"Dance needs to become more socially understood and cherished"; North Coast Dance artistic director shares his own journey about being bullied in school

A statewide initiative to incorporate visual arts in the common core curriculum has resulted in a partnership between the Humboldt County Office of Education and North Coast Dance.

Northcoast artistic director Ikolo Griffin said that each region got to decide what art medium to focus on and Humboldt County chose dance. This partnership shows teachers how to incorporate dance into their daily curriculum.

A special show for local students was held during the performances for "Ballet Heritage" as a part of this effort.  NCD Executive Director Kris Beck said that an outreach was made to local schools. Dows  Prairie, Redwood Prep and Winship are the three schools participating in this program.

At Redwood Prep, a gym teacher was show how to include dance so his daily class was not just about athletics. In a science class, Griffin showed how dance can be used to teach about orbits.

"Humboldt has great music and drama programs," said Griffin. "This will help bring arts back into schools. Art is mandatory to graduate."

Beck said that the idea came about when Stacy Young, a liaison form the Humboldt County Office of Education watched rehearsals for Nutcracker and "she liked how Ikolo interacted with the kids."

"School is not all about academics," said Griffin. "Dance needs to become more socially understood and cherished."

Griffin shared his own journey of how he started being interested in dance. "I came from an outreach program. The San Francisco Ballet came to my school."

"In junior high, I had a very hard time, kids teasing me about something kids don't understand.," said Griffin. A boy doing ballet was difficult enough but he is also African-American and he said many stereotypes about boys in ballet were challenging as a young man.

Griffin credits his mother for her love and support in keeping him focused and enrolled in the program. Each year she would tell him, "You like doing the Nutcracker," and when he said yes, she kept encouraging him to continue for one more year.