Great Neck North Middle School won “the gold” at the Third Annual Dancing Classrooms Long Island Colors of the Rainbow Team Match and Festival. Great Neck South Middle School won a bronze award. More than 100 elementary school and middle school students competed. The competition was held Sunday, April 27, at Sachem North High School in Lake Ronkonkoma.
North Middle School’s team of six girls and seven boys competed and earned the gold level award. All participants received medals and the school received the gold level trophy.
Colors of the Rainbow Team Match & Festival, as documented in the Paramount Classics hit, “Mad Hot Ballroom,” is a team-based ballroom dance competition open to schools across Long Island who completed Dancing Classrooms: Transforming Lives One Step At A Time during the 2013-14 school year. “The Colors of the Rainbow Team Match is the part of the journey where children get to experience community,” explains Dancing Classrooms National Network Program Director Rodney Lopez, who served as emcee. “In a residency, children learn to dance with their friends and with their classmates. In a COR Team Match, children get to experience community with other schools. It isn’t so much about the competition, although there is a competitive element to it, but the real issue is that children get to see themselves in other schools and dance with children from another area, and it just widens their experience. I think that makes a lasting impression, not only on the children who are participating, but on their families who are watching.
According to Lopez: “The Colors of the Rainbow Team Match & Festival pays tribute to the invaluable life lessons the children have acquired through Dancing Classrooms’ 10-week, twenty-lesson in-school residency program. Coming together from across Long Island, the students displayed the core values of Dancing Classrooms with elegance, partnership, and civility as they performed the following dances: Merengue, Foxtrot, Rumba (Elementary Level only), Salsa (Middle Level only) Tango, and the Swing.
