Dance Education: Elevating Dance to New Heights
In September 2000, Maria Gebhard co-founded DanceArt with Jorge Niedas and is the Founder and CEO of DanceArt National. For 25 years she has built the organizational infrastructure, community partnerships, and institutional relationships that have allowed DanceArt’s model to survive, grow, and now expand nationally. Jorge Niedas trained at the Instituto Superior de Arte del Teatro Colón and held his first professional position with the Ballet del Teatro Colón, Argentina’s premier ballet company, and went on to perform in the country’s major theaters including the Teatro San Martín.
Jorge’s teaching career began in Caracas, where he served as Ballet Master of the Escuela Municipal de Danza y Ballet. Jorge serves as Chief Artistic Consultant to DanceArt National. For 25 years his practice has been the artistic and teaching foundation of everything DanceArt National does.
The Mission
DanceArt National is a dance-based fine arts institution with a twenty-five-year operating history in Chicago and an institutional commitment to communities whose educational pathways are shaped by structural inequity.
Chicago is the paradigm site — where the institutional model is built, proven, and held — with New York as the national identity center and 2027 multi-city activation underway.
The methodology is called Authored Practice. It is the institutional core of DanceArt National — the reason the model works, the reason partners returned at a 99% rate, and the reason a twenty-five-year Chicago institution is now ready to carry its work to new cities.
DanceArt National builds curricula. Over twenty-five years we created more than 100 non-repetitive, site-specific programs — each one designed in collaboration with the community it served. Dance, music, theater, visual arts, history, philosophical tradition. Every program different because every community deserved a program that was theirs.
its work to new cities.
DanceArt National builds curricula. Over twenty-five years we created more than 100 non-repetitive, site-specific programs — each one designed in collaboration with the community it served. Dance, music, theater, visual arts, history, philosophical tradition. Every program different because every community deserved a program that was theirs.
The Record
DanceArt National is the institutional successor to DanceArt, founded in September 2000 by Maria Svolos Gebhard and Jorge Niedas.
Over 25 years:
* 30,000+ children served across 65 Chicago Public Schools
* 99% school renewal rate — partners stayed because the model works
* 65 CPS schools — from the South Side to Lincoln Park, from Woodlawn to communities across the city
* 15-year partnership with the Chicago Police Department's G.R.E.A.T. program, delivering arts-integrated programming across multiple Chicago neighborhoods, bridging schools, families, and law enforcement citywide
* $1.09M Arts Education Model Development and Dissemination grant from the U.S. Department of Education
The Evolution
DanceArt was founded in September 2000 in Chicago. For twenty-five years it served students within Chicago Public Schools — from Woodlawn to Lincoln Park, from the South Side to communities across the city. The partners stayed. The model worked.
DanceArt National is not a departure from that work. It is its natural completion.
What has changed is scope. DanceArt National brings the Authored Practice to learners of all ages, through community arts institutions across the country. Not schools — institutions. Not one city — a national network, built from the Chicago paradigm outward.
Chicago remains the paradigm site w— New York is the national identity center. Multi-city activation begins in 2027.
Over 25 years, in 65 public schools and across generations of young people, DanceArt built and refined what is now ready to travel. We call Chicago the paradigmatic city — not as a gesture, but as a fact. And that designation carries weight: what Chicago proved, the rest of the country can inherit.
The methodology is the same. The commitment is the same. The record speaks for itself.
What is new is the invitation — to community arts institutions ready to bring rigorous, research-grounded arts curriculum to the people they serve, at every age, in every community.
*For partnership and funding inquiries: maria@danceartnational.org | 312-330-4600*
A framework as original as the students it serves.
The Authored Practice
Authored Practice is the methodology at the center of DanceArt National's work, essential for our dance programs and workshops. It is built on five foundational pillars: Walk. Axis. Connection. Breath. Silence.
These are not steps but principles — a framework for building the cognitive and social capacities that determine long-term outcomes such as focus, self-regulation, persistence, and the embodied confidence necessary for academic success, workforce readiness, and civic participation.
In our dance competitions, Authored Practice includes a repertoire component. Participants do not simply learn technique — they create, develop, and perform original work. The act of authoring — of making something that is fully and accountably theirs — builds agency and accountability in ways no passive curriculum can replicate.
The inaugural Authored Practice framework, Andante, activates on October 15, 2026.
THE LAUNCH
On October 15, 2026, DanceArt National holds its public launch at Ruggles Hall, Newberry Library, Chicago.
This event marks the formal activation of Authored Practice and the beginning of a 2026–2027 program year serving 1,500 youth across Chicago through various dance programs. The South Side remains our anchor, and the national expansion begins here, as we aim to elevate youth engagement through local dance competitions and enriching dance workshops.
What we built in Chicago is replicable because it was never imposed — it was built in collaboration, learner by learner, community by community. The partners stayed because the model works. We are now ready to bring it to new cities, and we are looking for the institutions, schools, and funders ready to grow with us.
DanceArt National is not just a dance program; it is a proven methodology with 25 years of evidence, a dedicated team, and a national vision that encompasses a wide array of dance competitions and workshops.
The work is waiting.
