DALA ballet dancers Brent Benkoski, Austin Watkins and Landon Guise. It’s imperative to include young, male dancers for the future of the art form. Courtesy photo
DALA Artistic Director Jonathan Guise instructs a student during ballet practice. Courtesy photo
By BERNADETTE LAURITZEN
Los Alamos
Maybe you are looking for end of the year giving or ahead to those agencies you would like to support next year? Perhaps, your heart is yearning to dance in 2025, or you have a future dancer who might be ready for an introduction class? If so, then Dance Arts Los Alamos (DALA) is here for you.
DALA is “Where leaps are made”. The non-profit runs the gamut for what they have to offer the community. They have Young Children’s Classes, Ballet 1 through 5, Mixed Repertoire, Dance Conditioning, Adult Classes and more.
One program many may not be aware of is their Adaptive Dance Program. One of the goals for DALA is to serve people of all abilities in the community.
“DALA aims to provide differently abled dancers a safe, professional, and structured space to confidently learn about self-expression through movement while acquiring knowledge on communication, teamwork, creative problem-solving skills, and leadership through the art of dance,” DALA Board Secretary Venita Chavez said.
The program was created in the fall of 2022 by Associate Director Karina Wilder. Wilder received her NDEO (National Dance Education Organization) Certification “Teaching Dance to Students with Disabilities”. She is also the recipient of the 2018 Special Education Super Advocate Award from the Hastings School District in Minnesota. There she worked to create an Adaptive Dance Program at Jan’s School of Dance.
DALA recently received a grant from United Way of Northern New Mexico. The grant is to be used specifically for tuition. This allows all Adaptive Dance students to take classes with free or reduced tuition. They continue to seek donations to enable staff to participate in continuing education to broaden all that DALA has to offer to their community’s members with disabilities.
Another area of focus for DALA is to educate boys in the art form of ballet. This class is offered to boys at no fee so to allow the art form to thrive. The effort to encourage boys to try a ballet class and participate is not just a challenge for DALA but for dance programs at all schools. The incentive helps DALA by encouraging their dance families to sign their boys up for ballet.
The DALA Board of Directors is a volunteer board of 10 people. Board members give guidance and make decisions about everything related to the success of their non-profit goals. Members assist with a variety of needs for every production. Their winter success of “Nutcracker” consisted of 120 dancers in 2024. Each dancer’s family is asked to volunteer in some capacity before, during and after the production. That results in managing 100 volunteers at any given time.
The work during productions begins and ends with loading costumes and sets in and out to the theater when a production takes place. That is followed by an enormous amount of tech crew backstage, costume support, chaperoning student dancers, working in the box office, providing snacks for intermission, and ushers. The same volunteers are maintained all year long, to help with anything that is needed for DALA’s success.
The other side of DALA’s success is a fantastic staff. One member of that great staff is Artistic Director Jonathan Guise. His love of dance is seen, heard and felt by a community of dancers and their families. He assuredly works more than his paid number of hours, as do many in the non-profit world. Guise’s goals are more than a paycheck because he can see the future ahead. What drives that spirit of giving for Guise? The answer is potential.
“My favorite thing about teaching dance is when I see a student reach a potential, they didn’t know they had,” Guise said. “Another great thing about being a teacher is the decade later phone call, that’s when one of my older students calls me or messages me explaining that they finally learned what I was trying to teach them at that time in their life.”
DALA serves more than 300 dancers between the ages of 2-1/2 through adult. DALA offers a range of classes from classical ballet to modern to flamenco, swing, boys ballet, hip hop and body conditioning classes. They invite the community to take a free trial class, to see if they enjoy the experience and the ability it can have to fill the soul.
Guise has an extensive list of accomplishments he brings to DALA as the Artistic Director. He has been an entertainer for 27 years. He began his relationship with dance in Colorado Springs. He began dancing with local groups and companies at the age of 15. Guise went on to dance with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Boston Ballet and The Eugene Ballet. He has been an educator for 24 years, for studios, companies and universities around the globe. At the core of his being, he is a mentor. He believes this view of mentorship, “Being a mentor is about teaching all of the life lessons that dance (arts) brings to the table because that’s my way of shaping the future by creating leaders, problem solvers and innovators.”
You can learn more about DALA at www.danceartslosalamos.org.
Courtesy photo