Dance school's first recital raises awareness of domestic violence

When the music stopped, Samantha Graviano and her students kept dancing.

The outbreak of the coronavirus interrupted Graviano's plans last August to stage the first recital of SLG Dance Company, her 2-year-old school. At first she and her students were devastated.

"We were working on everything and then the pandemic happened," Graviano said. "Originally, we weren’t going to do a show."

But following the oldest dictum in the entertainment business — the show must go on! — Graviano, 23, of Ridge, and her students came up with a plan.

They choreographed five dances to music such as "Praying" by Kesha and "Train Wreck" by James Arthur, rehearsed for weeks, rented a ballroom at East Wind Caterers in Wading River and made videos of their work in January, before some of Graviano's students went back to college. The dances premiered online on Feb. 25 on the Facebook page of Long Island Against Domestic Violence. The show has raised a little more than $1,000 so far for the Central Islip nonprofit, Graviano said.

"They did fantastic," Graviano, who teaches ballet, hip-hop and jazz, said of her students. "I was blown away.... They all danced beautifully." She said among the most gratifying aspects of the show "was really watching them get a better understanding of the topic and [learning that] these issues are real."

Despite the pandemic, the school — which rents studios in Moriches and Westhampton Beach — has attracted 23 students, all girls and women ranging in age from 16 to 32.

Graviano, a volunteer rape crisis counselor, said she had decided in December 2019 that the company's first recital would raise awareness about domestic violence and that she would donate proceeds from the show to an organization that focuses on that issue. The 45-minute video includes messages from Suffolk County Sheriff Errol D. Toulon Jr. and Long Island Against Domestic Violence executive director Wendy Linsalata.

Linsalata said she was "thrilled" with the production, adding she was impressed with the dance numbers, which sought to depict women recovering from abuse.

"Their creativity is beyond measure," she said. "It’s a hard topic to address and approach, and they did it tastefully and respectfully."

Brooke Fitzsimmons, 17, of Selden, who joined the company last summer, choreographed a dance depicting a teenager who was abused by a date. In the piece, the girl seems to be at her breaking point before she is joined by two friends who help her recover, Fitzsimmons said.

She did some research and drew from her own feelings, then set the dance to the soulful James Arthur ballad, she said.

"I really took the power behind the music and portrayed it as best as I could," said Fitzsimmons, a junior at Newfield High School in Selden. "I didn’t want it to just be like a fake representation of it [domestic violence]. ... I took every pain that I could think of and put it out into the dance.

"It’s definitely a good feeling because it’s going to an amazing and emotional and meaningful cause," she said. "It made people really think about the meaning behind it and the struggles that people don’t realize are happening."

By Carl MacGowan

carl.macgowan@newsday.comCarlMacGowan

Carl MacGowan is a Long Island native who covers Brookhaven Town after having previously covered Smithtown, Suffolk County courts and numerous spot news and feature stories over his 20-plus year career at Newsday.