awn-move me soul 2014

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December 10, 2014 Published in partnership with MOVE ME SOUL Mary Thomas goes through warm ups with the rest of the Move Me Soul company. DAVID PIERINI/Staff Photographer N ine years ago, I told my graduate school professor that I wanted my work with youth to have meaning. My main goal was to expose inner-city youth to the arts. I wanted the arts to be the vehicle to awaken their genius. I wanted to share the benefits I gained as an inner-city teenage dancer. I wanted to find scholarships to dance schools so teens could be immersed in professional training. Every year, I wanted to take a bus load of teens to the theater to see Alvin Ailey, Dance Theater of Harlem, Muntu Dance Theatre, Najwa Dance Corps and others. I wanted to give them a platform that allowed them to perform, travel, tour and prepare for life after high school. I wanted to make this vision come to life by teaming up with my peers and industry professionals who could sustain and grow this vision. Nine years later my vision has become real. And these pages tell the story. Sincerely, Ayesha Jaco INTRODUCTION Empowering young people to discover hope and build self-worth through inspiring performance based arts and student athlete development in Chicago’s most challenged communities. For furth information contact, Andrew Born at [email protected]. @P3performs Pyramid Players Productions Empowering young people to discover hope and build self-worth through inspiring performance based arts and student athlete development in Chicago’s most challenged communities. For further information contact: Andrew Born at [email protected]

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Page 1: AWN-Move Me Soul 2014

December 10, 2014 Published in partnership withMOVE ME SOUL

Mary Thomas goes through warm ups with the rest of the Move Me Soul company. DAVID PIERINI/Staff Photographer

Nine years ago, I told my

graduate school professor that I wanted my work with youth to have meaning. My main goal was to expose inner-city youth to the arts. I wanted the arts to be the vehicle to awaken their genius. I wanted to share the benefits I gained as an inner-city teenage dancer. I wanted to find scholarships to dance schools so teens could be immersed in professional training.

Every year, I wanted to take a bus load of teens to the theater to see Alvin Ailey, Dance Theater of Harlem, Muntu Dance Theatre, Najwa Dance Corps and others. I wanted to give them a platform that allowed them to perform, travel, tour and prepare for life after high school. I wanted to make this vision come to life by teaming up with my peers and industry professionals who could sustain and grow this vision.

Nine years later my vision has become real. And these pages tell the story.

Sincerely,

Ayesha Jaco

INTRODUCTION

Empowering young people to discover hope and build self-worth through inspiring performance based arts and student athlete development in Chicago’s most challenged communities. For further information contact, Andrew Born at [email protected].

@P3performs Pyramid Players Productions

Empowering young people to discover hope and build self-worth through inspiring performance based arts and student athlete development in Chicago’s most challenged communities.

For further information contact: Andrew Born at [email protected]

Page 2: AWN-Move Me Soul 2014

14 Wednesday, December 10, 2014 MOVE ME SOUL

Urban Hardball offers FREE baseball clinics for kids ages 13 and under at

Columbus Park (500 S Central Ave, Chicago, IL)

January 17th February 21st

March 21st April 18th

12:30 pm— 3:00 pm

Urban Hardball Baseball

To learn more visit:pyramidplayersproductions.org Howard A. Peters III

Best Wishes ToPyramid Players

Productions

Friends of BJ and Tom Walker

BJ and Tom

Sheila Talton

Stafford Hood

Cindy Konieczny

Elizabeth Rae Rosenstein

Schaffer Hilton

Sunnah Pasha

Kenneth Joe

“Every great achievement was once considered impossible”

Pyramid Players Productions continues to nurture our community

Friends of BJ and Tom Walker

BJ and Tom

Sheila Talton

Stafford Hood

Cindy Konieczny

Elizabeth Rae Rosenstein

Schaffer Hilton

Sunnah Pasha

Kenneth Joe

“Every great achievement was once considered impossible”

Pyramid Players Productions continues to nurture our community

Page 3: AWN-Move Me Soul 2014

Wednesday, December 10, 2014 15MOVE ME SOUL

Move Me Soul, then & now

B Y D E B Q U A N T O C K M c C A R E Y

As a freshman in high school, Ayesha Jaco, the founding director of Move Me Soul (MMS),

joined Gallery 37, an After School Matters dance apprenticeship for adolescents.

In that seminal time, in a room full of danc-ers, and under the tutelage of the program’s dance mentors, she learned how to dance, and gracefully found her calling.

That, plus a few other influential factors, including growing up with a Dad who was an accomplished African drummer, led Jaco to earn a Bachelor and Masters of Arts Management in Youth and Community Development from Columbia College Chicago. She eventually founded Move Me Soul, an After School Matters dance and life skills devel-opment apprenticeship program she based at Austin High School and performs throughout Chicago, as well as across the State of Illinois.

“MMS shows that excellence exists, beyond all of the violence in Austin, beyond the low performing schools in this area, and every-thing negative anyone can point out,” says Jaco, a professor in the Sociology depart-ment at Northeastern University, and direc-tor of the Lupe Fiasco Foundation. “Our students are going to college and launching good careers. They are being exposed to other places, and representing the Austin commu-nity on a global level, by studying abroad and coming back to share their experiences with their peers. This program shines brightly and has a lot of positivity because through it we are affecting lives in Austin through our arts and life skills programming.”

Here’s how it all began2007

■ Ayesha Jaco offers a dance class as alternative to gym at Austin High School, under the After

School Matters club model.

2008

■ Move Me Soul formed as a teen dance company, under the umbrella of Austin-based Pyramid Players Productions (P3), its marketing, fundraising and production support arm.

■ Yolanda Pittman Maloney joins program, and MMS becomes an After School Matters Dance Apprentice program providing stipends to 30 teens, and its first Winter and Spring

dance concerts are staged in the auditorium of Austin High School.

■ Area nonprofits collaborate with MMS to augment dance instruction with the provision of youth development workshops.

2009

■ The first prestigious nod arrives when MMS is selected to perform at After School Matters CityWide Showcase at the Chicago Theatre

■ As the program grows to 45 teens, MMS produces and presents 2nd Annual Winter, Spring and Summer Concerts

■ Career readiness and STD prevention workshops are added, and many teen dancers were selected to participate in Lupe

Fiasco Foundation’s Off The Block Global Exchange program, which paired Austin teens with teens in South Korea.

■ MMS becomes an After School Matters Apprenticeship

■ Jaco offers first Summer Intensive for 15 Austin Teens and first MMS Summer Dance Concert is staged

2010

■ MMS upgrades sound and lighting so the spaces in Austin would be more acoustically ready for MMS.

■ Instructor Diana Muhammad joins staff.

■ City Wide Tour is added to its performance schedule, and that year MMS performs at IAPHERD National Conference, St. Charles, IL. By Summer, the dance program grows to 60 teens, and becomes an After School Matters Advanced Apprenticeship. Adding to its diversity, 10 Young men join the roster.

2011

■ Total audiences numbers at annual concerts surpass 200.

■ First graduating class attends college

■ At its Spring Concert, Lincoln University (MO) scouts

MMS dancers, and MMS graduate, Shalonza Wickliffe, thanks in part to its college readiness component,

receives a full dance

scholarship to Lincoln University.

■ The Alumni Company, now MMS 2, is Formed to create a year-round peer-

to-peer mentoring program, plus be a traveling performance dance troupe.

■ Jessica Morrissette joins the teaching staff.

■ Performances staged at Kwanzaa at Chicago State University and Black Women’s Expo Gala.

■ Steve Cobb and Chavunduka are honored as Community Artists Recipients at the Winter Concert.

2012

■ Legacy of Oscar Brown Jr. is honored at Winter Concert.

■ Skill Up Chicago becomes a partner, and Lupe Fiasco Foundation’s study abroad efforts send two MMS dancers to Ghana, Africa.

2013

■ Performance at Community Forum at Center For Inner City Studies. ■ Albert Williams,

Artez Jackson and Rasheida Smith joins the teaching staff.

■ MMS becomes artists in residence at the Austin Resource Center, and two MMS Alumni members attend Children’s Defense Fund Conference in

Tennessee.

■ 600 audience members attend Winter, Spring and Summer shows.

2014January: MMS dance instructors co-facilitate in After School Matters Dance Winter Intensive with Hi Def Dance Ensemble at Roosevelt University.

February: Ten dancers perform for Jesse White Black History Celebration at the State of Illinois Building, and others are featured in Najwa Dance Corps Black History Month

Extravaganza at DuSable Museum.

March: Via a partnership with college enrichment programming, 10 graduating seniors take tours of Talledega College in Alabama, and MMS teens perform for Black Women’s Expo at McCormick Place.

June: Ensemble performs for South African Youth Day.

August: MMS performs for South African Women’s Day, participates in Bud Billiken Parade and in September, took the stage for 1st Annual AAHH Fest at Union Park 2014.

6 PM, December 19: Public is invited to attend “None Greater than Love” in the Dr. Martin Luther King Auditorium at Austin High School, 231 N. Pine, Chicago.

DECEMBER 19, 2014 | 6:00 PM AUSTIN HIGH SCHOOL CAMPUSDR. MARTIN LUTHER KING AUDITORIUM231 N. PINE CHICAGO, IL 60644

Page 4: AWN-Move Me Soul 2014

16 Wednesday, December 10, 2014 MOVE ME SOUL

What it takesP H O T O S B Y D A V I D P I E R I N I

(Left) A dancer flies across the floor at Austin Town Hall. (Above) The group forms a circle and dancers take turns in the center. (Right) Bryonna Young says she wanted to stay away from drugs and violence and joined Move Me Soul because she wanted to be like the dancers. (Below) The company warms up at Austin Town Hall on a recent Saturday afternoon.

(Above) A lengthy warmup period gets the dancer ready for a rigorous rehearsal. The group forms a circle and dancers take turns in the center. (Right) Jonnerick Miller during a recent rehearsal at Austin High School. (Far right) Bryonna Young, 14, has been dancing with the group less than a year. (Below)

Page 5: AWN-Move Me Soul 2014

Wednesday, December 10, 2014 17MOVE ME SOUL

Page 6: AWN-Move Me Soul 2014

18 Wednesday, December 10, 2014 MOVE ME SOUL

B Y D E B Q U A N T O C K M c C A R E Y

In mid-December, Brassel Jackson, 17, envisions that he will explode onto the auditorium stage at Austin High School in Chicago, feeling like a star, as he performs with his 50-member After School Matters

apprenticeship dance and life skills development pro-gram, Move Me Soul (MMS).

Jackson, one of six young men in the MMS dance perfor-mance group, auditioned for it as a high school freshman, hoping to bridge beyond hip hop, a dance he knew well.

“I learned hip hop at age seven, but now in high school we are learning ballet, jazz, tap, African dance, some more hip hop, contemporary, etc.,” Jackson says. “Dancing is cleansing, both mentally and emotionally, because it helps me express myself, and lets me get my anger out.”

Meanwhile, on a recent Saturday, sitting in a folding chair next to Jackson at Austin Town Hall, is Jonnerick Miller. The high school and program graduate is tapping his foot to the bed of background, on a break from his MMS rehearsal. Initially, with him being a reserved guy in the mostly female dance ensemble, participating in the after school dance program was a personal challenge that became transformative for him, in more ways than one.

“I was kind of big, so lifting girls, that was hard for me. I still have a bit of a problem taking off my shirt and stuff, but I have taken off a lot of weight so far, and I can lift up girls now, even my dance instructor, and she is not light,” jokes Miller, a freshman at Kennedy King College in Chicago, where he is studying culinary arts and dance.

The men of Move Me Soul

Another MMS graduate, Vonzell Byrd, recalls how he started, too: He was a freshman basketball jock who joined MMS as a way to meet girls and be a better “b-boy,” which is a guy who in the streets does hip hop, he says.

“When the male choreographers started coming on, for me it got really hard, and I found out what a male dancer’s responsibilities real-ly were,” he says. “You need to be strong to lift girls and just learning how to be the lead. That was hard.”

Now, age 19, dancer Byrd has taken flight.

“I really didn’t know what a mas-culine dancer was until I went to an Alvin Ailey [American Dance Troupe] and Najwa Dance Corps, and saw all these professional dance companies on MMS field trips,” says Byrd. “I saw these guys in tights who had this muscle type that was killing it, so Move Me Soul was teaching me all this stuff about dance including discipline.”

For Miller, growing up in the Austin neighborhood wasn’t easy; finding a group of like-minded peers with whom he could learn how to

dance in a safe space, and just hang out before and afterwards, has been a positive part of his personal growth.

Now, to this program he is giving back whenever he can.

“I would hope that one day theseguys will be in the position that I am, because I think youth pro-grams such as this one gives young men, as well as me, an outlet so there is a future here,” says Artez Jackson, 34, an MMS instructor and choreographer. “For our dancers, this is home. We are family, and the doors are always open for them.”

DAVID PIERINI/Staff Photographer

Brassel Jackson, one of six men dancing with Move Me Soul, describes dancing as “emotionally cleansing.” (Left) Vonzell Byrd is one of six male dancers in Move Me Soul. He hopes to dance professionally.

DAVID PIERINI/Staff Photographer

A special thanks to Ruth Kimble!

Page 7: AWN-Move Me Soul 2014

Wednesday, December 10, 2014 19MOVE ME SOUL

BY D E B Q U A N TO C K M c C A R E Y

Seven years ago, when Sharif Walker, a regional director with After School Matters, first observed Ayesha Jaco, the found-

ing director of Move Me Soul (MMS), she was teaching a high school dance class that was an After School Matters club. It was an alternative to gym class at Austin High School in Chicago.

Time and again what struck Walker was the verve and enthusi-asm of Jaco’s beginning dancers, all who were required to be there to receive a gym credit to graduate high school.

The next year, with the enthu-siastic support of Walker, also the founder of the nonprofit P3 (Pyramid Productions Players), Jaco successfully transitioned her dance class into an After School Matters pre-apprentice dance and life skills development program called Move Me Soul.

In 2008, P3 became its umbrella organization to provide marketing, fundraising and technical produc-tion support.

As a subset, P3 also organized

itself as an incubator for other youth programs, including Urban Hardball, a baseball initiative, and S.T.A.R.S, an afterschool theater program for high school age youth.

“Move Me Soul is a collective of independent instructors and art-ists who are contracting with After School Matters to provide stipends via artistic programming at Austin

High School, but we are still inde-pendent from that, with our own programming as well,” Jaco says.

Their collective impact…Over time it has been Jaco and

Walker’s shared aim to leverage the resources of a cross section of key stakeholders to maintain and extend their reach to urban youth through arts programming, primarily deliv-

ered through the lens of dance.In Summer 2015, on behalf of

MMS, Walker says P3 will launch Move Me Too, a pilot dance pro-gram geared to elementary age chil-dren. The effort will be powered by Jaco’s cohort of MMS program graduates, who as college students and program mentors will carry on the legacy of MMS at community sites including Austin Community Resource Center, 501 N. Central Avenue in Chicago.

“It will be where our high school students and our program alum-nae come back to mentor elemen-tary school kids in dance, but at the same time they will be giving them these foundational things that they have developed through the other relationships in our MMS model,” says Walker. “What we are doing with Move Me Too will be beyond the scope of After School Matters, and because of that it will need additional funding and support.”

In Fall 2015, Walker’s hope is to begin working with the Chicago Public Schools’ The Creative Schools Initiative, to provide grant funded MMS after school dance and

life skills development program-ming as an after school option in public elementary schools.

“When you look at other com-munities that are doing well, they have strong arts, sports and youth programming,” says Walker, add-ing that P3, on behalf of MMS, is currently working with Austin Community Resource Center, the former YMCA of Austin, to cre-ate a community center for youth and working with the Chicago Park District to put together a larger and collaborative outdoor performance. “We have reached the point where MMS can say to the City of Chicago, listen, we have stuck with it. We have found that people like what we are doing, and now we are ready to get to the next level with it.”

A collective impact for urban youth

DAVID PIERINI/Staff Photographer

Jaco, Move Me Soul’s founder, hopes exposure to dancing and the arts is as life changing for the young dancers, like Ashley Smith, center, as it was for her.

A Leap into a Legacy■ Read more about Move Me Soul

and its dancers

■ Watch videoLOG ON TO

AUSTINWEEKLYNEWS.COM

Page 8: AWN-Move Me Soul 2014

20 Wednesday, December 10, 2014 MOVE ME SOUL

P3 congratulates Move Me Soul and thanks Ayesha Jaco, Rashieda Smith, Artez Jackson and

Diana Muhammad

Vernis Likes Keith Daniel

Natasha Walker LeShele Silas-Armour

Co ming together is a beginning .

Keeping together is progress.

Working together is success.

Conrad Terry Joy Dickson

Andrew Born

@P3performs Pyramid Players Productions