About Leah Willis Dance Arts

The Mission at LWDA

Our Mission centers around tackling three distinct tasks: eradicating childhood and adolescent obesity, stopping teens from dropping out of school, and providing jobs in the communities we serve.

At the heart of our mission, is the goal of positively impacting our community so that the youth as well as the adults that take part in our programming become healthy, well-rounded, inspired and accountable; and will grow into intelligent, articulate and creative individuals who joyfully share their artistic passion, while actively striving to support and improve their communities.

LWDA’s Contribution To Our Community

Arts Education is important to people of all ages. Building well-rounded coping skills and creative capacity into the youth ensures that we are making a positive investment into the people of tomorrow.

Access to Dance Education allows people to:

• Be exposed to various cultures which give them the opportunity to realistically orient themselves in the world.
• Develop strong communication skills including: transmitting ideas in writing, speaking with clarity, listening dynamically, and discerning analytically.
• Build a capacity of empowerment to express ideas, emotions and opinions, with confidence that they will be heard and considered valid. 
• Increase their aptitude to solve problems and make choices that increases independence, resourcefulness, and the capability to be accountable.
• Live a fuller and more involved life due to positive social interaction.
• Live a more active healthy life due to positive metabolism and educated choices about food consumption.
• Take responsibility for their own lives and decisions by choosing to use their art to enhance their academic intelligence.

 These basic foundations build an individual’s ability to cultivate skills for living and working and therefore contribute more fully to community health and development.

Leah Willis Dance Arts Presents: 

LWDA Unlocking Reading Power With Dance©

Dance has been the primal form of communication, since the beginning of human interaction. All movement; i.e. Nonverbal cues, gestures, facial expressions, audible tapping on the body or on a surface, embraces, and the like, are all expressions of the Spirit within the body. These combine to form a Dance, that expresses what is going on in the lives and minds of the movers. We utilize these expressions and use them to the utmost advantage of healing, building trust, strengthening bonds, having fun, releasing harbored emotions, and constructing relationships between people. LWDA Unlocking Reading Power With Dance © is an interactive adventure, that allows students who have an academic deficiency in Reading Comprehension to: gainfully express themselves, realize their linguistic learning power, build, important phonics, vocabulary, inferrence, and language Art skills, and learn contextual Dance Discipline, Technique, History and Culture. Fun blends seamlessly with learning and expression so that what results is life long excellence and the ability to adapt, grow and flourish through challenges and triumphs.

LWDA Unlocking Reading Power With Dance © Program Facets Include:

• Professional Dance instruction from a seasoned, accomplished Dance Artist.
• 2 Dance styles rooted in State Content Standards for Performing Arts and Physical Education. Dance styles will rotate after 1/2 the Session has transpired. (7 Technical Styles total).
• The Program - Dance Technique, LWDA Rules of Healthy Practice© Nutrition Education Program (ROHP) and CDA is 2 hours long, each meeting period.
• Cross-Disciplinary Applications (CDA) of Dance and academics with functional assignments connecting dance history, real world applications of academic subjects building career competencies. Academic Studies: Reading, Comprehension, Language Arts and Problem Solving.
• 1 major performance or informal presentation at home school or facility per Session.
• Individual Career preparation within the Dance and Major Performing Arts Sector.

Session Structure:

• Four 30 minute Class Activity Blocks, for a total of a 2 hour session.
• Sensory and visual props.
• Movement exploration that is age appropriate and cohesive for various learning abilities.
• World Culture and language exposure.
• Musical exposure through instructor-led a capella song engagement and recorded music.
• Locomotor movement development through pattern building and repetition.

Program Cost

(Please request LWDA Innovative Arts Education Programs

Cost Break Down for Schools, Districts, Youth Facilities, and Businesses,  for full description of costs).

LWDA Unlocking Reading Power With Dance After School Program

 This program is within the nature of an ongoing, progressive skill building experience. It will be tailored toward the lifelong learning of each child, and therefore is not in the scope of merely a “dance class.”

Past Program Site(s):

2019-2020