‘Creating the spaces that we need’: How Sacramento’s Miss Tee is sowing the seeds of dance
Learn how this youth arts advocate’s mission to change lives through dance has found a new Sacramento home. Tamaira Sandifer, a former Sacramento dance educator and youth arts advocate, is leading a $4 million project at the Studio T Arts & Entertainment Innovation Factory, which will become a hub for her efforts to help underserved young people through dance. The space will include performing arts, production studios, a Black Box theater and teaching rooms. Project designer Kevin Sherrod, a University of Southern California architecture lecturer, is tasked with shaping the space. Sandifer also has plans to open innovation factory sites in Atlanta, New York, Philadephia and Tulsa, Oklahoma in 2026. The opening date for the Innovation Factory is set for October.
نشرت : منذ 4 أسابيع بواسطة Darrell Smith في
Even from an empty room of her future flagship, Tamaira Sandifer could see what was on the horizon, down to the paint on the ceiling. A performing arts space and production studios; a Black Box theater and teaching rooms. A place to create and to celebrate.
“Whenever we’re doing shows and events here, our kids will always be able to look up and see the stars,” Sandifer said. “They’re learning all this great stuff, getting people in here to see what they created. They feel celebrated and want to repeat the process over again.”
For the woman known as Miss Tee to the tens of thousands of underserved young people she has mentored through dance over the decades, the Sacramento dance educator, entrepreneur and youth arts advocate’s newest project marks a milestone.
A new $4 million, 36,000 square-foot Studio T Arts & Entertainment Innovation Factory at 1215 Del Paso Blvd., will soon become the brick-and-mortar hub of Sandifer’s years-long mission: helping young people use dance to build confidence and life skills, careers and livelihood, to grow and to heal.
The Innovation Factory will house dance and performance spaces, podcasting and video and music production studios, a culinary arts kitchen and classrooms for training in careers both on and behind the stage. Sandifer also has plans to open innovation factory sites in Atlanta, New York, Philadephia and Tulsa, Oklahoma in 2026.
A gala at the site in January to announce the project coincided with another milestone, Sandifer’s 50th birthday. An opening date is set for October.
That the Del Paso Boulevard space once housed county juvenile corrections offices serves as its own bit of poetic justice.
Project designer Kevin Sherrod, a University of Southern California architecture lecturer, is charged with shaping the space. His work in Los Angeles focuses on communities of color with a portfolio that includes Gallery 90220, a new creative space for Black and Brown artists in south Los Angeles and Debbie Allen Dance Academy, led by the renowned choreographer, dancer and actor.
“As Black and Brown people, traditionally we inherit spaces that aren’t designed uniquely for us,” Sherrod said in a statement. In Sacramento and the cities on the drawing board, Sherrod said Sandifer is creating “equitable and one-of-a-kind spaces across the nation for young people who aren’t traditionally considered.”
“There’s the importance of being in a community where kids truly need these kinds of services that we offer nationally,” Sandifer said. “So, when I found out that the building had previously been for the youth corrections through the county of Sacramento, it just made it so much more poetic.”
The Innovation Factory is the latest extension of the work Sandifer’s Studio T Arts & Entertainment has done since she founded the Sacramento youth arts nonprofit in 2005 with dance at the core. From Studio T’s beginnings as Studio T Urban Dance Academy, Sandifer molded young graduates who have since gone on to Hollywood and work with performing artists from Rihanna to Selena Gomez and Beyonce.
Her Side Hustle Academy teaches youth and their parents entrepreneurship and financial management skills. Studio T is also behind the talent showcase SacTown Showdown. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Sandifer connected virtually to hundreds of thousands of homebound students across the country through her studio’s distance learning platform Pass to Class.
In 2022, Sandifer launched a Studio T dance and mentorship program at San Diego Unified School District, California’s second-largest school district. San Diego high schools and middle schools used the program’s online collection of dance classes, inspirational video and entrepreneurial guidance and Sandifer traveled to the district each month to lead on-campus pop-up dance sessions.
Sandifer hopes the program will be adopted by schools across California.
Sandifer continues to sow seeds with school districts across California and the U.S. to offer dance programs to thousands of elementary and high school students in schools and online; while working with underserved and underrepresented communities to create access to the arts and links to the creative economy in neighborhoods like North Sacramento and Del Paso Heights.
“I knew I had to take dance and build strength of character and integrity in kids who are just facing some absurd challenges in life. That’s what dance did for me. When you think about communities of color, particularly the Black culture, that’s what we do. Look at anything by way of innovation and entertainment, there’s the touch of our culture in all of that,” Sandifer said.
“Taking that and showing our young people that it’s OK to show up as who you are — that has been the game changer truly for us.”
That ethos was on full display during the COVID crisis, Sandifer said. Many of her kids “were very challenged, very angry, very hurt, and struggling,” she said. Her Studio T’s media arts program changed from learning tool to coping mechanism and a way to document what they were experiencing.
“Once we put a camera, something real, where you can do some stories and storytelling, we found that a lot of the anger left, a lot of the challenges left,” she said. “They were starting to be able to tell their stories through media arts and it changed everything.”
Her charges then turned those newfound skills to the community, helping small businesses promote themselves and stay afloat.
“They needed content to sell their business, video to show their products and services. Our kids came in handy for that,” she said. “Our kids are developing entrepreneurship, activating the training in a way that causes them to build careers. That’s been ultra key for us and it’s something that I learned organically, just growing up in the Bay area in survival mode. You learn how to be innovative and creative so you can survive.”
The roots of all of it, dance, advocacy and access, education and entrepreneurship, trace back to Sandifer’s childhood. She was one of five children raised by a cash-strapped single mother in the East Bay city of Richmond. An early idol and later an influence was dance icon Debbie Allen, whose multi-hyphenate career would inspire Sandifer’s own.
“It wasn’t often that we saw creative people on television, so she was the first example of that and it was really an open door to hope and a multitude of possibilities,” Sandifer said. “You’ll hear her voice when I’m teaching a class. You’ll hear her inspiration that she’s given thousands of times to other people because she’s mentored me without even knowing she was mentoring me.”
Sandifer has spent the ensuing decades paying that inspiration forward. In 2021, Sandifer was named to Forbes magazine’s list of the Culture 50 Champions. The inaugural honorees, “models of business excellence ... who uplift Black and Brown communities.”
“The celebration of creation gives you a sense of pride and accomplishment. She’s using that time to use dance to accomplish other things,” said Sonya Young Aadam, CEO of the California Black Women’s Health Project. She talked about the importance of the arts and artistic spaces in the Black community.
“To have a space that is intentionally positive, it’s the lifeblood of a community,” Aadam said. “The presence of these types of spaces, they’re usually by people who have committed heart and soul to keep the doors open. When we’re looking for a place to share, to dance, to create, wherever they are, our people will come. We create the spaces that we need.”
Today, Sandifer continues to use the love of dance that transformed her life to transform the lives of others.
“You take something as simple as the seed of dance and you evolve it so that it becomes ‘dance-plus’: dance plus media, dance plus the arts, dance plus social media, dance plus fashion. It’s never a standalone thing.” Sandifer said. “Our goal is that we’re continuing to evolve and grow and tap as many young people as we can in as many cities as we can — that we’re empowering people to live differently.”