DEL at 30: The program that changed dance education in New York — and far beyond

We are all born to move.

Before language, before we learn how to explain ourselves, we move. It’s our first form of expression. And yet for decades, dance was the least likely art form to be taught in schools. Music and visual arts programs were standard, but dance was often the missing piece.

That started to change n New York City 30 years ago, thanks to a pioneering initiative: the Dance Education Laboratory, known simply as DEL and housed within the Harkness Dance Center at 92NY.

Today, DEL is recognized as one of the most important forces in dance education — a program that has impacted and continues to impact not just the way dance is taught in public schools in New York City and across the country, but in many places the fact that dance education is present at all.

Start with the teachers

DEL began in 1995 with a clear and practical idea from its founder and visionary, Jody Gottfried Arnhold: if you want to bring dance to children, start by training the teachers.

At the time, Arnhold had recently begun her term of service on the 92NY Board. Working closely with the Dance Center’s then leader, Joan Finkelstein, and founding faculty Ann Biddle, they launched a single weekend workshop: Thunder and Lightning Dance.

Teachers came. The workshop was successful. It was clear they had tapped into something real. What emerged was a way of teaching rooted in artistry and grounded in the belief that every child deserves the chance to experience dance. DEL was about preparing and empowering teachers – giving them the tools and the confidence to bring movement, imagination, and emotional awareness into their classrooms and into the lives of their students.

Thirty years later, that idea has changed thousands of classrooms. DEL has become a kind of professional home for educators, a place where teachers and artists come together to share what works, to learn from one another, and to grow. But the real story lives in what happens after they leave: in the teachers who carry this work back to their schools, and in the students who discover that they can think and express themselves through movement.

Dance for every child

“Imagine a world in which every child in every school has access to this kind of education. To have a dance-literate society would change the world.”

— Jody Gottfried Arnhold

If your child attends one of New York City’s 1,800-plus public schools and has experienced dance in class, there’s a good chance that the teacher leading that class has been influenced by DEL.

DEL’s impact includes professional learning for thousands of teachers, PreK-12 curricula, a year-long teacher institution, and partnerships with professional dance companies and artists. But talk to DEL educators and they’ll often tell you the most important thing they gained was not just training. It was belonging. Since its inception, DEL has provided a welcoming and inclusive community that nurtures and supports professional learning across the lifespan. Today, under the leadership of Director Erin Lally, DEL continues to grow, innovate, and adapt to new educational environments and challenges, all while staying rooted in its founding belief: dance belongs to everyone.

A joyful celebration

DEL’s 30th anniversary celebration on Saturday, April 25 brings together the DEL community — educators, artists, students, and friends — for performances, films, and stories from three decades of impact.

The day begins with a Movement Sentence Choir workshop led by Ephrat Asherie and Taryn Vander Hoop. What participants build collaboratively will be performed that evening on the David Geffen Stage of Kaufmann Concert Hall — a beautiful reflection of DEL itself: process becoming performance, learning becoming sharing.

Other highlights include a new short documentary film by Nel Shelby Productions, and performances by Young Dancemakers Company and Democracy Prep Harlem High School. A special moment will be the presentation of the inaugural Arnhold Dance Education Award to the Paul Taylor Dance Company, honoring its deep commitment to making dance accessible to students and families.

Gratitude, and what comes next

Anniversaries are a time to celebrate. But they’re also a time to say thank you.

Thank you to Jody Gottfried Arnhold, whose belief that every child deserves the chance to dance became not just an idea, but a living, growing reality.

And thank you to all the teachers – the hundreds and hundreds of educators who said yes to trying something new, who brought what they learned back into their classrooms, and who passed it forward to their students, year after year.

That is DEL’s legacy: A chain of learning, teacher to teacher, generation to generation.

And if the past 30 years are any indication, it’s still just getting warmed up.