Herald Neighbors

‘The best release I had was dance’

Posted

Her first time in front of thousands of people was in 1992 at the Grammys. She was 19 and on the verge of stepping onto stage with rapper, LL Cool J. For Lisa Hilliard, 44, reflecting on the early days of her dance career are nostalgic, but now she’s a mother of three — Kumasi, 20 and twins, Leah and Josiah, 11 and owner of the Freeport based dance school, HilliArts. There she teaches choreography to students from Freeport and surrounding Long Island communities. 

Hilliard started teaching dance, while a student herself, when she was 15 years old, in her hometown, Jamaica,Queens, New York, under the instruction of notable dance instructor, Gloria Jackson of Gloria Jackson Dance Studio in St. Albans, Queens and she also went to the Bernice Johnson Dance Studio up until the age of 12 years old. She says learning from Jackson also helped her get her foot in show business. Though her dance specialty has been contemporary, she has an expansive expertise in hip hop dance. 

Hilliard graduated from Martin Van Buren High School in Queens Village, Queens in 1990. Two years later, she went on tour with LL Cool J as one of his backup dancers.

“There were about two thousand girls [at the audition] and they were looking for nine and I was one of them who got it,” she said as she described the auditioning process for the gig. 

After landing the LL Cool J tour, according to Hilliard, it led her to other auditions and dance opportunities with other renowned artists like singer, Mary J Blige and R&B group, SWV.  In 1997, she stopped touring when she had her first child.

She opened HilliArts in Freeport in 2017, but she opened her first studio in West Babylon, Suffolk County in 2016. 

“I had students that [were from] Suffolk County — East Patchogue and as far on the other side like the Bronx,” Hilliard said. “I wanted to come a little closer to Queens, which is also where I live, so it would be easier and more of a middle ground.” 

She became familiar with Freeport in 2007, while teaching dance in an after school program at J.W. Dodd Middle School. Eventually, she decided to open the studio in Freeport off Atlantic Avenue in 2017 and has received tremendous support from a number of local dancers throughout Long Island. 

“I connected with a lot of the students [while teaching at Dodd],” she said. “I had an understanding of the community of Freeport and the community was something that I appreciated. I figured that this would be a great place to open the studio.”

During a dance rehearsal in mid-June, her troop of dancers were seen sprawled out throughout the dance studio trying on their dance costumes for their showcase in the theater of the Elmont Library. The Elmont show was inspired by Hilliard’s former dance teacher, Gloria Jackson with a theme centered around storytelling — “Who Tells Your Story?”

 “Gloria Jackson would always say ‘what is it that people would say about you?” Hilliard said. “So outside of being a dancer, what is your story?” 

The showcase highlights performances on bullying, which some of the dancers had experienced. 

“Instead of them crying about it, which would happen a lot because they would keep revisiting the feeling, they have to now dance it out because it’s a form of therapy,” Hilliard discusses. 

 Hilliard says the purpose of the showcase was to teach dancers how to tell their story and learn how the arts can translate their. Dancing for her, has been therapeutic and helped her during the early years of her career and growing up in a household with a drug addicted father. However, she says, her  mother was very supportive of her and the reason she started dancing.

“It was a interesting household to [live in],” she said. “The best release I had was dance.”

Through her dance studio, Hilliard has hopes of transforming it into a  hub of multicultural arts through the style of dance she teaches— ballet, pointe, jazz, tap, African, Hip Hop, Modern and Acro Dance. She also explained wants implement academic programs in the studio as well. 

“I feel like [my dancers] should know dance, but other things like financing, too” Hilliard said. “They should understand things that deal with credit, taxes and things like that. So it keeps them mentally stimulated as well as keep their arts elevated.”

 

Nia Matthews is an intern at the Freeport Herald Leader.