CJay Philip, artistic director of Baltimore’s Dance & Bmore, is full of energy and joy as she sings about James Brown on Pennsylvania Avenue. Her dance classes for ages 65 and over combine live musicians, storytelling, and movement to connect participants with memories of their first concerts. These songs and memories eventually grow into performance pieces that give the students “the opportunity to tell their stories through music and movement.” This is the core of Dance & Bmore’s mission: to create meaningful human connections through movement, music, and theater.
Philip came to Baltimore in 2010, after 18 years in New York City, where she had performed on Broadway (Big: The Musical, Street Corner Symphony, Hairspray) and off-Broadway, toured nationally and internationally, choreographed, and directed. The award-winning multi-hyphenate and her husband, a music producer, were ready for a change and found Baltimore to be a “creative, collaborative place.”
Dance & Bmore’s very first program was the FazaFam Family Jam, where kids, parents, grandparents, aunties, uncles, and their entire families danced together at a local church. The class started with six to 10 participants, but, thanks to a small grant called Free Fall Baltimore and the promotion that came with a month of free creative offerings throughout the city, it grew to over 40 people from a variety of social, economic, and cultural backgrounds. A few years later, Dance & Bmore launched the Elder Arts Jam and became artists in residence at a local senior center. Now, with its free classes, original productions, multidisciplinary ensembles, cabarets, cross-generational performances, and community collaborations, Dance & Bmore reaches about 2,500 people per year, on average.
“You don’t have to age out, you just age up,” is Philip’s philosophy and the most important lesson she imparts to her students, who range from 2 to 92. “We never age out of creativity. It is a part of who you are. Be a lifelong lover of music, movement, and the arts.” Her love for lifelong learning was recognized by the Tony Awards, with the 2024 Excellence in Theatre Education Award.
Here, Philip shares with Dance Teacher her tips for creating family-focused dance classes and what she’s learned about managing nonprofit finances.
You encourage family members to participate in class alongside your students. How do you help them feel comfortable joining in?
Sometimes parents come nervous, so we’re very strategic and particular about what’s the first movement that we’re doing. We’re not moving our feet at all, so anyone who feels like they have [two] left feet does not feel limited by a step-touch. We’re swaying, hands up, and “hey-ho”–ing like you would at a family barbecue. That’s what it should feel like to get everyone moving. We incorporate high fives and hugs from families to get the serotonin going, to get the parents comfortable and feeling safe. We always start with a community circle and we just connect as humans first, and then we move into movement. If there’s a variety of folks with differing levels, find ways to have your language be simple and accessible to all.
What advice do you have for studio owners or teachers who want to work with older adults?
You’re going to spend a lot of your front time building trust—and you’ve got to move at the speed of trust. Be able to communicate prior to the session what they can expect, but don’t take too long. We always start very gently, with calming classical music, some breaths and stretches, and then we find something that they would dance to whether we were in the room or not. Music that they remember and brings nostalgia is a great way to do your opening warm-up jam.
We demonstrate everything twice so that they can see and make a decision to do it or watch it. You don’t have to do all of the physical movement—you can make your mind move by watching. We do a lot of things that are exercising our cognitive functions: call-and-response, slaps and pats, hand jives, crossing the center of our body, building choreography. We also incorporate a lot of theater or improv games that get their mind imagining.
I did a lot of research early on. Creative Aging [at] Lifetime Arts has been a wonderful resource for us.
What have you learned about funding and grant writing as a nonprofit?
I learned you don’t have to be a nonprofit to do nonprofit work. We are actually fiscally sponsored by a nonprofit; their 501(c)(3) is an umbrella over top of Dance & Bmore programs. So when we receive a grant, the grant is paid to our fiscal sponsor, they file and report to the IRS, and they receive a percentage for managing the backend of our finances. That takes a lot of the stress off the backend admin and allows you a learning curve while you focus your energy on your programming. We just applied for our own nonprofit status because now we feel confident that we’ve learned enough from another larger nonprofit.
Any advice for grant writing?
I teach a class called Pitch Your Creative Idea, at Peabody Conservatory, to introduce young artists to proposal and grant writing. Really listen to the story and the question that is being asked. Don’t say too much. I had to edit myself and not tell them all the wonderful things we were doing because half of it had nothing to do [with the grant]. Tell them the things that you do that align with what they value.
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