West Center offers kids’ hip-hop class; dance group possibility seen

       Hip-hop dance instruction will be offered for ages 6 to 18 at the West Intergenerational Center starting Oct. 25.
       Offered after school from Monday through Thursday, the seven-week class will be taught by Zanata Hadley, who has danced on Black Entertain-ment Television (BET) and been featured in Colorado Springs with the Iva Bowers Multicultural Dancers group, including performances at Imagination Celebration and Cinco de Maio activities.
       According to West Center Director E.D. Rucker, Hadley's class will focus not only on modern hip-hop dance steps but also individual values and responsibility.
       The class will be divided into two age groups - 6 to 12 and 13 to 18. The cost for the seven weeks will be $15, Rucker said. The class should be especially appealing to girls, he added.
       The times each day will be 4 to 6 p.m.
       Hip-hop is a dance style “borne out of an urban setting that crosses all cultural and racial lines,” Rucker said.
       A long-range goal, should enough attendees become accomplished hip-hoppers through the class, would be to make them part of a dance-performance group that would be identified as from the West Intergenerational Center. Rucker said that's similar to what happened when he was director of the Hillside community center in the '90s. In that case, the group became the Hillside Multicultural Dancers, from which the Iva Bowers group became a spin-off.
       For more information on the hip-hop class, go to the West Center, at 25 N. 20th St. (on the West side of West Middle School) or call 385-7920.

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