While many of their classmates are hanging out with friends this summer, upcoming Hoboken High School seniors Shakera Frazier and Krisely Quinones will be spending much of their summer on college campuses honing their favorite crafts of dance and journalism, respectively.
Frazier, a talented dancer and choreographer, was recently selected for an extremely competitive paid internship at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York City.
Ask anyone with a love for American modern dance and they will confirm that the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is one of the preeminent global teachers and performers of African American cultural dance and modern dance.
"I’m so excited that I just can’t wait." said Frazier. "It’s seems like I wake up every morning counting the days until I get to go."
Frazier said she has a true passion for modern dance, traditional African dance, and hip-hop. She has been dancing her entire life, and graced the Hoboken High School Stage many times in school performances such as this year’s musical On with the Show, or performed with her 13-member dance group Final Attraction, for which she is the choreographer.
This year she also made her dramatic debut at Hoboken High in To Kill a Mocking Bird.
Her tall, slim frame of long lines makes her a striking figure when she dances. She has a style that has caught the eyes of some of the best talent scouts in the country. Last October, thanks to an arts grant for urban schools from the New York Times, instructors from Alvin Ailey conducted two workshops a week for six weeks at Hoboken High.
Jared Ramos, Hoboken High School dance teacher, said during that workshop, Frazier was able to establish a relationship with the instructors from the fabled dance studio.
"She’s a real nice person who has a real passion for dance," said Ramos, who choreographed and directed On with the Show. "She is also receptive to learning new things and has strong interest in choreography, which isn’t always the case with dancers. I can really see her having a bright future as choreographer."
During the summer she will be a counselor at Alvin Ailey’s camp for urban children. According to its website, the camp brings under-served youngsters to a full-scholarship summer day camp that combines dance with personal development workshops, creative-writing classes, and field trips. The six-week program focuses on inner city youth between the ages of 11 and 14.
While at camp, she will be eligible to takes classes in dance and choreography, and will be interacting on a daily basis with some of the biggest names in modern dance music. "The opportunity [that Alvin Ailey] has given me is remarkable," said Frazier. "I’m going in with the attitude that I’m going to learn as much as I can, develop my own technique, and meet as many people as possible [ in the dance industry]."
Frazier is also interested in modeling, photography, and creative writing.
The "write" stuff
Quinones will also be working hard this summer doing what she loves. She has won a summer scholarship to the Hugh N. Boyd Minorities Journalism Workshop at Monmouth University. The workshop is funded by the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund, the New Jersey Press Foundation, Monmouth University, and various newspapers from around the state.
This year Quinones has garnered attention writing for the resurrected Hoboken High School Lantern newspaper. Some of her stories have focused of social issues that face urban high school students, such as teen pregnancy and affirmative action.
The workshop is designed to teach minority high school students with an interest in journalism the intricacies of the profession and for them to practice the skills associated with journalism.
Each summer the workshop recruits 16 minority high school juniors and seniors from around the state to live on a university campus for two weeks. It combines a taste of college life with 13 exciting days of hands-on experience in news writing and reporting, editing, photojournalism, layout, news design, and production.
While there, she will cover current news issues and cultural events and interview sources, write stories, take photos, conduct Internet research and work in an Apple desktop publishing lab to produce a complete newspaper.
"I knew all my life that journalism is something that I wanted to do," said Quinones. "I’ve always loved to write, and to be about to tell stories that inform and educate people is something that is very rewarding for me."