El Puente Arts & Cultural Center
 El Puente Dance Ensemble performs La Vida es Diversa (Life is Diverse). |
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Photo:
Shirley Rodriguez
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Founded in 1982 by Luis Garden Acosta and a group of community leaders, including dancer and educator Frances Lucerna, after a wave of violence struck their Brooklyn neighborhood, El Puente is Brooklyn's most comprehensive Latino multi-arts and cultural center. It is a place where young people and their families see the worlds of the arts, health, education and the environment as interconnected. It is a haven dedicated to building young champions who are committed to investing their energies in the place where they live.
Once accepted, teen members develop individualized plans with El Puente staff. A daily after-school program is conducted at El Puente's spacious home, a former Catholic Church that was once an opera house. Here students pursue their arts instruction in dance, drama, music, media and fine arts and graphic design, and they work on El Puente's year-long multidisciplinary project in collaboration with El Puente's public high school, El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice. One such performance project: Fashion Conscious: La Moda que Siente, inspired by Williamsburg's garment sweatshops. This year, students will produce four bilingual Public Service Announcements, a mural, and two short plays on asthma and the environment. In addition, El Puente has three youth resident companies. Teatro El Puente uses theater to address important health issues. El Puente Dance Ensemble sees modern dance as a means of communicating a sense of community and cultural identity. El Puente Mural Group invests in the cultural and physical restoration of the community.
In the process, El Puente is producing educated, resilient artists and community leaders who may go on to dance with leading companies, paint professionally, win a Tony Award (as did former member Wilson Jermaine Herreira for his role in Rent), or to return to Brooklyn and help build more bridges.
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Puente Arts & Cultural Center El Puente 211 South 4th Street Brooklyn, NY 11211 Phone: 718-387-0404 Fax: 718-387-6816 Focus: Media, Performing and Visual Arts Number Participating: 300 Ages: 12-21 Annual Budget: $450,030 "Nobody wants to be called 'at risk.' We need to serve kids not on the basis of their potential as criminals and pregnant teens but on who they are as people." Luis Garden Acosta Founder |