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[0:00] Christine Shepard: Our other guest we're going to talk to is Chanel DaSilva and she is an educator, dance instructor, dancer, I'm going to say pioneer in the sense of I think she's doing amazing work for the community. So I'm going to go ahead and say thank you so much for being with me. I would like you to go ahead and explain what MOVE NYC is if you don't mind real quick before we get into the questions because I think it's valuable and current with what we're talking about.

[0:40] Chanel DaSilva: Absolutely. So thank you for having me on, Christine. I really appreciate it. So I am a Brooklyn native. I'm from New York City, born and raised, and everything about what I learned about dance, art, culture, I learned in New York. And I love my city and I will forever be grateful for what I learned. And, you know, I matriculated through training programs. I went to a local studio called Creative Outlet Dance Theater, Brooklyn, where I learned a lot about my culture and how to perform. And then I went to LaGuardia High School, I trained at the Ailey School, and I went to the Juilliard School. So as I started to climb the rungs of my training over the years, my best friend and I, Nigel Campbell is my best friend and partner, we started to realize that the further up the ladder we got, the less people that looked like us were around, meaning we were searching for people of color to be in the room with us.

And there weren't that many. In fact, a lot of times, Nigel and I found ourselves being the only one or the only two in the room full of all of our white counterparts. So that's something that I became very aware of innately when I was a teenager and in my early 20s. And then I joined a dance company called Trey McIntyre Project, where I was, again, the only person of color in a company of 10 people for at least five years. So as I got older, and I started to really cultivate my voice and start to ask what I wanted to leave in this world, it became very apparent to me that part of my life's mission, which is still continuing to develop, is to move obstacles out of the way so more young people like myself, more young people like Nigel can have a clear path to success without the obstacles like money or socioeconomic status or geographic proximity to the training.

So those are the kind of things that I feel are made up social constructs that lock us out. And they're not fair. So in 2015, Nigel and I co-founded Move NYC. And just to give you a little bit of backstory about Move NYC, he and I met for drinks and a burger when I went to meet him in Sweden when he was dancing in a company in Sweden. And we were sitting down and just talking about the dance community like we do. We love the dance community. We're so passionate about dance and art. And we started asking ourselves, why are there not as many people of color in these rungs of the field as there could or should be? And in 2013, that was the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement. That was right after Trayvon Martin had been murdered.

And so we were impassioned. We were angry. We were frustrated. And we wanted to contribute to the world in the best way we know how. And that is going to be through the arts. So then in 2015, we founded what is now Move NYC, which is an arts and social justice organization that has the mission of creating greater equity and diversity in the dance profession and beyond. And a part of Move NYC is a program called the Young Professionals Program. And so the Young Professionals Program has evolved over time, but it is now a program that is geared towards New York City teenagers who are talented and motivated for a career in the arts. And because we have talent as the prerequisite, we let that be the sole determining factor of who can be a part of the Young Professionals Program.

So for now and forever more, the Young Professionals Program will be tuition-free. Because like I said earlier, Nigel and I don't believe in these made-up obstacles that lock us out of the room. Talent does not know class. Talent does not know race. Talent does not know gender. Talent distributes itself evenly throughout all demographics of people. So the only thing that we found that locked people out is most times access and opportunity. So in a nutshell, that's Move NYC, and that's why we started it. And we just celebrated five years of existence this year, so we are super pumped. I don't even know where five years went, but it is so thrilling to say that we did it. You know, we helped something, we saw there was a void in our world, and we decided to fill it, and now we're doing that.

[4:53] Christine Shepard: Everything we already have like kind of started talking about, I feel like, yes, I have questions, but also that was stimulating. In a sense, I'm like riled up about it. Education for all, just like super excited about it. That's the reality we need.

[5:09] Chanel DaSilva: Yeah, so alright, let's get kicking on some of the questions. Tell me about the children who have access to or who are interested in the arts. What kind of students are they? With Move NYC, it's, you know, clearly geared, focused on dance and things like that, but I feel like you get to know them kind of not only just as a dance student, but as a student of the world. So yeah, do you feel as though there's certain maybe things that have stuck out?

[5:32] Chanel DaSilva: I mean, I know I sound super biased because I'm an artist, but I really do feel like artists have the potential to be changemakers. So much of the revolutions and the vast systemic changes that we've had in our world have been catalyzed by art, whether that's by song, whether that's by visual art, whether that's by music, whether that's by a dance piece, whether that's by theater. We as artists have a very real power because we get to talk about our real experiences through our work, and then that work gets shared to the masses to the point where the government will go to like extensive measures to get songs off the radio because they know that that song can incite feelings, whether that, yeah, change, it can incite rage, it can incite frustration, you know what I mean?

So the world understands the power of art, right? But sometimes we don't necessarily, especially here in the States, really show how powerful and how needed artists are. So for me, my students, I believe that they're the future leaders of our world, of our industry and of our world. I believe that they're thinking in ways that I couldn't even imagine thinking when I was 16, 17, 18, you know? I had this glass ceiling on top of me where all I wanted to do was dance, you know? Being able to make it to the point where I was a professional dancer was revolutionary for me because my grandmother could not do that as a black woman. She couldn't, if she wanted to be a dancer, she couldn't do that in the 30s. So the fact that I could rise to the place of being a professional dancer and be in this industry in my 30s was revolutionary for me.

Now, my students, they're like, yo, I'm trying to start, I'm trying to upend the world. I'm trying to, I'm starting a revolution. I want a space where everyone's welcome, you know? Like they're thinking so much bigger than themselves now. And that is because I feel like to be an artist, it is to be ultimately selfless. Everything we do is about sharing. Everything we do is about inviting people in. For me, that's the kind of people that my kids are, my students are, my young professionals are. They are so much broader than dancers, you know? They have entrepreneurial spirits. They're thinking about the world with big eyes.

[8:00] Christine Shepard: I'm literally just grinning. Because I agree. It's exciting to know that this is like a kickstart of places and spaces for students like that to be able to curate their own signatures. Passionate kids are some of the coolest things on the planet.

[8:13] Chanel DaSilva: Agreed. I learned so much from my kids.

[8:16] Christine Shepard: It's that lack of fear.

[8:17] Chanel DaSilva: Yeah, I mean, and we also cultivate that mindset within them, you know? Part of the young professionals program is a career management class where we help them understand how to navigate the field. We also have leadership seminars with them where they literally identify leaders and understand as a teenager, how can I be a leader? What are the qualities of a leader? So when you have that kind of mentality that early on in your life, by the time you get to our age, it doesn't seem like such a feat to lead or it doesn't seem like such a feat to start something new, to be innovative, to be creative, to chase your bold ideas, you know? So that's why we found it so important that we're not going to wait to teach them how to be leaders. You have to have leadership qualities in order to step into a leadership position.

[9:04] Christine Shepard: Let's carry on. Do you see a racial divide or lack of representation in the arts program? This question was definitely more broad. You've gone through a lot of different arts programs, not only as a student, but as a teacher. So I feel like this can be branched out into just, you know, your own personal testimonies. But I think you can also talk about, you know, moves, I think, a clear passion towards building, breaking down that barrier and that wall to these other experiences. What do you think was the biggest contributor to that racial divide or lack of representation?

[9:39] Chanel DaSilva: Ooh, Christine, listen, girl. Are you ready for the long winded answer? Because there's so much. So Nigel and I had to do this work when we were trying to figure out what MoveNYC was, right? So when you look at the, like, what's in front of you, we see that certain parts of the arts world are largely homogenous. There's a whole lot of one type of person and a little other, little small part of a different type of person, right? And so we said, okay.

[10:11] Chanel DaSilva: Hey, this is the issue that we are looking to tackle, but we can't just throw a band-aid on that issue and say, okay, here's more people of color, just throw more people of color in. We were like, well, why did, how did we get here? How did we get to the place where there are only 5% people of color and 95% non-people of color, right? So then we had to peel back the layers. Okay, in order to become a Broadway star or in order to get into a prestigious ballet company or a prestigious modern contemporary dance company, I had to have trained at a very prestigious institution, most likely. So it's like, okay, let's look at the prestigious institutions. Let's see the demographic of those places. So if you look at certain schools that are very well known for feeding into contemporary dance companies, ballet companies, Broadway, like those schools also have a glaringly uneven demographic of people, right?

So we're like, okay, so in the higher level institutions, there's also a large disparity, but it means you had to have gotten to, into that institution. Okay, well, why did certain people not get into that institution? What, what was blocking them from that? And so you peel the layers back again and like, okay, in order to be ready to get into an institution like that, I had to have been training professionally for probably eight to 10 years at a program where I was paying to be in certain types of classes to have access to those classes. Okay. And okay, so who, who and why don't have access to those classes? And we found that a lot of times people of color, primarily black women and people from lower ends on the socioeconomic status poll don't have access to those classes because they can't afford it.

They can't afford to go to this $5,000 ballet summer program. You know, I'm a, I'm a young black girl. My mom's a single mother. We've got four other people in the house with us. And I'm like, Hey mom, can I have $5,000 to go do this program? And mom is looking at me like, are you crazy? If they don't got a scholarship for you, you ain't going nowhere. In fact, you're getting a job this summer. Real story. That's what happened to Chanel DaSilva. I'm speaking my own story, right? And so everything about what I know to be true comes from my own experience. So then Nida and I said, wow, okay. So it actually, it actually starts at the seed. It starts with access to education. And from the beginning of time, we know that certain groups of people, i.e. people of color have been locked out of education.

And then as years go on, we've been locked out of the types of education that we need to get in the types of institutions that will push us into the types of professions that we'd like to do. So if I'm a young woman who never had any obstacles in front of me, my parents could pay for all of my training. Of course, I've matriculated through all the programs and found my way onto a Broadway stage. Of course, I'm matriculated through all the programs. And now I'm in a prestigious contemporary dance company. My young girl who's talented, but could never quite get in the room because I didn't have a scholarship or because I didn't live close enough to the studio. And I just kept falling further and further behind, not because of talent, but because of training.

Come time to audition for these prestigious institutions, I don't get in. I'm not ready. You know what I'm saying? From stage to studio, from performance to education, it behooves us to roll back the layers and look at the education. Who are we allowing in the room or getting in the room when they are a seedling to let them know that, A, they have access to this, but also that they belong here. If I know at the age of 12 that I'm already being cultivated to be on a Broadway stage, I'm ready. Just tell me how to do it. But if I'm 12 and I'm the only person in the room that looks like me and I'm trying to get into an industry where no one looks like me, I might doubt myself and might doubt if I'm welcome here.

So to wrap it up, I would say that arts education has a huge, takes a huge part in why we look at our upper level company members, institutions, industries, stages, and we have a homogenous cast. That starts with education. That starts with access when artists are young. And we have to really upend that problem if we want to solve the racial disparities that we see at the top.

[14:59] Christine Shepard: Yeah. And I just have to agree that, yes, it comes from the education and that we are, our country has built so much on education that it is impossible to not have the conversation about how it affects the demographics in our business, in our social lives, in all these things around us because then your education ties to your money and then that's a whole other, you know what I mean? The thing is, it's not impossible to undo it, which is why Nigel and I started our organization. We were like, we can't change the world, but we can dag on shore, start a ripple. You can't turn a blind eye to it anymore. It's glaringly obvious and I'm offering you a very clear solution. Let's do the work and go back to the beginning and see the thing about that is when you go back to the beginning and you start investing in 10, 11, 12 year olds, it's going to be about 25 years until we see them shift the world, right?

So it has to be a dual thing. It's like, okay, we need to acknowledge what's happening at the top. We can't just keep hiring the same type of people over and over again. We can't do that, but that can't be the only thing we do. We also have to ready more people who are historically locked out of this industry via education, access and opportunity.

[16:18] Chanel DaSilva: How do you think the male to female ratio in teaching is affecting the students?

[16:23] Christine Shepard: Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. It's so funny because I feel like the arts, even today, even though it's gotten a little bit more equal, the arts is highly populated by women, but it seems to be highly led by men. And I'm trying to think, I had a pretty equal level amount of male to female teachers. I was able to do 60-40, but it didn't feel uneven in my day-to-day teachers. But when I talk about directors, most often it has been males. I think that sends a very clear messaging to students, both to the male students and the female students or the gender non-conforming students, that you can be a part of this industry wherever you are, but to lead it, you may have to have certain characteristics.

And I'm looking forward to seeing more of a leveling out of that playing field as we move forward. I'm looking forward to seeing more female leaders. I'm looking forward to seeing more female directors leading the room, leading the charge, leading the team. So that not just for us, but for the young people coming up underneath us, they can know it's possible.

[17:41] Chanel DaSilva: Even as I venture out into choreographing more for musical theater and hopefully one day into the Broadway world, I can say candidly for myself, when I first stepped on a creative team, I didn't think I was ready. I had every doubt in the book about what do I know? I'm super green and I don't know anything about being a director. And then turns out I actually knew more than a lot of people knew. But the doubt is what I led with. And I'm like, well, where did that come from? And if I'm looking around, I'm like, wow, I don't know if I've ever been in spaces where I had solely a strong female director and a strong female director of color.

[18:28] Christine Shepard: Yeah.

[18:31] Chanel DaSilva: And just talking about representation, even as a woman now, I look to people, women of color that are directors and running shit. I'm like, can you mentor me? I just want to be in the room with you. I'm just going to watch in the corner with a notepad like, uh-huh. Listen, I am going to fly on the wall and absorb some of that ferocity because you know, a lot of what I'm doing every morning before I walk into that space is reminding myself that I'm worthy to be there. And not downplaying what I know, what I come to the table with. And I think that that starts with, again, who did I see in the front of the room, at the front of the program when I was growing up?

[19:16] Christine Shepard: Yeah, definitely a lot of white women in my educational process. Not even really until college was I dealing with a lot of male instructors. So yeah, I was pretty green in that sense where like, you know, just to have like a guest choreographer who is not a white person. I was like, well, oh, I got it. Good thing I have my good t-shirt on for like, you know.

[19:36] Chanel DaSilva: Yeah, well, in my formative years, I was actually very lucky because like I said, I went to Creative Outlet Dance School in Brooklyn, and all of my teachers there were people of color. All of them. The founders were three men of color. All of the teachers that I had there were people of color. So that part of my life was very representative. I felt seen. I felt heard. I had people that looked like me at the front of the room. You know what I mean? So that balanced the fact that when I got to LaGuardia High School, most of my teachers were white. I had one black ballet teacher, Cassandra Pfeiffer, who was a principal dancer, fierce phenom with the Institute of Harlem, and she was one of my ballet teachers.

[20:22] Chanel DaSilva: At that time, she actually was the only person of color on faculty. It was her and a faculty of eight, so she was the only person on faculty. Then I got to college, and again, I had one teacher, one black woman of color, and all of my other teachers were white. So yeah, professional training with a majority of white teachers. And that's still a thing now, because eventually I went back to teach at LaGuardia, as you know, through Brandon. And then myself and Ms. Pfeiffer, Ms. Pfeiffer was still there. She and I just, we kind of like crossed. We spent like two years there together, and then she left. So then I became the only teacher of color on the LaGuardia staff, which is a problem. We live in a world where it should just be that whoever's, you know, in quotes, qualified to teach should be hired.

But I think a part of the educational rubric, or just understanding that we are raising young people to be older adult humans, is that they are watching everything that we do. I'll say this, when I was at LaGuardia, all of the students of color came running to me to talk to me about stuff. And not just the black kids, my Indian students, my Latinx students, my Asian students. Mrs. Silva, can I talk to you? Because they felt represented, you know? And I didn't quite get it right away, but then I was like, oh, they feel seen. They feel like there's someone here that's non-white who will understand what they're going through, you know? So I think that's something that we take for granted. I think that's something that our industry, our arts education industry, takes for granted. We have to make sure that our faculty is reflective of the student body that we're teaching.

[22:09] Christine Shepard: What kind of effect do you think the upcoming age of online education is going to have for the arts?

[22:15] Chanel DaSilva: I'll say the things that I think that would be positive. I think online education is going to crack us open in a new way. It's going to pierce through like another part of the universe where we start making art that we've never made before. Art in the virtual world. Art with people who we've never met before. If I wanted to right now, I could make a piece with someone who lives in Seoul, South Korea, and we can make a work together and premiere it and say, y'all, I have never seen this person in real life. And even though that seems really strange for a millennial like me who's like, what does that even mean? It's also really incredibly cool. And I think until COVID happened, we weren't thinking that broadly.

I know I wasn't. So I think it's going to lend itself to us being more inventive, innovative, creative with how we make our art and what the presentation of art can be. Now it's like, well, is there another way to do that? Can we do the same thing and offer it virtually and make it interactive and interesting for the viewer? And part of me is resistant to that because I love the theater. I love it. No, yeah. There's nothing like live theater. There's literally nothing like live theater. There's nothing compares. In the effort to not get stagnant and stale, people are going to start to invent new ways to do things. And then those new things are going to stick. The only part about it that I am afraid of is one thing that I noticed from my students is that they are already a couple of layers removed from being social beings because they are attached to this device.

I'm teaching them and I'm like, listen, y'all, make eye contact. Look across at your partner. And they couldn't do it. That's because they're just sending emojis now. So I'm already a little worried that they lack that humanistic, in-person quality that you need to be a performer and to be able to get that out of your spirit and share it with the audience. That already worried me. And now I'm like, if we stay squarely in the online learning platform, we're going to lose that all together. That play outside mentality. Yes, yes. It's going to be gone. I get worried that it's moving so fast that I'm like, am I even catching up to what the new standards are? Social media must be the triggering point that switched it from you becoming, you know, it's that accessibility that is so amazing of technology.

Everything is your oyster. These things are at your fingertips. And with great power comes great responsibility. We have a choice right now. You can either dig your feet into the sand and say, I am not moving forward in this virtual world. I don't like it. I do not like where it's headed. No. Or you can say, this is where we are and this is where we're headed. And I want to remain relevant. I want to remain innovative. I want to continue to be a part of the conversation. I want to continue with my job. Or my career. Or, you know, my education. This is how we're doing it now. And I think for a certain age demographic, it might have been too quick of a shift away from what we used to have. Because even before this, even though technology was, you know, a very big thing, there were still some parts of us that were still, you know, doing it how we've always done it.

And then this, like, took the whole thing, crashed it on the floor, and now this new thing is growing. And we all are adapting at the same time. And I can see how that's jarring for some people. And I can see how it's exciting for some people. And that's why I told my young people, you always have a choice. My new mantra is, I'm taking it one day at a time.

[26:15] Christine Shepard: Listen. Listen, that's good enough for me. I think we're at our last question, to be honest. I went a little off some of the rail of the questions, but, you know, conversation's conversation, so.

[26:29] Chanel DaSilva: So thank you, again. I'm thrilled. I'm truly, I've been-

[26:33] Christine Shepard: Thank you for asking me. I mean, I never imagined that I would be the person that people want to listen to. You know, that people are calling up, they're like, what do you think about this Chanel? And I am, I take this role very seriously, and I don't take it for granted. My old dance teacher used to say, why not you? And I always thought that was really cool. Tiffany Schlatter, she said that.

[27:01] Chanel DaSilva: That's great.

[27:02] Christine Shepard: All right, so my last one for you. This should be a good one. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for Broadway and the Broadway community, I would say, to help reach out to underserved and unrecognized youth?

[27:16] Chanel DaSilva: Yes, a couple of things. One of the first things that I would do, and if I were a producer, and I had the money to do this, so if I was a director, and when I am a director, because I know that's going to happen, when I am a director, I am going to make a very diligent, conscious effort to either find ways to subsidize certain shows so that I can offer five or $10 tickets to the youth to come and see. I would make a very conscious and diligent effort to subsidize some shows and offer very cheap tickets to students, for sure. Once or twice a week are just $10 so that we can have students, high school, junior high school, elementary, with parent, like $10 tickets for high schools, or maybe one of the matinees, everything, the whole theater is only for students at a rate of $10.

So I get a really beautiful donor to subsidize those evenings so that we can have students watch this, because there is something powerful about being a kid, going to a show, seeing not only people that look like you, but a story that relates to your story. Like, I think about, what if I saw In the Heights when I was 10? You know, like that would have changed everything about how I view my culture and upbringing, because a lot of us are told to suppress that. And now I see my culture and upbringing on a Broadway stage, I'm like, I can be exactly who I am and still be an artist, you know? So I think it's beyond valuable to give our young people access to the industry earlier than when they're in a college or post-college, because they are going to be the ones that come up and through the industry and keep it going.

So if we indoctrinate them earlier, it's only going to help us. If I was a Broadway producer and I was really adamant about changing what we know the Broadway demographics to be, I would make it my personal mission to go to any training institution that I know is readying these young people to be in our industry and start asking, what type of resources do you need to make our industry more accessible to the students?

[29:35] Christine Shepard: Special thanks to Chanel DaSilva for allowing us to share their stories this week. The Ensemblist was produced today by Mo Brady, Jackson Klein, and myself, Christine Shepherd. There are two great ways you can help The Ensemblist right now. One is by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. The second is by becoming a Patreon member at patreon.com slash The Ensemblist. Please follow The Ensemblist wherever you listen to podcasts, whether that be on Spotify, on Apple products, or at home on Broadway Podcast Network at bpn.fm. You can also follow us on Instagram. Thanks for listening. Until next time.