Street Jazz Student Performers
Higher & Higher
Art Share LA is a place where art becomes life and friends become family. I first heard about Art Share through the Youth Opportunity Movement in East Los Angeles, where I spent some of my teenage years advocating for inner city youth. A spokesman for Artshare LA (who I now know as Ricardo) stopped by Youth Opportunity one day and told me I should check it out. When I first stopped by Art Share LA I was somewhat nervous but exited none the less to see what they had to offer. I was always interested in the art of dance but had never really made an effort to enhance my skills as a dancer because it always seemed as if it was some sort of dream that would lead me nowhere.
I come from a not-so-safe part of town where your guard always has to be up and any little slip up could lead to your detriment. Now, here at Art Share I don’t feel like I have a guard to keep up, it is a very relaxed and safe environment. I have grown mentally, physically, emotionally as well as spiritually; now what use to be just a dream is becoming more of a reality. I recently had the opportunity to audition for a dance company in LA called LDC. Not really thinking that I could make the company I auditioned purely for the experience of knowing what a dance audition was like.
I walked in, gave the judges my music and did what I am known to do, be me. With dance as my new voice of expression I gave the judges all that I had. I ended my audition, walked out and proceeded to leave the building, because I just KNEW that I didn’t make it. Feeling the pull on my arm by a fellow dancer, I was in awe when she told me that I actually made the company. I am now looking forward to pursue this opportunity. Not only have I grown as a student but I have gained the knowledge and have been given the privilege to be a teacher to those who have come after me.
Art Share LA will be giving me the chance to teach a Theatric Dance class in their Fall session. Looking back at what use to be a life of dark and impossible dreams I am now able to look beyond my circumstances and reach for greater heights.
“People always say ‘reach for the top’ but you can always go higher than that.”- Eddejay
A piece by Avi ~ January 2007
Deep within an astrological sphere
Hovers a lonely, innocent child,
that wonders restlessly through stars
and is pre-ordained to a life it probably never wanted.
It’s carrying a disease,
It coughs and it wheez,
It’s slowly dying for our need.
We have a blind reasoning that history happened to “them”.
Unfortunately it is us who are writing today’s history,
to look back on and find that
perhaps Human existence isn’t all that great;
We are the hypocrites, molesters, and liars
to our very existence.
We create a never ending chain of reaction
of the destruction to this home of ours;
We infest and thrive
Become the stupified pawns of our very own lies
Chained to a shatterted fate
Of ideiologies and so called “moral justice”
A judgement so surpassed, it’s getting harder to look back and laugh.
Who are we to over-dominate?
De-create and still be proud of it?
Hold an over-bearing burden over those that we deem lesser?
This child is getting tired
Of our selfish desire.
How much longer can it take?
Before it engulfs in such a rage
That its cries to Mother
Will reverberate in the soul of every man.
Payback is a bitch,
And Mother nature will come after us.
Student Artist: College bound and Scholarship winner, ESTEBAN
