New Orleans Dance Collective

The New Orleans Dance Collective (NODC), a non-profit youth organization, actively links dance with social work and seeks to address the overwhelming need for life-affirming, esteem-building cultural activities for inner-city at-risk youth in post-Katrina New Orleans.

Its mission is to celebrate community and diversity by providing dance programs for inner-city at-risk youth that utilize group therapy techniques as a means of intervention and to positively affect behavior through dance within a group setting.

Janet Andrews, MSW, NODC founder, is a native New Orleanian who has been teaching dance for the past 45 years. Ms. Andrews holds a graduate degree in social work from Tulane University and contines to teach tap through NODC and teaches dance at L.B. Landry High School.

Through history and across cultures, dance has strengthened communities and helped individuals build self-esteem and self-discipline. As a social work intervention, dance can unite, uplift, teach, inspire, and heal, thus empowering individuals and communities.

Who We Are

The New Orleans Dance Collective provides an environment for inner-city at-risk youth and adolescents where they can recognize and develop talents, share skills and information, and ultimately realize their own potential, then pass on new community-building skills to others to sustain the impact.

NODC teaches:
African
Hip Hop
Tap
Salsa
Lyrical
Afro-Cuban
Modern & Jazz