Nickerson-Rossi Dance awards 88 scholarships to PSUSD students
Kendall Flynn
PALM SPRINGS, Calif. (KESQ) – Eighty eight students are getting a new opportunity to dance in the Valley as Nickerson-Rossi Dance awards Palm Springs Unified School District students with scholarships.
Nickerson-Rossi Dance is a professional contemporary and modern touring dance company. The company presents the Palm Springs International Dance Festival. They’ve been partnering with the PSUSD for over 10 years providing a free eight-week session for dance.
“Being in the desert, we know we have limited opportunities and it’s expensive,” Amber Gascoigne, the PSUSD director of expanded learning said. “And our families are struggling to even make ends meet just at home. It’s giving them a glimmer into their futures.”
The program with Nickerson-Rossi Dance is supported through $21 million in funding for expanded learning programs, allowing free lessons for families who could otherwise not afford them. PSUSD and Nickerson-Rossi Dance noticed the need in the community and the dance company worked to provide scholarships as their programs can be expensive.
“It’s about $600 total,” Chad Ortiz, the executive director of Nickerson-Rossi Dance said. “We do break it down into monthly payments but scholarships, it depends on what part of our program you’re in, but they could be anywhere to $600 per student to all the way to $6,000 per student.”
Nickerson-Rossi Dance has given out $70,000 worth of scholarships this year, with PSUSD’s coming with support from the Anderson Children’s Foundation and the Grace Helen Spearman Foundation.
Now dancers in the Coachella Valley youth have new opportunities to be a part of the dance company with 60 scholarships covering 50% of tuition for PSUSD students and 8 scholarships supporting pre-professional students with 25-50% tuition coverage.
The remaining 20 scholarships go to support one of the initiative of the dance company for boys dance programs, providing full tuition.
“They didn’t have the knowledge that it was something that was attainable. We have a lot of male faculty that lead this program as well,” Ortiz said. “And so seeing August who’s been with us about three year four years now grow within our program — we really hope to build that lineage along the way.”
August Havel is a third-grader at Katherine Finchy Elementary School, and he loves hip-hop. He is one of the full tuition scholarship recipients, and he will start the program at the end of this month.
“I like how [dance] motivates me and it mostly makes me feel like entertained and educated,” Havel said. “I just want to say, for people that are like me, make sure to keep following your dreams.”
Stay with News Channel 3 to hear from PSUSD’s director of expanded learning, Nickerson-Rossi Dance officials and a third-grade student recipient.