DANCERS CHOICE AWARD 2018: Carla Service
by HEATHER DESAULNIERS
A SALUTE TO MOVEMENT. A glimpse into this region’s rich, diverse dance community. Bay Area Dance Week is back! From April 27-May 6, dance professionals, enthusiasts and fans will gather to participate in and witness a myriad of free events all over the Bay. And 2018 marks a milestone for BADW, its twentieth con- secutive year. During the festivities, some special honors are also an- nounced: the Della Davidson Prize for choreography and the Dancers Choice Award, recognizing longstanding achievement in the Bay Area’s dance landscape. Dancers’ Group solicits nominations for every Dancers Choice Award, and this year, received a record 161. Past honorees include teachers, civic activ- ists, dance companies and ar- tistic directors. This year adds another esteemed individual
But for Service, Dance-A- Vision’s school is about so much more, and has been from the very beginning. More than steps, technique, choreography and performance; it’s about positive relationships, fostering communication and building confidence and self-reliance. “I want to see that the students are following through, and doing what they need to do to move forward in and out of the stu- dio; I want them to question why they might be falling and to understand what falling is – not just literal falling, but things like grades being down or being too concerned with what some- one else is doing or thinking,” she relays, “the kids may see it as just a dance class, but it’s re- ally about life skills.” Service doesn’t do the word ‘hope’ – “I don’t teach dream , I teach do.” In over thirty years
Carla Service / photos by Ah Sou Saechao
of sessions, Service estimates that thousands of kids have
Officially named Carla Service’s Dance-A- Vision School of Dance, the current program offers three sessions per year (Spring, Sum- mer, Winter), for students aged three and a half up to mid teens. To ensure that every child is met at the place where they need, each class is kept small with around fifteen students (there is always a wait list). Creative Movement, for the youngest students, com- bines expressive play with pre-ballet instruc- tion, which Service incorporates for structure and posture. As students continue through Dance-A-Vision’s programming, modern and jazz are also introduced, but the heart of the school’s curriculum is the exploration of freestyle. “Freestyle is first and foremost – every human being needs to understand that they can move their body, they should move their body and there is no right or wrong when it comes to movement and rhythm,” Service relays. At the end of each session, Service hosts a recital at Malonga to showcase what the dancers have been working on during the previous months. But that is just one of the many performance opportunities available to Dance-A-Vision students. In the first few months of 2018, they have performed at Oakland City Hall’s Black History Celebra- tion, at the film opening of Black Panther in Emeryville and as part of the third annual San Francisco Movement Arts Festival at Grace Cathedral. Dance-A-Vision’s students also participate in various events that Service produces, co-produces and helps organize around the Bay Area, like the longrunning Oakland Art and Soul Festival (July 28- 29), and the newer Oakland Dance Festival, which she founded, coming up during Bay Area Dance Week (April 28-29) in Jack Lon- don Square. “This is the first year that the Oakland Dance Festival [will be] a two-day event, with dance performances, classes, an audience dance party and a children’s dance festival on day two” notes Service, “it makes me very happy to see the audience experienc- ing so many different dance languages – dif- ferent styles and different forms from differ- ent cultures.”
to the impressive list of recipients: Carla Ser- vice, performer, choreographer, teacher, book- ing agent and, for more than three decades, a mentor to Oakland youth, empowering through dance. In a recent conversation, Ser- vice distilled her philosophy on movement to a single, powerful sentence, “if you have a heartbeat, you can dance.” Writers often turn to phrases like ‘lifelong mover’ or ‘lifelong dancer’ to describe those who began their dance journey at an early age. When you learn about Service’s story, neither seems an adequate enough descrip- tion. “I’ve always danced, rhythm was natu- rally in my head and body,” she recalls, “I was that kid, the one people were trying to keep from dancing and moving around.” Throughout childhood, dance and move- ment was something Service could depend on, for joy, or when she needed healing and escape. “Dance is how I survived a traumatic, abusive homelife; anytime I got fed up, felt alone or unloved, I would start dancing – in the midst of pain and anger, moving through space was something that brought me happi- ness,” Service shares. Service never listened to the doubting, negative voices that told her to stop moving. She persevered, honing her dance practice in her community as opposed to a conventional studio setting. “In African American culture, dance is such a big part of the social experi- ence; hip hop/freestyle movement isn’t some- thing we learn in a classroom, it’s part of being together, in casual settings or at more formal gatherings and events,” she explains. Service’s talent was noticed early on and she embarked on a professional career at age seventeen. She began opening and headlining at nightclubs and discos in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, including the famed Studio 54 franchise, which had locations in both cities. This led to numerous movie spots and com- mercial shoots.
gone through Dance-A-Vision’s school, and have experienced its empowering message of strength and resolve. Many alumni have gone on to successful entertainment ca- reers, forming their own professional dance troupes and film companies, performing on Broadway and in the Cirque de Soleil, and some have even been inspired to open and operate their own dance studios. As Dance- A-Vision moves into its next decade, Service will continue imparting these lessons to yet another generation. “My job is to teach life through dance and the highlight of my exis- tence (and career) is that through dance, I’ve helped raise some very happy and produc- tive human beings,” adds Service, “they love themselves, they love life, and there’s too many people out there that don’t.” HEATHER DESAULNIERS is a freelance dance writer based in Oakland. She is the Editorial Associate and SF/Bay Area columnist for CriticalDance, the dance curator for SF Arts Monthly, a contributor to DanceTabs as well as several other dance-focused publications.
As bookings and gigs increased, Service felt compelled to question the status quo for dancers, “in the entertainment industry dur- ing the late 1980s, dancers were on the bot- tom of the totem pole, they often didn’t get paid and there was no representation.” She
“If you have a heartbeat, you can dance” —CARLA SERVICE
wanted to change that. At the same time, Service was feeling a deep call to engage with youth in Oakland (her adopted hometown), kids who were in a variety of challenging circumstances, and connect them with dance and movement. “One of the first young girls I worked with reminded me so much of my- self,” Service recounts, “she had a troubling home situation and I wanted dance to be a safe place for her and others who needed it; a place that would start with the mind and go down to the toes, breaking down the lack of self-esteem and instilling appreciation, worth and love.” With these goals on her heart, Service founded Dance-A-Vision Entertainment, an arts organization with a broad platform of artist advocacy, dance education and youth mentoring. Thirty-plus years later, Dance-A- Vision has expanded to include event pro- duction, entertainment consulting and cho- reographic commissions for both national and international stages. And the outreach program, which began with just a few youth, has grown into a renowned dance education arm, still going strong today at the Malonga Casquelord Center for the Arts, formerly the Alice Arts Center, in downtown Oakland.
Dance-A-Vision presents the Oakland Dance Festival: Apr 28-29, Jack London Square, Oakland, 510- 763-5180, dance-a-vision.weebly.com
DANCERS’ GROUP Executive Director: Wayne Hazzard, Program Director: Michelle Lynch Reynolds, Program Assistants : Michael D. Lee, Andréa Spearman and Natalia Velarde, Bookkeeper: Michele Simon, Publication Design: Sharon Anderson
I Dancers’ Group gratefully acknowledges the support of Bloomberg Philanthropies, California Arts Council, Clorox Company Foundation, Delta Dental of California, Fleishhacker Foundation, Grants for the Arts, James Irvine Foundation, JB Berland Foundation, Koret Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Osher Foundation, Rainin Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco Foundation, Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, Walter & Elise Haas Fund, William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, Zellerbach Family Foundation and generous individuals.
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In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
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