Youth

The teen population at the Boys and Girls Club of Northern Westchester is infatuated with GETTING LIGHT. This new dance craze, based around the same rhythm used in Lil Mama’s hit song “Lip Gloss”, seems to be sweeping through New York City and has made it way as far north as Mt. Kisco. A few of the teens who frequent my Cultural Arts Center can actually do the dance. And when they are not busy practicing routines for upcoming talent shows and club events, they are in our Mac lab watching youtube videos of NYC’s finest GETTING LIGHT.

I was immediately drawn to the dance, simply because it looks cool and it’s performed by street kids no older than their early teens. Me, I would never even attempt to try the dance style myself. Sure, I always could do a mean RUNNING MAN, but I never could master anything tougher than that. The ROGER RABBIT was always too complicated for me.

GETTING LIGHT is like a combination of the HARLEM SHAKE and BREAKDANCING. The kids seen in the youtube videos are like skinny jeaned superstars in our Mac lab, as we all watch the clips over and over debating who’s nicer. And their names are crazy, like DOOFIE BABY and GOYA BEAN. It seems like a very cool after-school scene to be a part of in NYC, where the onlookers provide the beat with hand claps and chants of enthusiasm for the opponents. And there’s lots of videos all over youtube, which means these kids are creative enough to invent the dances as well as tech savvy enough to spread the culture virally. Here’s one of the more competitive battles, MR. STYLES vs. KID PATT…

I was hired in September 2007 by the Boys and Girls Club of Northern Westchester as the Cultural Arts Director. With that position came the duty of designing the club’s first ever Cultural Arts Center. So to help make our mark and add some flare to the freshly painted white walls in our main art room, I hired Haifa Bint-Kadi, a locally acclaimed mosaic artist based out of Yonkers, to work with our club members to design and create our very own mosaic.

One of our 8th graders Londell Nugent, an amazing talent for his age, ended up designing the layout of the wall with the help of his peers in a brainstorming session. Everyone agreed that bringing the BGC to life on the wall and showing all the activities that happen under our roof would make for an awesome mosaic. And after six weeks of hard work, our mark was made. Check it out.