Isaiah Providence balances on the noses of his beat-up Chucks under the lights of the Temple Street Garage. He locks and pops and ripples, his four nephews dancing in kind along with him. After a few flips, gainers and other aerials, the music stops, the crowd cheers and tips flutter into the bucket.
Members of the Providence Dance Project perform this New York-style street show every Saturday night from 9 to 11 p.m. on the southeast corner of Crown and Temple. Founded in 2013, PDP has performed at the International Festival of Arts & Ideas and snagged a scholarship to the Broadway Dance Centerās winter workshop at last yearās Brooklyn Dance Festival. The nephews are still youngāthe oldest is 17, the youngest eightābut theyāre learning fast. āThey always looked up to me, they still do,ā Providence says, whoās only 20 years old himself.
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And they have a lot to look up to. At the age of 14, Providence earned his black belt in karate, and at about the same time he started training in dance. Four years later, using a mix of the two, he made it to the callback phase, known to fans as āVegas Week,ā on the TV program So You Think You Can Dance. This year, he co-founded Higher Movement, a dance and self-defense studio in Meriden, and celebrated the birth of a daughter.
Dancing on the sidewalk is a relatively new step in Providenceās relationship with the streets. He grew up among some of New Havenās rougher neighborhoods, moving from āThe Villeā to āThe Tribe,ā then to The Hill and Fair Haven. He and his brother would ride their bikes to Exit 8 on I-91 and jump rooftop to rooftop along the Bishop Woods School complex. āWe used to hear people yell out from the windowsāāWeāre going to call the cops!āāand weād jump off the roof,ā a two-story drop.
But thatās the wildest he and his brother ever got, he says. They grew up in choppy waters but were never dragged under. āMy father was into that lifestyle when he was my age. He didnāt want that for us.ā His father ensured Providence and his brother stuck together, enrolling them at their uncleās martial arts studio in part to keep them busy and out of trouble.
Providence has 15 years of karate under his belt, which, along the way, would give him an edge on the dance floor. He didnāt take dancing seriously at first, lip-syncing to pop songs and wriggling around like so many ātweens and teens. But eventually, moving to a beat moved something in him. A middle school student at Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School at the time, Providence transferred from a theater emphasis to one in dance.
Matriculating for high school at Educational Center for the Arts high, he began training in modern dance, adding contemporary, ballet and jazz techniques to his repertoire. It was encouragement from former classmate and fellow PDPer Kirby Shields, as well as her mother Kara Shields, that led Providence to audition for the 10th season of So You Think You Can Dance.
His dancing also got him consideration at Adelphi University, University of Massachusetts Amherst and Long Island University. But while Providence had the moves for all of them, he didnāt quite have the grades. It was only the second half of his junior year at ECA, around the time that he became interested in the Bible, that he started taking school seriously. āThere was definitely a link,ā Providence says. āI was tired of being a hypocrite. I knew right from wrong but I didnāt partake in the right,ā he says, adding, āI started taking everything seriously so I could be alright in life.ā
From that point forward he was an honor roll student. It was enough to get him accepted to LIU, but Gateway Community College proved more financially feasible. At Gateway, Providence discovered an apathy for his initial career track, railroad engineering, and a love for working with children. He now works at the Foote School as an after-school teacher for third-graders, on top of that raising two aforementioned newborns: six-month-old daughter, Leah, and two-month-old studio Higher Movement.
But every Saturday, weather permitting, Providence still makes time for his nephews. Some of the money that goes into the troupeās tip bucket pays for uniforms and dance classes for them, and, eventually, for train fare to New York City, where the Providence Dance Project plans to make its debut in the near future.
Itās a new move for Providence and the PDP, but what else is new?
The Providence Dance Project
performing Saturdays, 9-11pm, at Temple and Crown Streets (map)
(203) 915-9777 | providencedanceproject@gmail.com
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Written and photographed by Daniel Shkolnik.