On The Radar: CityStep, Louder Than Words

Friday, April 7, 7:30 p.m. and Saturday, April 8, 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. Sanders Theatre. Tickets available through the Harvard Box Office, (617)-496-2222. $6 students, $8 general.

Dancing to the spoken word sounds more like a cryptic metaphor than an actual event. But the twenty-third annual CityStep show, entitled “Louder than Words,” intends to do just that: depict the memorable words of great leaders through the art of dance.

“We are going to be dancing to quotes from figures around the world,” says CityStep Executive Director Russell L. Graney ’07. “The implication is that dance is louder than words, and we’re bringing back these influential words.”

CityStep has been serving schoolchildren and audiences of the Cambridge community for over two decades. The club teaches dance, along with self-expression and self-confidence, to fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-graders at six schools in the Cambridge area. Each year of instruction culminates in the annual performance of original works, choreographed and performed by the children and their instructors.

This year, however, CityStep has made an effort to get the students to “think outside of the box” and consider “dance as original movement,” Graney says. The organization has set academic and personal goals for the students to better focus class time—some of these goals correlate even with the Massachusetts Arts Standards.

“We’ve really refreshed our curriculum...to challenge our students to the utmost,” Graney says. “This year our show will be the culmination of our new focus and our renewed dedication to introducing our students to movement and dance.”

To achieve this dynamic new focus, the members of CityStep have chosen seven inspirational quotes from political, artistic, and social leaders and have constructed an innovative dance number to each of the quotations.

According to Graney, in six of the seven pieces, the audience should “Look forward to seeing Cambridge youth performing their versions of inspirational quotes, interpreting the words sounds and rhythms of quotes, and transforming them into dance.”

The CityStep instructors will perform the final dance, which was choreographed by the six classroom directors.

In its fusion of words and movement, CityStep hopes to create a communicative whole that somewhat resembles the sentiments of one of their performance quotes, by author Chinua Achebe: “People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.”