Photo: Carl Stevens/WBZ NewsRadio
BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — Urbanity Dance, a non-profit community dance center, reopened its South End location on Jan. 14 after a six-month closure due to flooding.
Urbanity Dance had to close their Washington Street location after heavy rain caused the center to flood in summer 2023. After six months, they welcomed community members back to the dance center with a grand reopening on Jan. 14.
Director and Founder Betsi Graves said it took a lot of work to recover after last year’s closure. “As a non-profit, we rely on volunteer work, and we relied on a lot of fundraising just to get to the point where we could reopen and be back on literally solid ground,” she said.
Graves started Urbanity Dance in 2011 as a community dance space for kids and adults, providing classes for those with Parkinson’s disease and free programs for people with mental or physical disabilities.
Urbanity Dance’s mission is “to inspire, engage, and empower individuals and communities through the art of dance and movement,” as their website explained.
Graves said that one of the programs at Urbanity Dance, Dancing with Parkinson’s, helps students with “connecting with other folks who have Parkinson’s disease.”
This program is both physically and mentally healing, explained Graves. “It’s a really remarkable program.”
Other programs include Urbanity in the Community, which “provides dance curriculum to Boston Public School students who otherwise would not have access,” as well as Movement Meets, which “uses movement to empower and inspire those who have experienced incarceration, homelessness, or violence,” explained the company’s website.
Graves was excited to be able to reopen Urbanity Dance’s doors to the community. “The students are coming back into class, dancers are dancing, and we are just really celebrating being able to be back in the space," she said.
WBZ's Carl Stevens (@CarlWBZ) reports.
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