Culture & Community | Dance | Hamden | Arts & Culture | Arts & Anti-racism
Top: James Brockington and Tia Russell Brockington in the 35 Marne Street space last month. They officially began welcoming students on March 17. Bottom: Students in the new building. Lucy Gellman Photos.
Tia Russell looked over her left shoulder, taking in a room of ballerinas dressed in red and black. Her left hand glided through the air. "Five, six, seven—" she started, and dancers looked up, studying every movement. She pressed a palm to her chest, and they ran forward. "Pull those arms up, and contract, up and around, reach—" She never stopped moving.
One classroom away, teacher Darriah McCoter was finishing up her Thursday afternoon tap class. She lifted her left leg, making a circle in midair, and a dozen students followed. The sound of shoes on the floor, steady and rhythmic, drifted through the wall. Outside, cars sped by on Dixwell Avenue, completely unaware of the magic that was happening inside.
Welcome to the new, 18,000 square foot home of the Tia Russell Arts Center, which last month made the move from Hazel Terrace in Woodbridge to the former home of Monkey Joe's in Hamden. As it welcomes hundreds of students, the space is in the midst of a creative transformation, working to position itself as both a dance studio and a community hub.
It is located at 35 Marne St. in Hamden, just off Dixwell Avenue. Classes are still taking students through mid-April. Enrollment information is available here.
Teacher Darriah McCoter (at the far right) with several of her tap students after class.
"Everything about this space is going to exemplify community," said co-founder James Brockington, who runs the studio alongside his wife and business partner, Tia Russell Brockington, on a walkthrough of the new location. "We are changing what we believe is a traditional dance model. We've been saying, 'The art of dance meets the heart of fun.' We want to build the entire performer."
It's a move, built on both faith and artistry, that marks 12 years of continued growth and resilience for the business, which has become something of a New Haven institution. When Tia Russell Dance Studio (TRDS) opened in Woodbridge in 2013, it welcomed students into a 2,500 square foot space with a few classes and a handful of teachers.
Within years, it had expanded and added a lobby, then a second Woodbridge location. By the time March 2020 rolled around, enrollment hovered around 450 students, with regular classes that ranged from ballet, tap, jazz and lyrical to acro dance, hip hop and African dance. Some students came from as far as New York and Massachusetts for the classes, which remains true years later.
And then overnight, all of that skidded temporarily to a stop. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit New Haven, it forced the studio to close its physical doors and regroup. The classrooms, normally filled with the joyful noise of young dancers, went eerily silent. Several teachers left. Russell Brockington, who is both an arts educator and a mom, could see a growing level of need in the community, as both students and their families struggled with the quiet and isolation of their new normal.
"We navigated mainly with our faith," Brockington remembered. In August of 2020, the studio reopened with masked, socially distanced classes, offering them at no cost as the owners tried to make a six-figure rent (the business did receive Paycheck Protection Program or PPP funding, Brockington said). By later that year, they were giving classes at reduced tuition, and slowly building back numbers. Still, every month, they were in the red. Even as the pandemic entered a new phase around 2022, student numbers remained closer to 250.
"We were looking for a type of breakthrough," Russell Brockington said. She and Brockington knew that their Woodbridge lease was ending imminently, and that it presented a kind of opportunity. She also envisioned a building with more studio space, costume storage, and parking. They settled on the Marne Street location after multiple visits, with construction crews that got to work shortly thereafter.
In the past months, they have begun to transform it into a multi-purpose arts center meant for both students and their families, and members of the greater New Haven community more broadly. There is, for instance, an expanded shop with dance gear, water bottles, t-shirts and neatly stacked towers of shoes, a parent lounge and still-in-progress refreshment bar, and open space where a bistro will go.
There’s a plan for a multi-purpose art studio and a resource room that community members can rent for everything from meetings to birthday parties (“Girl Chat,” an in-house series of monthly meetings where students can speak candidly with each other about everything from hygiene to school bullying, will also take place there). There’s an arts wing where Brockington envisions a recording studio by fall of this year.
But the heart of the space is still its focus on dance. Beyond a welcome desk and large, high-ceilinged atrium, there are two large closets for costumes, replacing a need for offsite storage. Around them, a total of four dance studios come to life with sprung floors, portable bars and acro mats. Two, down an L-shaped hallway, will serve the center’s youngest students, from infants and preschoolers (dance classes start at 18 months with a parent or guardian) to those who have been with the studio for years.
Another two, in the building’s main area, welcome middle schoolers and teens. On a recent Thursday, both were full, with sound that bounced through the building amidst cries of “one, two, three, four!” and the sound of students cheering each other on.
“Nothing that we’re about to do is really foreign [to us],” Russell Brockington said. “Dance has changed over the years a lot. The needs have changed. We’re balancing love and discipline.”
Top: Jahnaya West-Fleming and Cherise Russell. Russell, whose daughter Dominique began dancing with the studio 12 years ago, said she's thrilled to be in the new space. "James and Tia, they're amazing," she said. "They're family. You have to love children to do this work. To see their growth is phenomenal." "I love it" West-Fleming added. During the day, she is a second-grade teacher at L.W. Beecher Museum Magnet School of Arts & Sciences. Bottom: Tia Russell Brockington teaches.
On a recent Thursday, that vision came joyfully to life as dozens of dancers filled the space, placing their bookbags and sneakers neatly in cubbies as they entered their classes. In one studio, Russell Brockington started a ballet class with stretching, students fanning out across the room as she counted them through neck rotations, shoulder rolls, arms that extended to students’ whole wingspan.
“Take your time and really try to dance with the music,” she said as students lined up against a wall, and prepared to do a series of leaps across the floor. Every so often, the joyful, solid tap! and thump of over a dozen pairs of tap shoes drifted through the wall. Next door, McCoter’s class was in full swing.
Russell Brockington, who has studied and taught dance for decades, is not one to be easily distracted. Gathering students back at the front of the room, she began to walk them through choreography, extending one arm gingerly as she spoke. Her outstretched hand lingered for a moment, then pulled back into her ribcage.
“Reach!” she said, her voice firm but gentle at the same time. “And cross here together—” she rose, arching back—”Straighten your legs and all the way over to the right! Go around. Back down—” a student caught her eye. “You good?”
A few students shook their heads. They needed to run it again. “Okay,” she said calmly as she walked over to a speaker. “That’s alright. Start from the beginning.”
Between classes, both teachers and students said they are thrilled to have the new location. McCotter, who has been dancing since she was seven, described it as just part of her dance journey.
As a kid growing up in New Haven, she first learned to dance at Dee Dee’s Dance Center, where instructors once included culture-bearers like Shari Caldwell and the late Chuckey Brown. Now, she’s giving back to the community that raised her.
“Dance saved my life,” she said during a pause between classes. “It was a way for me to express myself. I was able to say a lot of things through dance that I couldn’t.”
After going on to study dance at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School and the Educational Center for the Arts, she began teaching herself eight years ago. “I love the vision. I love the kids,” she said.
DesTahnee Manick-Highsmith: "It’s just a second home."
That was also true for DesTahnee Manick-Highsmith, who has been teaching hip hop at the studio since 2022 but dancing since she was a kid at the Daedream Theater Arts Company over a decade ago. After finding out TRDS was hiring instructors while she was looking for work a few years ago, Manick-Highsmith fell in love with teaching.
“I love the energy! The creativity!” she said. “It’s just a second home. You can feel that when you walk into the studio.”
Teachers are passing that on to the next generation, too. As she took a beat to herself between classes, sixth grader Jasmine Williams remembered starting dance around the time that she was two years old, and falling completely in love with it.
Over the years—and as she’s transitioned from one class to closer to six—dance has helped her make friends and build her confidence. A lot of that, she said, is credit to the family-like atmosphere that Russell Brockington and other instructors build in the space.
“When I dance, I feel honestly pretty happy,” she said.
Madison James, a senior at the Sound School. As she heads to college, she said, dance has taught her the discipline and creative thinking that she'll need for college. She hopes to be a pediatric cardiologist.
Madison James, a senior at the Sound School, added that there’s a sense of multi-generational learning that happens in the studio. When she started dancing at the Woodbridge location, she was in the first grade, and didn’t know exactly what to expect from her classes. Now, as she prepares to graduate from high school, she can’t imagine her life without it.
“They’ve taught me a bunch of life skills,” she said. “Like to be on time, and to focus … It's like my second home.”
She added that she’s learned how to lead through one of the school’s signature programs: it’s not uncommon for longtime students and alumni to teach younger kids. Currently, James teaches hip hop to a group of five to seven year olds. She balances that responsibility with her own load of six dance classes and a never-ending stream of schoolwork.
“I love being able to share the gift that they gave me with the younger generation,” she said.