May 3, 2024 | Santa Fe New Mexican | By Michael Wade Simpson
More than 150,000 kids have come through New Mexico’s National Dance Institute since it was founded 30 years ago, with NDI teacher Catherine Oppenheimer calling the culminating performance each year a “transformative” experience.
Over its 30-year history in New Mexico, the National Dance Institute has taught more than 150,000 kids to do the institute’s trademark “runs and jumps.”
Russell Baker, NDI’s executive director and 23-year veteran NDI teacher, presents the move this way to students: “This is your moment in the spotlight. You’re gonna get the chance to run and to leap through the spotlight. And when you do, I want you to look at the audience. I want you to run as fast as you can. I want you to jump as high as you can. I want you to smile out at the audience. I want you to stretch your arms, I want you to reach for the sky and leap for the sky. And when you do that, I want you to show the world who you are.”
NDI New Mexico Artistic Director Liz Salganek adds, “No matter how many students are a part of the show, we always do runs and jumps. It’s about being seen, but also about perseverance and endurance. Once your jump is done, you have your spot on stage and you keep dancing until every person has had their turn. And then, when you finally hit that final pose, and you feel all 500 of you jump and hit the pose at the same time, and the audience bursts into applause, you can feel that the applause was for you. But it was also for the whole team that you’re a part of. And you also had to work really hard and you’re sweating and you’re panting and you feel a great sense of, ‘I did it!’”
Origin Story: Jacques d’Amboise and Catherine Oppenheimer
In the fall of 1975, Jacques d’Amboise, a legendary ballet dancer with New York City Ballet, began teaching dance classes in New York public schools. “Not ballet,” he wrote in his memoir I Was a Dancer (Knopf, 2011), “but introducing kids to the arts through dance.”
Soon, his end-of-the-year spectacle, called the Event of the Year, was playing at Madison Square Garden featuring thousands of school children. He called this new organization the National Dance Institute. A film about NDI, He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin’, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1984.
One morning, young NYCB dancer Catherine Oppenheimer was on her way to class at the New York State Theater and came across d’Amboise rehearsing with a group of kids. “I love kids. These were kids of every size, shape, color, and energy. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked Jacques. ‘This isn’t your time,’ he said. ‘But when you’re ready, come see me, and I’ll give you a job,’” Oppenheimer says. She started teaching at NDI 10 years later.
In 1990, d’Amboise won a MacArthur “Genius Grant” and used part of it to buy a second home in Santa Fe. “In 1994, he asked a few of us teachers to come out to New Mexico and start a new NDI program,” Oppenheimer says. “I had been born and raised in New York City and had my dance career there. I fell in love with New Mexico.”
NDI in Santa Fe started small, she says, bringing NDI to first one school, then three schools, then five.
“We used Jacques’ tried-and-true teaching techniques and soon had schools on a waiting list. We started working in Albuquerque, then Silver City and Roswell. Elementary schools in New Mexico were offering either music or PE — we offered a lot of kinesthetic experience — something different,” she says. “The process of getting kids to the point of performing together in a show at the end of the year was transformative. It still is.”
The Santa Fe organization had no permanent home, so they performed at the Greer Garson Theater on the campus of the former Santa Fe University of Art and Design. They rehearsed at the “Pink Church” on Pacheco Street and performed at the Lensic after it became a performing arts center in 2001.
Under Oppenheimer’s leadership, NDI New Mexico raised $4 million, leased 3.5 acres on Alto Street from Santa Fe Public Schools, and built the 33,000 square foot Dance Barns that provided space for dance studios, a costume shop, storage, a 500-seat theater, and administrative offices. It opened its doors in May 2003.
Later, NDI opened a similar facility at the repurposed Hiland Theater in Albuquerque. d’Amboise died in 2021 at 86, and NDI continues its vast outreach to communities across the state, offering year-long as well as short-term programs that create maximum impact for young students.
NDI has a well-established tradition of engaging hundreds of students each year who reside in the Española Valley. This year, NDI will include more than 8,000 students in urban, rural, and Native American communities in the state. Ninety elementary schools with 271 public school teachers participate in NDI programs. More than half of the program’s participants are Hispanic, 19% are Anglo, and 9% Native. More than 60 percent of the students qualify for federal free and reduced-cost meal programs.
Legacies
Many participants are children or relatives of former NDI students.
Elisha Wray (three generations of NDI): “I started with NDI when I was 9, 1997 I think. I was in SWAT (Super Wonderful Advanced Team) and Celebrations (junior high school-aged dancers). Jacques came out a few times. The way he dressed, the way he talked. He just had this energy. Everything about him screamed ‘Broadway.’ I loved everything about NDI. I love dancing. Once it was show time, it was amazing that everything always fell into place. There was lighting and music and costumes. So exciting! You felt like a rock star!
“My dad was a retired captain for the fire department and worked as the paramedic for a few of the NDI shows. They had some professional ballet dancers visiting one year who weren’t used to the altitude. I remember my dad standing backstage with two oxygen tanks, waiting to give them air when they rushed off.
“I started my two kids with NDI at 2½. My daughter Kaylee is now 15. This is her graduating year with NDI. She’s a beautiful dancer. The first time I saw her do ‘runs and jumps’ took me full circle. I cried. ‘Where did the time go? That was me up there just a few years ago!’
“My son Dominic is 11. At first, he was a little intimidated to be in a classroom full of girls. He stuck to it because of his teacher. Once he got into hip-hop and jazz, he really flourished.
“My daughter is really shy, but when she’s on stage she truly shines. With my son, it’s the opposite. NDI brought one of my children out of her shell, and it’s keeping the other one centered.”
Teachers
Public school teachers who bring NDI into their classrooms are a critical element of students’ success.
Edmund Gorman (fifth grade teacher at El Camino Real Academy, 22 years): “I started with NDI 20 years ago. My son and daughter both went through the program. I’ve been the inschool coordinator and danced as part of the teacher-parent dance in the end-of-year performances for more than 150 shows.
“I know that not all teachers do this, but I dance side-by-side with the students at every rehearsal. I find that when your students see you get excited about something, they get excited too. It spreads the passion. Year after year, you see the selfconfidence explode in these students. It’s pure joy, the sense of teamwork, for them to see what they can accomplish when they work hard. It’s a bonding experience.
“I work with English learners. A lot of them are immigrants. During NDI practice, they have verbal instruction in English, they learn to count and move together. The teachers won’t move on until everybody gets it. They may practice all year in the cafeteria, but when they get to the Dance Barns and see the rest of the kids and the whole show, their eyes go wide. They realize they are involved in something bigger than themselves. And the fact that the whole thing is free means that a lot of them whose families would not be able to afford dance lessons get to succeed.”
Other key players
After the last performance of Dream Big, the 30th Anniversary Spring NDI extravaganza for 500 public school children in Santa Fe ends on May 4, the sweaty costumes will be sorted, bagged, and loaded onto trucks to an all-night laundry operation in Albuquerque.
The same costumes will get used by hundreds more young dancers at dress rehearsals starting the following Monday. At the Hiland Theater, the costumes will again get sorted, laundered, and swapped for another week of shows with another batch of dancers. All this takes precise planning.
Dawn Baca is NDI’s costumer in Santa Fe. Sweatpants and bins are her best friends, she says. “I have 10 bins of navy sweatpants,” she says. “You don’t have to worry about the length, and you can roll up the waists.”
The two-story costume shop at the Dance Barns contains thousands of costumes.
“There are racks with dresses, military uniforms, Western shirts; bins with tap shoes and boots and pointe shoes,” she says. Before the show, each student receives a plastic laundry basket with their name taped to the side and their their costumes folded and stacked. It is the students’ responsibility to keep everything organized for the week of shows, but volunteers stand by with needle and thread.
“There are always three or four kids every show who are hard to fit and need extra attention,” says Baca. “They may be self-conscious because they are smaller or larger than the other kids. I make sure they are 100% comfortable in their costumes. It’s important for their confidence. They are the ones who always give me the biggest smiles as they go onstage.”