What if every child in America could receive a quality, sequential dance education? That very aspiration fuels the life’s work of Jody Gottfried Arnhold (M.A. ’73), a dance educator whose tireless contributions and support for the field are featured in the New York Times this week.
Arnhold’s lifelong work — spanning the 92Y, schools, Ballet Hispanico, Teachers College itself and beyond — is expanding dance education beyond what it was once known. A pursuit, that for Arnhold, is essential to the very lifeblood of education and emotional development.
“Dance must have a seat at the table wherever education is discussed,” Arnhold told the Times. “What would it mean if every child were dance literate? It would be a different citizenry.”
Having “transformed dance education in the city” in the words of the Times, Arnhold’s vision is coming to life across the country.
At Teachers College, Arnhold and her gifts with her husband John through the Arnhold Foundation have provided more than $15 million to develop dance education. Their support established the doctoral program announced in 2016, followed by the Arnhold Institute for Dance Education Research, Policy and Leadership to strengthen dance education research, policy and practice nationwide and the state-of-the-art dance education research studios set to open in 2024.
Arnhold teaching in a New York City public school in 1982. (Photo: Norma Matusewitch)
“She sees people’s potential and helps them realize it,” Joan Finkelstein (Ed.D. ’23), one the first graduates of the program this past May, told the Times.
But Arnhold doesn’t see her work slowing down any time soon, identifying potential to work on dance education access beyond New York City: “I want to tighten the web so nobody can escape a dance education.”
Read about Arnhold in the Times, and learn more about Arnhold’s work at Teachers College: