|
Red Clay Dance Company
(RCDC), a nonprofit dance
company that creates and performs a
diverse
repertoire of Afro-contemporary dance, is
stepping up in the fight
against the threat of
COVID-19 in its community with the Dance
Pamoja Challenge,
a 12-month project beginning
June 1 that focuses on controlling blood
pressure,
building resilience, and preventing death from
COVID-19 among
African-American families living
on Chicago’s South Side.
RCDC shifted to providing its program
participants with virtual dance
classes with
the implementation and extension of stay-at-home
orders.
With the new Dance Pamoja Challenge,
RCDC is working
with Dr. Audrey Tanksley of
ACCESS Community Health Network and Clinical
Pharmacist Jewel Younge of University of Illinois
at Chicago College of
Pharmacy to target blood
pressure management, A1C monitoring, and
psychological stress to reduce or eliminate the
burden of COVID-19 and
the risk of death.
With healthcare guidelines recommending 150
minutes
of exercise a week, RCDC’s dance
classes have the potential to preserve
and
improve blood pressure and blood glucose levels.
“Red Clay Dance has performed professionally
and provided dance
instruction for thousands of
Chicagoans in our home-base community on
the
South Side,” said RCDC Founding Artistic
Director and CEO Vershawn
Sanders-Ward.
“Engaging people in exercise can be very
challenging, but
high-energy and aerobic styles of
dance are deeply rooted in the
African-American
tradition. The motivation to dance is not just
practical; there are spiritual, cultural, and
psychological components
that make dancing
central in African-American homes, churches, and
social settings. In short, we love to dance
pamoja,
which means together in Swahili. This
project speaks directly to RCDC’s
work
during the past 11 years to strengthen the
resiliency of our
communities through dancing
pamoja!”
Participants
in RCDC’s online classes are also
eligible to participate in a 12-month
observational cohort study. Participants
receive a blood pressure
monitor to log their
numbers and team up to lower and
maintain their
blood pressure. Dr. Tanksley
closes the care continuum loop through
protocol-driven monitoring, escalating, and
referring participants to
testing, or a doctor,
when necessary. The program
approaches
resilience-building through
strategies such as counting blessings,
creating a resilience inventory to reinforce
the supports people need to
navigate
the pandemic. Dance Pamoja Challenge
prizes support the goals
of lowering blood
pressure, increasing activity, and building
resilience. The Resilience Portal provides
participants with a group
blog to share
their expression and learn more about
COVID-19 resources,
mental wellness
exercises, and immune-boosting nutrition.
“Dance is a great form of exercise
to include in anyone’s health
management
program,” stated Sanders-Ward. “Now, in
particular, RCDC is
offering an alternative
to face-to-face classes, which helps
people keep
movement in their lives while
avoiding the risk of infection.”
The Dance Pamoja Challenge will
culminate in 2021 with an in-person
Dance Pamoja Celebration
hosted by
RCDC and the project partners. This
event will celebrate the
participants and
encourage them to continue their
healthy lifestyle
journey, as well as
potentially attract other individuals in
the
community seeking to live healthier
and more active lives. Participants
will have
access to free dance classes, healthy
snacks, food prep
demonstrations, blood
pressure screening, and testing.
For more information about RCDC,
visit redclaydance.com.
Red
Clay Dance Company lives to awaken
“glocal” change through creating,
performing, and teaching dances of
the African Diaspora—change that
transforms cultural and socioeconomic
inequities in our local and global
community. Founder Vershawn Sanders-
Ward conceived the idea of RCDC
while
on her first trip to Senegal, West Africa,
when she became
fascinated by the
interconnectedness of dance and everyday
life. The
name Red Clay comes from her
childhood memories of playing in red earth
during her summers in Mobile, Alabama.
RCDC is supported by the Alphawood
Foundation, the Chicago Community
Trust, the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley
Foundation, the Field
Foundation of Illinois,
the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation, the MacArthur
Fund
for Arts and Culture at the Richard H
Driehaus Foundation, the Polk
Bros.
Foundation, the Springboard Foundation,
and the Chicago Department
of Cultural
Affairs and Special Events.
###
Photos by Raymond Jerome Photography.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment