This fall will mark the 11th annual edition of The Stars of New York Dance event, but because of the pandemic, it will have to be virtual. Founder and producer Cheryl Todmann is confident the program will be another success in spite of COVID-19. “Every year, something unexpected happens no matter how much we prepare,” she eluted. “I realized it is a normal thing, a constant challenge, and that things will work out as they should.”
The Stars of New York Dance is a judged dance competition for New York City leaders to raise dance education funds for children from low-income communities to help them develop discipline, confidence, and self-esteem to succeed in school and life. Dancers and honorees over the years have included journalist and former editor-in-chief of Essence Magazine Susan L. Taylor, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, New York State Attorney General Letitia James, Mayor Bill DeBlasio, Rev. Al Sharpton, and activist and New York City First Lady Chirlane McCray.
She is still working out the details for this year’s virtual event. “We want to honor artists and activists who have kept us dancing during this crisis,” she commented. “This time of ideation is exciting and a little nerve-racking. Over time, I understood that running events like these, one should expect the unexpected. It’s amazing to see what happens behind the scenes but then the final product is seamless and works like clockwork.”
Introduction to Dance
Todmann was introduced to dance for the first time on the nationally syndicated program Soul Train (which ran for 35 years, beginning in 1971), and then Dance Fever (which first aired in 1979), and Solid Gold (which began in 1980). “That was dance to me. It was fun, electric, and different,” she recalled. “My mom and dad danced in the house, playing Diana Ross, Tito Puente and Curtis Mayfield, and they looked like the people on Soul Train with their bell bottoms.”
Her cousin Dara started taking dance lessons at a studio in Harlem. “I lived in the Polo Grounds, and my sister and I would pick her up a few blocks away from her house and go with her to her lessons,” Todmann described. “I would just wait while she was taking class. Their dance didn’t look anything like what I saw on Soul Train. It was ballet.”
She didn’t think much about dance again until her first year at Syracuse University. “There was a talent show and there was a woman, another first-year student, who did a praise dance. She wore a black leotard and danced to a gospel song,” she recollected. “I can still see her in my mind. It left such a mark on my spirit, taking the swag of Soul Train and adding something else that was so meaningful. I remember it being a significant earmark in my life that I didn’t know or understand at the time.”
A couple years after graduating college, Todmann moved to Brooklyn, but was still commuting to church in Harlem. “I really wanted to find a church in Brooklyn. I was regularly playing pool at Brownstone Billiards with three friends from college,” she recalled. “One night, some friends from high school suggested we go to a 6 a.m. service at St Paul Community Baptist Church. I said, ‘Say no more, no!’”
In spite of her initial reaction, Todmann did attend the 6 a.m. service and never regretted that decision. “We left the pool hall at 4 a.m. and went to an all-night diner before heading to East New York,” she recounted. “We walked in and the dance ministry was up. It was a sea of women of all shapes and sizes dressed in white. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. There were about 30 women moving and swaying to gospel music. I was mesmerized.”
Hampered by knee injuries that stretched her ligaments years earlier playing tennis, Todmann was determined to dance even if she had to wear multiple braces to do so. Not to long after joining the church, she was a member of the dance ministry. Having worked for Essence, The New York Times, and MTV, she found her passion as part of the church team. “Robin Gray-Bishop, the dance ministry director, saw my natural talent, but also saw immediately a flaw that I have battled my entire life when she told me I had to ‘get out of my own head,’” she laughed. “I was overthinking every step. She said she had seen me move at parties, but I wasn’t moving the same. She saw I had a gift regardless of how much I complicated it.”
Dedication to Dance
At the time, Todmann was working for TV Guide as a copyrighter supporting the sales team and developing advertising pitches. Having been at the job for less than a year, she was named the company’s top marketing person. “(Then Senior Vice President and Publisher) Suzanne (Grimes) asked me how I came up with the ideas I did and I attributed it to the creative juices formulated by dance,” she venerated. “After that, she decided that everyone should take tap dance at the Broadway Dance Center in Times Square once a week on their lunch hour. People were not too happy with me, but we did it for a month and people ended up loving it.”
About a year later, she decided to quit her corporate career to become a personal trainer to help others and to get her knees in better condition. The gym was just a few blocks from her church so her pastor Rev. Dr. Johnny Ray Youngblood organized members of the church to attend the gym. “Many of the staff came to train with me, which allowed it to be my full-time job,” she explained. “Then I would dance with the other leaders at church at night.”
Before long, some of the women in her dance class asked Todmann to run her own class. Under a new project set forth by the pastor, she founded the Jewel & Rock Fitness dance program at St. Paul. “One of the Jewel groups were called Sapphires (women aged 50-59) and they asked me to choreograph a dance for them. I didn’t know how to do it,” she said. “Jamel Gaines was a member at the church and had founded Creative Outlet Dance Theatre of Brooklyn. He taught me a lot and I eventually worked as the dance theatre’s marketing director in exchange for dance lessons.”
With no experience in choreography and a self-admitted problem with overthinking and memory, Todmann would do one movement and write it down, over and over. “Jamel told me you don’t write things down. You just feel and move,” she recounted. “So, I did that, but I still wrote things down when he wasn’t looking.”
The choreography went well enough that she was teaching dance consistently. “We would have 70-to-80 women at a time presenting and dancing every few weeks,” she stated. “That essentially meant me being up nights trying to figure out steps. No one knew how I struggled to create the dance piece, but I loved it and we filled that place.”
With the success of the women’s dance program, many men in the church wanted to learn. “We had 100 men at the first class. It was a little overwhelming, but I did it in honor of my father, who had passed away five or six years before that,” she recounted. “We had the pastor and assistant pastor, and a real mix of men. Our first performance was to Frankie Beverly and Maze’s ‘We Are One,’ a great social justice song. Guys who would never dance pushed through and it was amazing.”
“I was always the quiet one on the sidelines. Fun, but quiet,” Todmann described. “To be able to bring people together and showcase others was perfect for me. ‘This is it, this is what I love!’ Now I needed to figure out how to make this the center of what I did, to dance while showcasing others.”
Michael Jackson and the Start of The Stars of New York Dance
While marketing and learning how to fundraise for Gaines, she received a request from her friend Dorcas, who also attended SU. “She said that the Michael Jackson fan club was having a big event and that she wanted me to choreograph a number. I told her Creative Outlet would do one and of course then Creative Outlet Co-Founder Lakai Worrell did a beautiful one,” Todmann recalled. “Dorcas would not relent and kept pushing me to do one. I chose one of Michael’s more obscure songs, ‘Dance With Me’ from his Off The Wall album. We had a large group, aged 4 to 40, and we rehearsed all week before the event.”
As with the overwhelming number of fan events, the celebrity is not scheduled to appear. “We were at Webster Hall in Manhattan and it was fun seeing everyone dressed up like Michael and watching all the groups perform. Creative Outlet went and they were amazing,” she recollected. “Then it was our turn and it was great. A guy with another group told me that I was a really good choreographer.”
Had the night ended on that note, it would have been memorable, but things took a dramatic turn to make it even better. “After we finished, they turned on the lights in the balcony that we didn’t even know existed. On the right side, Michael stood up and we all went crazy cheering and screaming,” she expressed. “I have been to fan club events and the celebrity was never there. Michael said, ‘I love you all, this is amazing.’ Then he said, ‘I loved the Jewels.’ That was us! Apparently, he really loved that song which didn’t get a lot of airplay. At that point, I knew I was in this dance thing for the long haul now.”
Around 2005, Todmann was sure God was speaking to her with a message that simply said, “get community leaders to dance,” though she had no idea what to do with it. “Every couple of months, I would get that message for an entire year. I finally said, ‘I am sick of hearing that. I don’t even know what it means,’” she admitted. “In 2006, I was flipping through the channels and landed on Channel 7 when I saw Dancing With The Stars for the first time. It had been on for a year, but I had never seen it. Then I heard that voice again, talking about getting community leaders to dance. I didn’t know any celebrities or stars.”
Eventually, she started to plan out an idea for having a New York City version of Dancing With The Stars, tapping into her connections from her previous jobs. She wanted to use the same premise as the national show, but with local people and professional dancers, adding the idea to raise money for youth to take dance classes. “I wrote a fiscal sponsorship proposal to an arts foundation and was so hurt when I was rejected. I remembered that same feeling when I wanted to study abroad after my junior year of college and got rejected for that,” she commemorated. “I clearly remember the next day, putting on a suit and going to the DIPA (Division of International Programs Abroad) and telling them why I needed to go. I emailed the woman at the arts agency to find out why I did not receive the grant and she told me they loved the idea, but I needed to flesh it out.”
She did eventually receive a fiscal sponsorship from Fractured Atlas, which works with artists and arts organizations, regardless of whether they are non-profits. Although she had helped run a few events while at Essence, Todmann realized she didn’t have a lot of experience in putting together an entire event. “I made so many mistakes, from fundraising to ticket pricing to needing to change the date of the event, but mistakes and failures are a normal, valuable part of any new process. The biggest blessing was that the community leaders and dancers were with me every step of the way. They loved what they were experiencing, and had faith in the process and in me.
“Soon, Susan Taylor and Letitia James were helping me get Rev. Sharpton to be a special guest dancer. Bill DeBlasio was the public advocate at the time and my friend Juanita Scarlett knew him. He had also come to one of my work events so we invited him, making sure to note that Rev. Sharpton would be there. He and First Lady Chirlane McCray agreed to come,” she remembered. “We updated the flyer quickly and sold those tickets for the new event date. We had technical difficulties, like finding a new host for the new date since political journalist Errol Louis, who is also Scarlett’s husband, was already book for the new date . Whatever happened leading up to the show didn’t matter. Everything was perfect.”
Continuing The Stars of New York Dance and The Future
Things started to become more settled in the second year of The Stars of New York Dance event. They moved the event to the Kumble Theater at Long Island University with 320 seats and re-confirmed Errol Louis, who has been the host for nine consecutive years. “Every show from local celebrities and leaders to dancers has been incredible,” she remarked. “The production behind the scenes has gotten better, but something unexpected still always happens. There are things I still want to perfect for myself and my team, but the show and the performances are always spectacular.”
Todmann has danced at a few of the events, but was nervous to dance when honoring legendary dancer and choreographer George Faison, who, years prior, gave Cheryl the incredible opportunity to perform in one of his dance pieces and was proud of her ability to catch on to the steps with the professionals. “The night we honored him, I messed up and it was hilarious. George just said, ‘Keep dancing, Cheryl.’ I know he had seen my growth and won’t let me give up,” she described. “It doesn’t matter as long as I can dance and create opportunities to thank the dance teachers who helped me and get others into dance.”
In last year’s event, long before anyone knew that a pandemic was going to affect the world, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries was honored at the show’s 10th anniversary. “We always secretly plan a dance for the honoree(s) and they don’t know about it. God always works it out,” Todmann commented. “He said, ‘I don’t know how you got me to do that, it’s not what I do.’ Juanita watched a video of his dance and asked when he had time to rehearse. He was that good.”
Todmann still dances when she gets a chance, sometimes joining Gaines for his lessons in the park, and taking virtual dance classes with Cumbe: Center for African and Diaspora Dance, Asase Yaa School of the Arts, AbunDance Academy of the Arts, and other dance companies and artists. “At times, it feels like I am starting all over again every time I dance,” she conceded. “I am doing adulting things (working as the Vice President for Communications and Marketing at Kingsborough Community College) and parenting (she has a 15-year-old son), but I have a lot of ideas about branching out “Stars,” even beyond dance.”
Even her days at a university may not be over. “I still want to get a degree in dance. I would have to commit time to taking classes and prepare to even audition, but I want to try it,” she articulated. “We are an organization that creates dance opportunities for all, and I want to give myself that same opportunity. Over time, I have come to see that God will give you what He desires. He has given me the craziest things to desire, but He has made them happen.”
Todmann looks forward to what other things will be created. “This pandemic has brought us all into a space of contemplation and creativity. There is so much more than what is in front of us and we can all be so innovative,” she described. “I am so thankful for the jobs I have had, the dancers and leaders I have worked with. I have learned skills at all of my jobs that have helped me run The Stars of New York Dance, and it wouldn’t truly run without the support of my team, our volunteers and our incredible sponsors and supporters. Life is about continually growing, inside and outside of dance. I don’t even want to stop learning because that would mean I am not growing.