Now in its third summer, UW Dance Exchange is bringing dance instruction into public schools. Dance Department teaching faculty member Chell Parkins hopes to keep it there for good.
By Maggie Ginsberg
Division of the Arts
The gymnasium inside Thoreau Elementary School is crawling with restless second graders. It’s the middle of summer and they are hot, distracted, and a little shy — and that’s okay.
“Let’s form a circle,” says today’s lead teaching artist, Abbey Brooks, who wears a red UW Dance Exchange t-shirt, pink hair and a warm smile. Next to Abbey is Vivian Simpson, a UW–Madison dance major who will teach this class solo after today. They all settle cross-legged at center court and go around introducing themselves by sharing the languages they speak. Proudly owning their identities is an intentional component of the curriculum — but the kids don’t need to know that yet.
It’s the first week of Madison Metropolitan School District’s Summer Arts Academy, and the district has brought in UW Dance Exchange — a unique collaborative effort that pairs UW–Madison students with local teaching artists to bring free dance instruction into public schools. But this isn’t your typical dance class, and these kids are about to learn so much more than technique.
The bass drops on a lively playlist — everything from “Si Antes Te Hubiera Conocido” to “Tick Tick Boom.” Abbey and Vivian lead the kids through hip-hop forms like ATL Stomp and imaginative games like Freeze Dance. By the end of the class the students are energized, engaged, and far less shy, cheering each other on as they try out their new moves. They return to the circle and flop onto their backs for some quiet time to allow their hearts, lungs and busy brains to resettle.
“That was hard,” one kid says to another.
“That was easy!” the kid says back.
Meanwhile, across town, UW–Madison dance major Pa Ying Gia Thao is leading skeptical-but-softening middle schoolers through their first breakdancing class as lead teaching artist Patricio “Pato” Cierna looks on. Tomorrow, Pa Ying Gia will be on her own while Pato heads to Hawthorne Elementary to mentor Sabrina Bonine, a dance and elementary education double major who is on track to become the first graduate of the UW–Madison’s new certificate in dance education.
Throughout the summer program, these and other members of the UW Dance Exchange team will be floating around 12 MMSD schools to work with elementary and middle school students. They’ll be teaching moves, but they’ll also be encouraging free movement and creative play, and nurturing relationships between the kids, their bodies and each other. They’ll be showing kids — especially those who can’t afford studio classes, or who struggle to stay engaged in school — what dance can do for them, and why it matters. Above all, they’ll be having fun.
This is the vision of Chell Parkins, UW–Madison Arnhold Director of Dance Education and creator of the UW Dance Exchange. If it was up to her, dance would be taught in all public schools, just like it used to be.
100 Years of Leading the Way
Chell Parkins first joined UW–Madison School of Education’s Dance Department in Fall 2022 in part because this is where it all began: 2026 will mark 100 years since Lathrop Hall became home to the country’s first academic dance program. Originally part of the Department of Kinesiology, the dance program became the Dance Department in 2010. UW–Madison pioneered dance instruction in public schools, then it all but disappeared over the decades as arts funding was cut. How poetic would it be, Chell and others thought, if the university that started it all could lead the country in bringing it back?
It wasn’t just this legacy that prompted Chell to leave New York for this job — it was the way it suited her research into accessible, trauma-informed, culturally responsive-sustaining dance opportunities for kids. So she hit the ground running, connecting with Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction to assess needs, then designing the two-year Certificate in Dance Education that’s open to all students, but puts Elementary Education, Physical Education, Special Education and Arts Education majors on a path to dual licensure. By the time the 14-credit certificate program launched in Fall 2024, Chell had also started the UW Dance Exchange summer programming on the side. Pato, an Argentinian hip-hop dancer working at nearby Barrio Dance Studio, had been her first hire in the summer of 2023. (Barrio was founded by Chell’s UW Dance Department colleague, AJ Juarez — Abbey teaches there as well.)
“I wanted to create a program where I’m working with highly skilled teaching artists in the community who maybe don’t have that educational dance pedagogy component, but would be open to developing that aspect of their teaching,” Chell says. “I was also looking for teaching artists that represent non-dominant identities and dance forms that are relevant to the kids’ backgrounds, because there is such a high need. MMSD public schools are 18% Black, 24% Hispanic or Latino, and we also have a large Hmong population here.”
Now in its third year, Chell, Abbey and Pato are mentoring new UW–Madison dance majors each summer — and, in the case of six partnering MMSD schools, throughout the academic year. Each school requests something different based on its student populations, such as social-emotional, culturally responsive programming for Spanish-speaking or Hmong students, or kids who are unhoused. Regardless of the population, the UW Dance Exchange’s thoughtful, developmentally appropriate curriculum is always at work in the background while the kids let loose and have fun. The UW students glean teaching experiences more aligned with public school instruction than what they’d get in a studio setting, and teaching artists are exposed to academic approaches like lesson-planning and child-development standards they might incorporate into their studio classes.
“It really is this little microcosm with different pieces that feed each other — students, teaching artists, schools, families, public school teachers,” Chell says. “And I think it gives our UW students this really unique and important perspective on how we can do this type of work in communities and schools.”
Creating Access to Dance for All Kids
Sabrina Bonine is one of those UW students. Although Sabrina grew up taking studio classes and joined a public high school dance team, they always relied on scholarships. Sabrina chose UW–Madison because it offered one of only two full dance majors in Wisconsin, and opted for the double major in elementary education out of a desire to make dance more accessible to all students. Fortuitously, the certificate in dance education launched Sabrina’s junior year. Sabrina was one of the first to sign up, and joined the UW Dance Exchange its second summer.
“This program really gives me the opportunity to physically practice my hands-on teaching in a way that otherwise I would have to wait until my dance education practicum. It’s just nice to be able to get even more experience, and a paid opportunity to practice and be around such fantastic mentors and teaching artists,” Sabrina says. “This is not something that most public schools have access to, especially in Wisconsin. This allows these kids to see that dance is for every single person, no matter your situation.”
That sentiment resonates with Pa Ying Gia, a dance major pursuing a pilates instruction certificate. Unlike Sabrina, Pa Ying Gia didn’t grow up dancing.
“I didn’t get dance at all, or lessons for anything outside of school — we could never afford it,” Pa Ying Gia says. “So seeing it in this setting, and being part of providing that for people? I really appreciate that this exists.”
When Pa Ying Gia came to UW–Madison, she learned the history and cultural significance of hip-hop and breakdancing through classes with Professor Omari Carter. Then UW Dance Exchange gave her teaching experience, and now she loves representing the culture to kids. Pa Ying Gia is a proud B-girl — one of the rare female dancers in breaking — and the only Hmong B-girl she knows.
“There was this little girl in my class trying so hard to get this ‘Baby Freeze,’ and she finally got it, and she was like, ‘I love the Baby Freeze because it tells me to never give up,’” Pa Ying Gia says of the classic breaking move. “I want them to discover themselves, especially the younger kids, to realize they have their own style, they can do their own thing.”
Full Circle Summer
That joy and discovery is on full display towards the end of July, when Pa Ying Gia floats to Thoreau to take her turn with the second graders that started their first week with Abbey and Vivian. As Pa Ying Gia leads them through a game of “crabs and spiders,” the kids think they’re just scrambling around on their hands and feet for a fun version of tag — but really they’re warming up by practicing the building blocks of breakdancing. Next, Pa Ying Gia demonstrates a series of moves: Four two-steps, two side-steps, two kickouts and a freeze. After a couple practice runs, they crank up the music and put it all together. Just like the early days, the class ends by returning to the circle to relax on their backs to zen music. Pa Ying Gia gives fist bumps to each kid. “You were amazing. You gave 100%,” she says. “And if you didn’t today, then maybe tomorrow.”
From the sidelines, Thoreau Principal Emily Jensen watches. “The kids really, really like it,” she says. “They’re all engaged, there’s nobody sitting out. It’s a different experience, it’s opening them up to different cultures, diversity, and opportunities they don’t get out in the community where they’re not getting dance class.”
Thoreau students are among the lucky ones that get to continue the UW Dance Exchange program in the fall. Last year the PTO paid for four days of instruction during phy ed classes, and next year Emily hopes it will be five or six days. “For us, it comes down to funding,” she says.
Chell says that Thoreau is unique in that financial support from parents. “Most schools use district funds, and not all schools can afford our programs,” Chell says. “We find other ways to fund those programs.”
One of those ways came in the form of the 2025 Joyce J. and Gerald A. Bartell Award in the Arts, awarded to Chell in recognition and support of UW Dance Exchange. Chell applied the funds to an MMSD elementary school that has the highest unhoused population in the district, one that couldn’t afford the program without it.
Despite funding challenges, Chell continues to grow UW Dance Exchange. Beginning with the 2025-26 academic year, the School of Education’s PLACE program will be providing structural support. Chell hopes that as more schools engage the UW Dance Exchange curriculum, it will naturally seed future practicum opportunities for her dance education certificate students. Above all, it’s a passion project that fully aligns with her life’s work — and the most rewarding aspects can also be the hardest to quantify.
“It’s incredible when the schools tell us how happy they are. When they say, ‘This kid never shows up in the way that they’re showing up here,’” Chell says. “Or, ‘That kid just lights up when he comes here.’ It’s an incredible gift.”