Jody and John Arnhold have now given $10.45 million to Teachers College. The Arnholds made their most recent gift in July 2019, donating $6.085 million to TC to launch an institute dedicated to developing leadership and expanding the evidence base in dance education through new research and reevaluation of existing knowledge. The Arnholds’ gift built on their 2016 commitment to TC of $4.365 million, which established the nation’s only doctoral program in dance education.
The Arnhold Institute for Dance Education Research, Policy & Leadership champions research informing public policies to eliminate disparities in the availability of high-quality dance education — especially in pre-K–12 public education — caused by an overall lack of access to the arts and opportunities for embodied learning.
“This is an enormous opportunity for Teachers College to affect the fundamental conditions of growth and human development for young people nationally,” said TC President Thomas Bailey.
“The Arnhold Institute at Teachers College is a critically important step toward realizing the vision to which I’ve devoted my career — a quality, sequential dance education for every child,” said Jody Gottfried Arnhold (M.A. ’73), who taught dance in New York City public schools for 25 years and earned her Dance Education master’s degree at TC.
The Arnhold Institute crowns a decades-long series of creative and philanthropic efforts undertaken by Arnhold — called “the godmother of dance” by The Wall Street Journal — to create a pipeline of professionals to serve the field of dance education on different fronts.
[Visit tc.edu/dancemaker to read a profile of Jody Gottfried Arnhold from TC Today.]
An early partnership between the public school where Arnhold taught and the nonprofit Ballet Hispánico showed her the power of a dance educator and cultural organization working together in a school. Subsequently, as board chair, she helped build Ballet Hispánico into an internationally acclaimed performance and teaching force. Arnhold also founded the 92Y Dance Education Laboratory (DEL); served as Co-Chair of the New York City Department of Education Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in Dance (pre-K–12); created a graduate dance education program at Hunter College as a pipeline for prepared and certified dance educators; and created TC’s doctoral program, which prepares university-level faculty to teach dance educators and conduct research. Arnhold also served as executive producer of PS DANCE!, the 2015 EMMY-nominated documentary film about dance education in New York City.
“As a result of Jody’s foresight, commitment and generosity, there are now generations of new certified dance teachers teaching in K–12 schools and a growing corps of faculty at universities and colleges,” said Barbara Bashaw, TC’s Arnhold Professor of Practice, Director of the Dance Education Program and Executive Director of the Arnhold Institute for Dance Education Research, Policy & Leadership.
[Read a recent profile of Bashaw in Dance Teacher magazine.]
But why an institute?
“Now, because of the Arnhold Institute, there will be strong, trained voices using data to create a broader environment that supports and enhances the power of dance and dance education,” Bashaw said.
Like TC’s doctoral program, the Arnhold Institute seeks to advance pre-K–12 dance education in public schools. The Institute’s research informs policy and practice, providing much-needed guidance and evidence-based recommendations for dance educators, school systems, universities and cultural organizations. The Institute also pairs TC students and faculty with practitioners from the broader dance education landscape.
“Children are our youngest artists,” said Arnhold. “Dance gives them another way to express themselves. It involves them in collaborative learning and problem-solving and brings them to the realization that, in any endeavor, the first time is not always best — it is important to reflect on what you have done and then try it again.”
Yet “we are fighting ignorance about dance and what dance can do educationally,” said Ana Fragoso, Director of Dance at New York City’s Department of Education (DOE).
“To change a cultural perspective about dance, data and research are needed,” said Paul King, Executive Director of the Office of Arts and Special Projects at the DOE.
Enter TC’s new Arnhold Institute for Dance Education Research, Policy & Leadership.
“Jody has thought of everything here,” said Joan Finkelstein, Executive Director of the Harkness Foundation. “We are very fortunate to have a philanthropist-expert like Jody Arnhold.”
The Arnhold Institute seeks to power a national movement that starts at the grassroots level. It will generate policy recommendations that can persuade parents to demand dance instruction in schools, prompt principals to say “yes” and convince legislators to approve funding. The Institute will also develop TC’s doctoral students as leaders capable of driving change in school districts and statehouses.
And because successful dance programs in educational contexts require “immense leadership capacity,” the Institute will act as “a leadership academy for dance educators,” said Bashaw. “For example, through participatory research, we could understand how dance educators construct leadership and thus how to prevent dance teacher attrition, a significant problem for the field.”
In part, the Institute will address the misperception that, as an art form — particularly a physical one — dance lacks “academic” value. To the contrary, “People understand and retain information better when they experience it through the senses — especially young children,” said former American Ballet Theatre dancer Ted Warburton, Professor of Theatre Arts at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who will join the Arnhold Institute in fall 2020 as its inaugural Senior Fellow.
In fact, dance can impart lessons well beyond the aesthetic. “We use dance to teach students awareness of how they interact as a community,” said Virginia Johnson, Artistic Director of Dance Theatre of Harlem. “There are wonderful programs that use dance to teach math or social studies.”
Bashaw also hopes to address the “historic cycle of inequity in our nation that unjustly limits who gets to study dance and ultimately gain entry into the artistry and teaching professions.” And Eduardo Vilaro, Artistic Director and CEO of Ballet Hispánico, sees a need to “decolonize” dance and dance education.
“Think about Hamilton,” Vilaro says. “It might never have been done. For the world to start looking at its own true identity, we need institutions that open a window to the needs of the community in total.”
To that end, the Arnhold Institute will prioritize partnership-building. Indeed, as it brings research and policy into practice, said John Tomlinson, Executive Director of the Paul Taylor Dance Company, “we will see audiences and appreciation for the art form grow, and a generation of individuals with broader intellectual capacity and curiosity.”
[Toward that end, The Arnhold Institute will offer a series of lecture demonstrations, titled “Pioneering Visions for Access and Equity in Dance Education” in collaboration with the Teachers College Harlem Renaissance Centennial Celebration on Thursday, March 26, 5:30 to 8:30 pm and Friday, March 27, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.]
Arnhold puts it more simply.
“Dance educators are my heroes, from beginning teachers to master teachers. I consider them to be at the highest level of achievement. I would like them to be famous the way dance artists are famous, because they are working with our youngest artists — children and teens in our schools.”