Tia Russell Brockington and James Brockington. Lucy Gellman Photos.
Before Mackenzie Robinson steps onstage Saturday, she knows she’ll have to take a moment to push away the pre-performance jitters and still her mind. Just beyond the curtain, the stage will be waiting for her like an old friend. As soon as the music starts and she begins to move, she’ll soar. She always does.
In between, she’ll take a breath, look around, and remember she’s with family.
Robinson, a freshman at Amity Regional High School, is one of 250 young dancers at Tia Russell Arts Center (TRAC), which next month marks a year in its new home on Dixwell Avenue in Hamden. Saturday afternoon, she’ll take the stage as part of “Chosen,” the studio’s annual winter showcase, at the John Lyman Center for the Performing Arts at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU).
As she and her peers prepare for the performance, owners James and Tia Russell Brockington are working with their dancers to summon joy in a time that can feel increasingly uncertain. The two, who are partners in both life and work, are both quick to say that it has taken a village: the studio has 30 instructors, including more senior students, over 200 families, and a mighty reserve of dance moms who help make the show happen behind the scenes.
Friends Zena Baker and Mackenzie Robinson, who have been dancing at TRAC since they were kids.
“I just wanted to make sure that we had a positive message,” said Russell Brockington at a tech rehearsal Wednesday, the first of two evenings she planned to spend working with dancers to perfect every detail of the performance. “It’s a reminder that life here on this earth is purposeful, and while we are here, we are here to spread love, spread joy, and spread unity.”
It’s a mission that she’s been trying to practice since she opened her studio’s doors in Woodbridge in 2013 (TRAC moved to a space in Hamden last March, but has been open for over a decade). But it feels particularly important right now, when “the cost of living is a lot,” and turning on the news can feel exhausting. When she looks around, she can see how much stress many of the dancers are under, and tries to create an environment where all of that melts away as soon as they walk trough the studio's doors.
As she built out the show with nearly three dozen staff members, that vision took shape in song, dance, and voiceovers that she wrote, recorded and stitched artfully between movements, making sure to create a through line that returned to the idea of maintaining and spreading joy. In addition to upbeat musical numbers, she wove in dazzling costumes with tuxes, voluminous tutus, and hundreds of gem-toned leotards.
“It’s a great representation of just feeling good—the power of uplifting,” Brockington added Wednesday, as he dismissed the studio’s younger students, and welcomed the older ones. “We want our students, we want our families to understand that we are all chosen for a purpose in this life. So all of the music is uplifting, all of the layers matter to us. We want everyone to know that they are special. That they have a purpose here.”
“We need our community,” he added. “We need one another. It’s all about coming together to showcase light, because there’s so much darkness in this world.”
Teachers Jocelyn Freeman (top) and Londyn Brockington (bottom).
In a tech rehearsal Wednesday afternoon, that vision was on full display as music floated through the Lyman Center’s large auditorium, and young dancers gathered among the rows of chairs, the pink of their leotards a sharp, welcome contrast to the slate gray sky outside. On stage, some of the studio’s youngest dancers jogged on to Shakira’s “Try Everything,” and within seconds, Russell Brockington was beaming and counting along.
“Yes!” she exclaimed as pint-sized dancers lifted their arms above their heads, pointed and tapped their feet, and lengthened their carriages, flanked by teachers the whole time in case they needed to check a move. As numbers unfolded one by one, several of the youngest dancers returned excitedly, ready to show off what they’d learned across genres like jazz, tap, African, and ballet.
In the audience, mom Michelle DeJesus cheered on her daughter, four-year-old Callie Barnes, as she made her way through four different dances over an hour. It’s a commitment to movement that has made the studio into her second home.
“I just love it,” DeJesus said. Two years ago, she signed Callie up for TRAC’s “Dance With Me” classes, which Jocelyn Freeman teaches with the warmth and ebullience of ten Abby Cadabbys (it does not hurt that Freeman is both a dancer and a kindergarten teacher at Barnard Environmental Science and Technology School; in the interest of full disclosure, she also teaches this reporter's child). “I just love to see her confidence grow.”
Michelle DeJesus and her daughter, Callie Barnes.
Already, it feels like family, she added: many of Callie’s current classmates have been learning with her from the jump. If they stay with it, as she and Callie plan to, “they’ll be growing up together.”
“It makes me happy!” a bright-eyed Callie added as DeJesus slipped a shirt and pants back over her leotard, ready to head into the drizzle that had started outside. “Sometimes I cry a little bit, because I don’t want to go to dance,” but then she remembers how much fun she has with her classmates.
“And I’m grateful,” she said. DeJesus explained that the lessons have taught her, literally and figuratively, about what gratitude is: last year, the class practiced a number set to the “Thankful Song” from the popular television show Gracie’s Corner.
Nearby, three-year-old Layla Rose and four-year-old Amore Sessions ran excitedly up and down the theater’s long aisles, laughter rising from the duo as they became temporary blurs of pink in their dance-ready outfits.
Friends Kenyena Amiker and Rhythm-Salyiah Sessions. Bottom: Ayla DeJesus, Layla Rose, and Amore Sessions.
From where they sat in Row K, adoring moms Kenyena Amiker and Rhythm-Salyiah Sessions marvelled at the sight—their youngest daughters growing up together, just as their older kids did several years ago. Amiker, who was a majorette dancer at James Hillhouse High School herself, said she loves watching Layla grow through movement, and find her people at TRAC along the way.
“I love being a part of something that’s so family oriented,” Amiker said, pointing to opportunities like tutoring, homework help, and “Girl Chat” affinity spaces for pre-teens and teenagers (TRAC also offers “Sister to Sister,” a space for moms and guardians to be in community, and a “Deliverance Through Dance” class for adults). “They’re not just trying to better themselves. They’re trying to better the community.”
Sessions, who also has two daughters who have danced through the studio, agreed. Until she was eight years old, Sessions’ eldest danced faithfully at TRAC. A hearing impairment never stopped her from feeling like she belonged each time she walked through the studio’s doors.
“She can’t always keep up with conversations, but she can feel the rhythm,” Sessions said. “She found her community here.”
As younger students made their way back into the dreary afternoon, a cold, damp night starting to fall outside, older students snuck in homework assignments and caught up in the mezzanine seats. Zena Baker, a freshman studying theater at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, soaked it all in. Even though she’s been dancing since early childhood, it never gets old.
“Honestly I love dance so much,” she said. For her, the medium is both grounding and full of liberation: it helps her sharpen her focus, and express herself in a way that is also totally unique. When she’s performing or rehearsing, the weight of everything else in her school—including a freshman year that can feel fraught and hard to navigate—drifts away.
“It’s like a family,” she said. “My dance friends, they’re like my sisters.”