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News 12 Staff

Spolight928part2_2024-09-28-12-13-16

We are talking about dancing dreams in Bayside queens. This nonprofit caught my attention. Thanks to a family from Wayne and pass a county who attends Joanne Ferrara is the founder and executive director, Joanne. Let's talk about your first dancer and who you cater to. Ok. Well, our first dancer Veronica was four years old when she started, she was the impetus. She was a little girl with cerebral palsy who wanted to be a dancer and there were no programs and that was what prompted me to start the program Veronica has now graduated from college. She has a degree in communications from Saint John's and I am proud to say she is an intern with us right now. Oh, that must mean so much to you. Uh It's, it's just, it's amazing to watch her growth and to see and for her to have to be able to give back to these families and these dancers and what an incredible role model she is for not only the dancers, but also for the teens to see how she has grown and what the impact of dancing dreams was on her life. What are the challenges your students are dealing with that. You help them with through dance. Well, we always say that everyone dances from their heart with their heart. Our classes are taught by physical and occupational therapists. Every class has a teacher as well as an assistant teacher, both of whom would be either physical and, or occupational therapists. And that allows us to cater to Children with a variety of physical challenges. It doesn't matter how physically challenged the child is. Every dancer, dancers, they just do it in their own way. We like them to dance. We say they all dance to their own self potential. Nobody has to fit into any preconceived mold. And when you see these kids come alive through dance and music, how does that make you and the staff feel? We are just thrilled when you see the faces of the dancers and, and the faces of the teens seeing their dancer achieve something that they couldn't do. I mean, it's just, it's, it's truly magical to see it on a week to week basis. I love the way she says they dance from the heart with their heart. That is so beautiful.

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Spolight928part3_2024-09-28-12-22-55

Joanne Ferrara is the founder and executive Director of Dancing Dreams in Bayside Queens. This is a nonprofit that is very special and you will see why a family from Wayne and Passaic County attends and it's beautiful for them. So let's talk about the fact that you just added a new class. Joanne. Yes, we did. We currently have three sites, one on Long Island, one in Bayside Queens, which is our original and biggest site and one in Manhattan. And I'm proud to say that this year we added, we had three classes in Bayside. We've added 1/4 we added a new day because we had so many Children that were interested in joining our program. Speaking of joining your program, tell me about the family from here in New Jersey and Wayne that comes well, Kaitlyn joined us from Wayne New Jersey. She has cerebral palsy. She's a twin. Her twin did not have cerebral palsy, does not have cerebral palsy. And Kaitlyn's twin wanted was a dancer and Kaitlyn always wanted to dance. And one of Kaitlyn's family members saw something about dancing dreams reached out to us and they started coming and they came for more than 10 years every week for Caitlyn to be a dancer. Her dad is an adaptive ski instructor at Wyndham and he's helped us every year provide an adaptive ski trip that we do for our dancers. And they're very, very involved with our program and they've been just a gift to us. A gift to you. How do the parents get involved in this program? Well, parents get involved because a, they bring their Children to class everything. Um And then we do have, we build, not only we didn't want to be just something where parents brought their Children for dance classes, we wanted to build a community and support for our dancers. So we have a social worker who actually was also one of our dancers is cerebral palsy and she went to the University of Illinois and she has a master's in social work. Kathleen is our graduate and alumni coordinator. So she's tasked with keeping everyone who graduates involved as well as our parent education coordinator. We run or Kathleen runs once every four weeks or so workshops for parents on topics that are of interest such as navigating the social services system, how to build accessible rooms in your home, summer camps. So we have that and we also have pep rallies before the show. We have a parent night, we have a dance aon over the summer, we go to a Yankees game, we go to a Mets game. We have our ski trip. So we have many activities outside the dance classes where we can bring in siblings and families to join the community. We try to build a community. Joanne says dancing dreams helps youngsters, ages 3 to 21 with medical and physical challenges, pursue their dreams of being a dancer tomorrow. She talks about their collaboration with the NYU Department of Theater.

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SpotlightNJ929Part4_2024-09-29-10-09-04

Dancing dreams in Bayside queens helps kids 3 to 21 live out their fantasies of being dancers, which a lot of us really, really appreciate. Joanne Ferrara is the founder and executive director. Let us talk about that. The fact that the kids come here and they get to feel yes, I can do this. Absolutely. That's our goal is to make every dancer feel that they're just dancing and, and there's no constraints. It doesn't matter what they do. What I say backstage at our show before they go on stage is it's all about being proud of yourself and what you can do. Performance. Yes. Yes. The performance, we have a great big performance every year we rent a performing arts center uh legitimate theater. We work with the NYU Department of Theater to provide us with um lighting set design and we have a theme and costumes. Every costume is hand designed for each dancer to meet their own needs because some of them have sleeves that are fake. Some of them are velcroed in the back. Every costume is created for each individual dancer. Last year we had for our show, over 500 costumes every dancer is in at least two, if not three or four dances every year. Uh We had over 850 people attend the show. We do not charge because it is our celebration of achievement. And quite honestly, the first year we had the show. I asked one dancer who did you invite? And she said, everyone I ever knew that. Yeah, you gotta love it. And, and they did. One mother told me they took it to heart and her daughter invited the mail carrier and the mail carrier came. So we are very, we love it. The more that our dancers can be the stars on stage, the more glitter and glitz and our older girls call themselves the dancing divas. And their motto is there is no such thing as too much glitter. I love that. There's no such thing as too much glitter. Joanne says dancing dreams is a very diverse program at noon. She shares how they celebrate this beautiful part of their program.

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SpotlightNJ929Part5_2024-09-29-12-18-58

Joanne Ferrara is the founder and executive director of Dancing Dreams in Bayside queens. We were talking about the diversity of your program. That's a beautiful thing. Yes, we're very proud of the fact that we are an extraordinarily diverse program. Last year, we had 28 languages spoken within the program. We celebrate diversity every year. We have a cultural appreciation day at classes where every family is invited to bring music, celebrating their culture and we dance to that music, families are invited to teach within the class. A bit of um dance that represents their culture. And we're going this year with that theme for our annual show. It is we are the world and we will be celebrating the cultural diversity within our program and representing the various cultures and um backgrounds of our dancers, Joanne, you said you don't charge for this program. So where do you all get the money and the funding to keep operating? Right? We don't charge for the show. We provide dance wear, leotards, tights to choose dance shoes for our dancers, for class, all the props, we provide all the costumes free of charge. Uh We raise our money we're scrappy. We raise our money through grants. So if anybody out there has a non pro has a grant, um uh foundation, please please contact us if we fit within your mission. Um We, we write lots of grants. We get, we obviously solicit donations from anybody who would love to donate to us. If some people want to donate in honor of people or for a specific cause uh within the program, such as providing costumes for the show, we have um students raising money. Our leader, our uh teens run a bake sale every year to raise money to run our pep rally. So we cobble together, we do a year in appeal. So we cobble together money from all different sources. We, but we manage, we are lean and, and we get it done. So and how do you spread the word about the program? We spread the word with honestly segments like this, which are absolutely wonderful for us because it lets us reach a wider audience than we would normally reach. We reach out to um medical facilities, medical professionals, as well as special ed uh facilities. Schools, many of our Children are in regular ed within their district. So we reach out to all the school districts. We reach out wherever we can. We have our parents reach out, we're active on social media. So we try to reach out any way possible to get the word out.

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Joann Ferrara, a pediatric physical therapist, explained to Della Crews how and why she started the program, which has grown to three locations and more than 100 participants. 

Spotlight New Jersey: Dancing Dreams

Joann Ferrara, a pediatric physical therapist, explained to Della Crews how and why she started the program, which has grown to three locations and more than 100 participants.

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