“Let’s Dance Boston,” a five-day outdoor dancing extravaganza run by Celebrity Series of Boston, begins Wednesday night on the Rose Kennedy Greenway, giving dancers of all experience levels a chance to salsa, swing or disco.
While this will be the first time Celebrity Series is hosting a dancing series of this scale, the arts organization has coordinated similar performance-centric projects in the past.
“We have a commitment to large, outdoor, free and participatory projects for the public because we want to activate people and space with live performance,” said Gary Dunning, president and executive director of Celebrity Series. “We knew there was an appetite for it, and we also knew that this has been done in other cities to varying degrees. It was a combination of working with the Greenway, which is a terrific space. They want to activate it with people. We want to activate people with performance. The combination just felt right.”
Each night of the series will start off with a 45-minute dance lesson, led by professional instructors from a variety of dance styles — Latin on Wednesday, swing on Thursday, disco on Friday, salsa on Saturday and swing once again on Sunday. After the lesson, participants will be given the opportunity to put their new moves to practice during a 90-minute live band set.
“The different dance styles will bring out a whole range of diversity that is Boston today, whether it’s because it’s a dance style that they [the participants] have known their whole lives or whether it’s one they’ve just come to appreciate,” Dunning said. “We definitely wanted that range.”
The festival’s coordinators and participating dance instructors shared that one of their main goals is to celebrate the various kinds of diversity that exist within the Boston area.
“We’re going to have dancers, non-dancers [and] people who happen to be walking through the area,” said Jenna Robey, a dance instructor from Salsa y Control Dance Studio in Allston who will teach Saturday. “It’s a big, wide range of age and people. It’s going to be interesting, actually, to see the dance community come together with people who may not be so involved in the dance community … It’s kind of bringing everybody together.”
Eileen Herman-Haase and Raul Nieves, co-owners of Dance Caliente in Arlington, encourage diversity at their studio by taking an alternative approach to teaching dance. The two, who will teach Latin-style dance at the Greenway tonight, focus on helping their students build healthy partnerships by setting traditional dance rules aside in favor of a more progressive method.
“When it comes to leading and following, we never talk about the man doing something or the woman doing something,” Herman-Haase said. “It’s always about the choreography for the leader or the follower, because there could be same-sex couples or some women who prefer to lead. We’re teaching to human beings, not to a set way of doing something. That’s really important to us, and it’s important for a really good, healthy partnership.”
According to Dunning, Celebrity Series was quite selective in its search for dance instructors for “Let’s Dance Boston.” In addition to showcasing many dance genres, the organization also sought out choreographers who have the ability to teach students of all levels.
“We talked to teachers in the area and found ones who we thought would, in a sense, appreciate what we’re doing and buy into the concept,” Dunning said. “Also, [we selected teachers] who are good at teaching to a totally amateur audience. They really had to have the right kind of personality.”
Herman-Haase said she believes Dance Caliente’s unique teaching method played a large role in helping Celebrity Series select her and Nieves to teach on opening night.
“They contacted teachers that they thought might be appropriate for this type of event,” she said. “They took a look at our resumes, our website and the philosophy that we have as we teach. They thought it would be a really good match because our focus is on having fun and encouraging people to dance.”
In the end, Dunning said, the main purpose of “Let’s Dance Boston” is to promote the appreciation of performing arts in the daily lives of Bostonians.
“We hope to do it annually because we think it helps fulfill our vision that the arts are a lifelong, shared, appreciated experience,” he said. “The phrase I always use is that everyone can be an artist. Not everyone can be a world-class artist, but everyone can really enjoy the arts and participate and have fun.”
“Let’s Dance Boston” will take place on the Rose Kennedy Greenway from Sept. 16 to Sept. 20. Dance lessons will begin at 6 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, and will begin at 3 p.m. on Sunday.
