Everybody Dance LA! thrives teaching less privileged kids

“You can’t be scared when you’re dancing.” We could all use some good news these days, and that’s what Natasha Kaneda offered when she said this to her Jazz I class of 8- and 9-year-olds on a recent afternoon in a studio off Burlington and Wilshire. “When you’re a low-income family, there’s a stigma about asking for help,” says Gomez, now a teaching artist with the program, who joined the staff as a dance site coordinator after graduating from UC Irvine. As she took her dance program to various charter schools, Bercovici realized she could do even more good if she “had the kids for eight hours instead of two.” So she founded the Gabriella Charter Schools; in 2015, she stepped down as Everybody Dance’s director, turning it over to Tina Banchero, a former dancer and artistic director of Dance Mission Theater’s Youth Program in San Francisco. When asked why Everybody Dance has flourished to such an amazing extent, Bercovici says simply: “There was a need.” And there still is, now more than ever. It’s going to take us a few years to get back on track.” But where there’s life, there’s hope, and there is a lot of life in the Burlington dance studios.