants Abiba Biao and Grayce Howe and Mentor Ruby Szekeres. Amber Bouteiller is a rising junior at West Haven High School.