In this episode, we sit down with Jody Gottfried Arnhold—visionary dance educator, founder of the Dance Education Laboratory (DEL) at 92NY, and a passionate advocate for arts in public life. From her early love of dance to decades spent teaching in New York City public schools, Jody’s journey has been guided by a deep belief in the transformative power of movement. She reflects on her path from dancer to teacher to philanthropist, and shares insights into what dance offers beyond technique: empowerment, expression, and democratic literacy. A tireless champion for dance as essential education, Jody speaks about founding DEL, the joy of seeing her students become leaders, and what it takes to create lasting change in the arts.
In this episode, we sit down with Jody Gottfried Arnhold—visionary dance educator, founder of the Dance Education Laboratory (DEL) at 92NY, and a passionate advocate for arts in public life. From her early love of dance to decades spent teaching in New York City public schools, Jody’s journey has been guided by a deep belief in the transformative power of movement. She reflects on her path from dancer to teacher to philanthropist, and shares insights into what dance offers beyond technique: empowerment, expression, and democratic literacy. A tireless champion for dance as essential education, Jody speaks about founding DEL, the joy of seeing her students become leaders, and what it takes to create lasting change in the arts.
Watch Jody’s acceptance speech of the Teachers College Medal for Distinguished Service: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gciHZF3iv0A
Learn more about the Dance Education Laboratory: https://www.danceedlab.com/
Watch P.S Dance : Next Generation on Thirteen.org
Dance Education Laboratory on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/danceedlab/?hl=en
Rabbi Ingber on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/rabbiingber
92NY Bronfman Center Events
This Transcript was Auto-Generated, its accuracy may vary.
Hello, I am Rabbi David Ingber and this is Detours and Destinations from the 92nd Street Y. Conversations with deep thinkers about their journeys, both expected and unexpected, and the wisdom gleaned from the twists and turns along the path. My guest today is Jody Gottfried-Arnhold. She is the founder of Dance Education Laboratory DEL at 92NY and is a luminary in dance education and an avid advocate for dance. She also happens to be the chairperson of the 92NY board. It is an honor and a privilege to sit with you today, Jody.
Jody Arnhold (00:40)
It's an honor and a privilege to be here, Rabbi Ingber.
Rabbi David Ingber (00:43)
Well, we have many issues to talk about, but as always, I like to start off with a question that is a bit broad, but I'd love to hear you weigh in on the concept of destinations in your own life. Do you think that we broadly construed have a destination, and did you have one? Because it feels like when I did a bit of a deep dive with my team on your career and where life has taken you, from a very early age, there's a sense that dance was like a center-piece of your identity and where you felt you were going. Does that speak to you? Did you feel like you had a destination?
Jody Arnhold (01:20)
I think that destiny might be a good word for me in dance. It started early, very early, when my mother took me to the JCC to see her dance class when I was about three years old. And continued at the JCC with the beginning of my dance, tap and ballet and all kinds of costumes. And I did everything. had piano lessons.
went to a wonderful art studio, Miss Udiski, I remember it. I don't think it exists anymore for art, but it was dance that grabbed me. Dance grabbed me. I loved dance from the very beginning. I loved to dance, I loved my dance teachers, I loved my dance school, I loved dance. think it became, it was sort of my identity, always, and I held onto it through lots.
Rabbi David Ingber (01:56)
Dance grabbed you.
Well, I want to hear how it started even more broadly. So three years old, take us back a little bit into the family that you're born into and where you're born and where that first dance class was. And you did mention that it was your mother's dance class. So give us a little bit of context for the soil in which that seed was planted, as it were.
Jody Arnhold (02:30)
Well, it was in Washington, D.C., which was an interesting place to grow up in those days, kind of a southern place, let's say. And I think my mother wanted dance for some kind of ⁓ cultural reason. She liked the community. She liked the people. It was an ecumenical community. And that appealed to me, too, the people that were involved in dance in Washington, D.C. at that time. And I had this beginning at the JCC and then found my way to modern dance. My first teacher was Bacha Heller and I performed with her. was the lopsided Christmas tree in the lopsided.
Rabbi David Ingber (03:11)
Christmas tree.
The lopsided Christmas tree at the JCC? is this a separate?
Jody Arnhold (03:15)
At this time, she had left the JCC, had a studio. It was not at the JCC. No, not really, but she was well known in Washington at that time. My parents were from New York, from the Bronx. They were neighbors. They grew up across the street from each other. My mother was the best friend of my father's younger sister. And they left New York during the war. My father was with the war effort.
Rabbi David Ingber (03:20)
Now, is Bobbie a well-known modern dance person?
What were your parents doing in Washington just to like-
Jody Arnhold (03:45)
They married and left New York, and they never came back to New York. My sense is they separated and kind of struck out on their own in Washington. from New York. Separated from New York, separated from the family. They were all over the country. They lived in Blacksburg, Virginia. They lived in Nebraska with this effort, the war effort. Then after the war, they moved to Washington, D.C.
Rabbi David Ingber (04:09)
And your mom, you said, was ecumenically drawn to the culture of the dance and that brought you in and then you said you were also drawn to that and then your first performance.
Jody Arnhold (04:17)
It's the lopsided
Christmas And then Batya sent me to Erika T. Mai when I was eight. And Erika T. Mai was, that was early, early modern dance in Washington, D.C. There were three people teaching modern dance. Erika T. Mai, Pola Norenska, and I think Ethel Butler. And I ended up with Erika. And Erika was not Jewish.
She was German, but she left Germany. She left Dresden, where she was studying with Mary Wigman, who's a very important person in German modern dance.
Rabbi David Ingber (04:54)
And already at that point, you had a sense. Because of your passion for it, it fit you.
Jody Arnhold (04:59)
dance. Yeah,
yeah, I really wanted to do it but I remember getting to the studio on P Street off Dupont Circle in Washington and there was a storefront and going past the desk and past a screen into the class and there was a bench and a circle of kids with Erica and
all kinds of percussion instruments. And I remember getting very shy, overwhelmed and overcome, and they sat me down on the bench and they told me to watch. And I can remember sitting on that bench and being just unable to stay there. Slowly, found myself in a circle. It drew me right in. Yeah.
Rabbi David Ingber (05:41)
And the shyness dissipated. That was it. It was like, it was home. This is home, this is me. And so that passion, it keeps growing.
Jody Arnhold (05:44)
Yes, that was it.
Yeah, and the experience that I had there really was formative. Really, you know, looking back on it now, it was everything that, you know, I do, everything that I think is important in a dance education. You know, we had technique, we had our places, we went across the floor, we learned dances, and then we made dances. The last part of every class was sharing dances that we made. We'd get it, have an assignment, we'd create, come back, share, edit,
Do it again. ⁓
Rabbi David Ingber (06:26)
So that, in a seed, almost like in a fractal of what would become your life, ⁓ all of those pieces were already present for you. I just loved the image of you, like as a child or any child, being on a bench watching, but the power of dance, the power of music, the percussive element drew you in. And aliveness, like there was aliveness there.
Jody Arnhold (06:45)
And it was crazy, and I can see it to this day. were temple blocks hanging on the wall. They came down, drums, bells, cymbals, the floor, everything. We were an orchestra.
Rabbi David Ingber (06:54)
Everything. Everything can be incorporated.
So you're in DC and it continues, you're eight years old, but you're in this school and you've taken to it and then it just follows you into high school, into schooling, into education and does the family form around it? Like your family, your parents are supporting your dance, enthusiasm for dance.
Jody Arnhold (07:18)
Yeah, we all danced. don't remember, the oldest of four, I don't remember my brother Eddie dancing, but my sister Lily danced, and my kid brother Peejee danced, and he was a very enthusiastic audience member. And it wasn't just the dance, was also, I say I had my performing career at that time, because Erica had the school, but she also had a company. It was a company of adults performing for children.
Rabbi David Ingber (07:32)
Little brother.
Jody Arnhold (07:47)
and they always needed a child. That was always me.
Rabbi David Ingber (07:51)
So you were a child performing with adults for children.
Jody Arnhold (07:54)
children
in very early excellent children's theater.
Rabbi David Ingber (07:59)
yet another
piece of your ultimate destination.
Jody Arnhold (08:03)
Yeah,
so I was the apprentice in The Sorcerer's Apprentice. I was the son in the donkey stable. I was the elephant's child in The Elephant's Child. I was, you know, just a long list of dances that Erica created for children that needed a child performer. So that was a real performing career in my mind. Yeah, think I always thought I was going to do that.
Rabbi David Ingber (08:23)
Do you think that you were going to be?
Jody Arnhold (08:32)
When I came to New York after college, I came to New York, I had two things in my head, New York and dance. And I studied ballet and then right there I went wrong. I should not have gone to ballet. I should have gone to Judson Church where they were making dances and thinking about dance in different ways and it would have been right up my alley but I didn't get to it.
Rabbi David Ingber (08:55)
At that point when you're in high school and you're a vision, you're still in companies or in different...
Jody Arnhold (09:01)
Yeah, with a huge
performing career, we went to high schools to perform. Erica had, she called it the seesaw circuit. And I think it was with the Department of Parks, performances in playgrounds all over the city in the summer where they built a stage and, know, lights, camera, know, the whole.
Rabbi David Ingber (09:18)
So there was it wasn't just your own self-expression though. That's something that's also catching me here because of course maybe for our listeners who don't know or maybe if they know a little bit about you or maybe they'll read about you we began with a little bit of your career but for those who don't know that so much of your career is focusing on dance as something you give back to the community or something that you cultivate in the community already at a young age. You're not only are you a dancer who's performing and expressing your passion but you're also in a company that's giving to the community.
in setting up these outlets for dance, not just for the individual, but for everyone. Amazing. And did you think, I'm gonna make a career out of dancing? I'm gonna have my own company.
Jody Arnhold (09:54)
it.
wasn't a big
one for planning things like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't really think I thought, you know, I'm gonna be a dancer. I just assumed I'd always do it. I thought I would always dance. I was determined to always dance somehow, no matter what.
Rabbi David Ingber (10:05)
You're following the thread.
Okay, so then you
No matter what, you're gonna keep dancing somehow. And then you make the big move from DC, which is also pretty symbolic that your parents had left New York to go to DC or other places than DC, and then you wind up back in New York. And you have those two things that you said earlier.
Jody Arnhold (10:39)
Two things in my head, really, dance and New York. know, and I say to my children, I say to young people, I say focus, focus. But I wasn't really focused. However, I had in my head, dance and New York, and that was enough.
Rabbi David Ingber (10:54)
New
York is a lot and the world of dance in New York is a lot. What is that like for you?
Jody Arnhold (10:58)
I
got an apartment with three roommates, 13 West 13th Street. And I started taking dance classes. Ballet with Don Farnsworth. And I went to, I did a lot of Cunningham. And then along the way I went to the new dance group.
Rabbi David Ingber (11:15)
So I
took a- ⁓
Jody Arnhold (11:16)
Yeah, I
took Martha Graham intensives. I went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison because it had a dance major and I was in the dance department all the time. Took a lot of courses. I wasn't actually a dance major, but my life at the University of Wisconsin revolved around the dance department. I was an orcasist. I performed. I took a class or two or three every semester. My friends were in the dance department. And in my junior year,
both the summer after my junior year, I went to the, to ADF, to the American Dance Festival. It was in New London at that time, and I studied with, you know, Martha Graham herself and the Limon Company and Desi Ney and loved it, loved it. And I have to tell you that in this dance studio at home,
one of the most important teachers that Erica taught, but there was another teacher, Claire Mallardi. She was from New York. She left to go to Harvard and start the dance department there. But she was always bringing New Yorkers. Murray Lewis came, Lewis Johnson came, many of them came. And she was always talking about Jose and Martha. so I was hearing all... ⁓ yeah, yeah, yeah. I was...
Rabbi David Ingber (12:28)
first name basis. So
you knew that New York was a hub and a center.
Jody Arnhold (12:35)
And then I went to ADF and, you know.
Rabbi David Ingber (12:38)
How many programs was Wisconsin the first one to have?
Jody Arnhold (12:40)
The first
dance major. Dance major. in 1926. Wow. ⁓ Yeah, Margaret Dobler started it. She was a gym teacher and she was sent by the visionary head of the physical education department, Blanche Trilling. She was sent to New York to figure out what dance at the university looks like. This Blanche Trilling, the visionary, wanted dance.
Rabbi David Ingber (12:44)
wow.
Jody Arnhold (13:08)
at the university. So this was, you know, coming out of restrictive lives for women. She wanted the women at the University of Wisconsin to dance. She sent Margaret Dobler to New York to study at Teachers College and Margaret over the course of a year, and I don't think it came to her till the very end.
put together what dance at the university should be, what dance in higher education should be. And she went back and she started a dance major and she peopled the country, the university, she peopled higher ed with dance. That was the beginning of dance in the university.
Rabbi David Ingber (13:43)
The Anthony University,
which we'll get back to because you obviously have a very big role in that legacy and the importance of that mission. But when you arrive in New York and you're taking New York in the dance scene, you also wind up getting a job.
Jody Arnhold (13:57)
Well, yes, I did this for six weeks and taking three classes a day. And then I'd kind of like ⁓ take to my bed. It just wasn't gonna happen. I needed structure. I needed a job. And I got a job. I sold better Get a job. I got So you get a job. I got, I needed a job. I knew it. I knew I needed, for my mental health, I needed structure. I needed a job. And I sold blouses at Bonwitz.
Rabbi David Ingber (14:09)
Okay.
Jody Arnhold (14:25)
and I, you know, I'm going to dance class after work and then I worked for two years for the Department of Welfare, it was called then, I think now it's the Department of Social Services. I had a caseload of 60 families and I was a caseworker.
Rabbi David Ingber (14:43)
Wow. So you were a caseworker for two years.
Jody Arnhold (14:46)
Yep, and then there was a strike and my friend's mother found a little article in the paper that said, intensive teacher training program, 12 credits in education at NYU in the summer, job in September. So my friend and I, my friend Judy Friedman and I went to NYU and took 12 credits of education and that fall I started teaching in 1967.
Rabbi David Ingber (15:13)
And what did you start teaching? First of all, thank you to Judy Friedman. Exactly. And her mother. Dorothy and Judy. So you went in when you get 12 credits in education, and as promised, in the fall you're teaching where you teach.
Jody Arnhold (15:16)
and her mother, Faith Reedman.
first
grade PS 165 on 109th and Broadway and it was the year, you know the Department of Education goes through all kinds of cycles and phases. was the year of team teaching. So I was partnered with a wonderful, experienced first grade teacher and began to develop my teaching chops and I liked it, I liked it, I liked it a lot.
Rabbi David Ingber (15:50)
What did you like about it?
Jody Arnhold (15:51)
I love teaching. I like the kids. I like teaching. I love teaching kids to read. This was first grade. And I did end up teaching every elementary school grade. I taught in elementary school for 10 years with classes grouped 2, 3, 4, 5. And I really got my teaching chops. And I was always thinking about teaching dance. Teaching dance in the public school, even though I didn't know anybody who was teaching dance in the public school.
Rabbi David Ingber (16:21)
Was there anybody teaching dance?
Jody Arnhold (16:22)
Yeah, yeah,
there were some people teaching in high school. Yeah a couple few
Rabbi David Ingber (16:27)
So the passion for teaching is now like born in you. You realize that you love teaching. You always love teaching.
Jody Arnhold (16:34)
teaching. I always love teaching. love teaching. Oldest
of four, I was always organizing them. When I was 15, this is telling, Erica T. May gave me the key to the studio. I opened it and I taught the five-year-olds on Saturday morning when I was 15 years old. I had the accompanist.
Rabbi David Ingber (16:41)
neighborhood.
And so here you have an opportunity to bring these two passions together, the natural teaching with dance. And you thought that would be really transformative in the public school.
Jody Arnhold (17:03)
Yeah,
I went to camp and I was the dance counselor. I think that was even when I was even younger, I was like 13 or 14. That was, that I didn't know what I was doing. That was hard. But there was one, there was one kid who was so good. And so I just helped her and everybody else do what she wanted to do. We did a masterful scarf dance at the end of the summer.
Rabbi David Ingber (17:30)
So, ⁓ my God. I love listening to it because how did you know as a teacher, okay, I'm good, or like, was it the kid, you saw the kid have something or you saw it's a spark ignited or they got it, they understood something, they didn't understand before, you saw immediate transfer.
Jody Arnhold (17:32)
my god.
of
You know what,
I could recognize good teachers. You know what they do with a class. They're doing all kinds of interesting things. They're learning projects and know just all this wonderful stuff that happens with good education. I just loved a teacher that could do that.
Rabbi David Ingber (17:53)
I just love. ⁓
Kids are listening, performing.
Yeah
and you had had the benefit of having some pretty good teachers that had inspired you. So did you think that, I'm gonna help inspire a whole cadre, whole? I don't know. don't know, just wanna. It's like, don't rush, they're still forming for you, okay.
Jody Arnhold (18:22)
I wasn't thinking about it.
I
really knew what I was doing. Looking back, it looks like I might have known what I was doing, but I never knew what I was doing. One thing about me though, I always knew what to do next. I always got to the next thing. Never got stuck.
Rabbi David Ingber (18:40)
That's good.
That's
what happened, you know in the public school
Jody Arnhold (18:47)
And so I was teaching in the public school and I wanted to teach dance and I heard about this program at Columbia Teachers College, Columbia University, which was just up the hill from my school on 120th at the bottom of the park. I had to get to the top of the park where there was this university that was offering a master's in dance education.
I got there and that was really, and I went through that program, it took me three years, know, two summers or three summers and two years, you know, it took a while to get that degree and I loved it because it got me back in touch with the art. I was teaching, I studying dance and in a community of dancers, it was great.
Rabbi David Ingber (19:28)
And when you graduate, do you have a sense of, okay, what you're gonna do with
Jody Arnhold (19:32)
When I
graduated, I thought, okay, I'm going to get a job teaching dance. And I didn't know of any jobs teaching dance or anybody teaching dance or I'm going to do something else. I'm rethink this whole thing. And I got a job teaching dance at PS 75 on 96 West End Avenue, where I had a wonderful interview and the principal walked me out. It was a circle of teachers and parents and the principal.
at a very progressive Upper West Side school. And he walked me out and he said, I'd love to have you at my school. You should teach dance. Find a school. It's not going to be here. Because we have a classroom teacher who has gone to London to study Laban. Have ever heard of Laban? I said, yeah, I've heard of Laban. And she's coming back and sh-
Rabbi David Ingber (20:22)
For those who don't know what Laban is.
Jody Arnhold (20:24)
Laban
is a German ⁓ dancer teacher who developed a whole system of movement analysis and movement.
Rabbi David Ingber (20:31)
Notation,
it's a language for notating.
Jody Arnhold (20:35)
And I had studied
Laban notation in the Teachers College program and made no connection whatever to education where I believe that it is the most important application of Laban's work. So I mean I was devastated. Yeah. I thought you know I found it. I found my place and no she's coming back and she's going to have the job.
Rabbi David Ingber (20:50)
It's walking it out. So what did you say?
Jody Arnhold (21:04)
He said, you're going to do this. And then before Labor Day, he called me and he asked me if I'd ever heard of Ballet Hispanico. And I said, yes, I've heard of them. And he said, they're going to be at the Delacorte Theater. I'm setting aside tickets for you. Go see them. So I called my mother. said, I'm not coming home for the Labor Day weekend. And I went to the Delacorte to see Ballet Hispanico.
And then he called me after the Labor Day weekend and he said, what did you think? I said, they were great. You know, I loved it. Thank you so much for the ticket. And he said, they're going to be at our school with an NEA grant in September, and I want you there too. We have this other teacher, but would you consider teaching in the classroom, moving desks? I said, yes, I'll do that. So I got there and I met the other teacher, Joan Sacks.
She said, who are you? I said, I'm Jodie Gottfried. I'm the dance teacher. And she said, I'm the dance teacher.
Rabbi David Ingber (22:05)
It's a dance-off. ⁓ no.
Jody Arnhold (22:08)
two dance teachers all of a sudden out of no, you know, no dance teachers all of a sudden. There two at this school. And she and I became fast friends, we're friends to this day. And she was a real educator, a real teacher who had this material to apply to teaching children. You know, the principles are...
anybody can dance, you can make a dance about anything, process over product, you all those, you know, progressive education ideas applied to dance education. She was determined to do this. She'd never done it. I'd been dancing and teaching all my life. We were a match. Together, we figured out what a dance program in a public school should be.
Rabbi David Ingber (22:51)
So the two of you got to work on creating a dance program in a public school.
Jody Arnhold (22:55)
Yeah,
for two years we worked together then she, strange word, was excessed. They sent her to another school. I had more experience. I had been teaching for 10 years. She found another wonderful school downtown, PS3, and started to develop that program and we were compatriots. know, was up on the west side, she was down in the village and we visited each other, shared everything.
Rabbi David Ingber (23:04)
right.
best practices and support
for everything.
Jody Arnhold (23:22)
continued developing as dance educators.
Rabbi David Ingber (23:25)
What did
you discover? mean, obviously, this vision of bringing dance to What did I discover? And just like, so people know, like again, I'm just gonna, know, things are gonna move quickly, but like in the next couple of minutes, but there's a sense that the dance is essential. Essential. Essential. So what did you discover? school.
Jody Arnhold (23:42)
It should become, can become the soul of the school. But well, this is what happened. I came in, raring to go. I bought a drum. Came in with my drum and a pile of index cards. And the night before, I'd, okay, tomorrow I'm gonna do that. And I'd do it. What am I gonna do now? no, I'll do that. Okay, but that'll only take you so far. Just, you know, random thoughts, ideas from index cards from a big pile.
Rabbi David Ingber (24:04)
Okay.
Jody Arnhold (24:10)
You have to have a big picture. And that was Laban movement analysis, which provides a vocabulary for dance. You you're in a school, you have to have the words. Dance is everything. But you have to, in a school especially, you have to be able to talk about it.
Rabbi David Ingber (24:12)
arc.
You have to break it down into discrete units, into different lessons.
Jody Arnhold (24:36)
There's
this Laban movement analysis applied to education, four categories. Body, what moves, effort, how the body moves, space, where the body moves, relationship, with whom, with what the body moves. And there it all is on a chart with those headings, body, effort, space, relationship, and all the vocabulary underneath. The whole thing, any movement that you see, baseball, game.
Kids on a Playground, City Ballet.
Rabbi David Ingber (25:09)
getting on a bus, getting up. It's core. It's the soma, the basic soma. And so this is very pioneering because you're.
Jody Arnhold (25:10)
Getting on the bus. ⁓
the vocab.
It's not pioneering,
was Laban developed the vocabulary and the organization. You know, we've been tweaking it along the way for our purposes.
Rabbi David Ingber (25:31)
different now. What
I meant by pioneering is maybe there are those who came before right, Laban, but for you and for Joan, guess, or for anyone to go into a public school context which most people don't think of public school as a place where dance is a core requirement. And for you to set that expectation that it's embodied, that there's something profound happening for the child when they're in dance, you had that experience of unaliveness. And then to have it comport to those categories using Laban and so on, but to make that
of your educational experience is that your natural dance or your movement is incorporated. That's pioneering.
Jody Arnhold (26:10)
Yeah, in a sense, it was certainly pioneering at that moment, at that place, at that school. It had developed after the war in England by disciples of Laban, Joan Russell, Sylvia Bodmer, know, a whole list of people. The work comes from that work, but we made it now for the Upper West Side, know, for New York City, for us now.
Rabbi David Ingber (26:40)
And so you do that, that works about two decades? Or you're kind of involved in that period? 25 years. 25 years. Wow.
Jody Arnhold (26:47)
Yeah. And dance became the soul of that school. We didn't do anything without the dance. You know, they were reading nursery rhymes. We did dances about the nursery rhymes. They were studying symmetry, asymmetry. We did dances about symmetry and asymmetry or shapes, stories, poems, seasons, holidays, making dances.
all the time. That was the goal. was it. I mean there was technique, was improvisation, there was, you know, all of it, but the goal was dance making. Choreography. And that's the highest level of thinking. That's where it all comes together.
Rabbi David Ingber (27:25)
So.
So it all comes together in choreography and making dance. And there's so many principles that are being applied in a very tangible concrete somatic way. So take me into and take us into, like there's a big of a pivot in your life. You meet your husband at some point in this period.
Jody Arnhold (27:48)
Yeah, I met him, I met John just about the time I started teaching dance. John was a very supportive boyfriend at the beginning of my dance teaching career. Or during it, actually in the heyday of it. It started, I got to be a master teacher. I developed a master program at PS75 where I had student teachers coming from all over and people visiting me and...
wanting to know how to do this. And that's when I started thinking about teacher training very seriously.
Rabbi David Ingber (28:21)
But when you had met John, I mean for listeners, might not know who John, he's your husband. And was John also in the arts? No, John was banker. So a dancer meets a banker.
Jody Arnhold (28:29)
banker.
However,
when I said to John, I'm a dancer, whatever I said, I'm a dance teacher, I teach dance at PS75, whatever I said, had a context for it because his beloved Aunt Esther was a modern dancer in Dresden. Listen to this. The family, the Arnhold family was from Dresden.
Rabbi David Ingber (28:45)
That's good.
Amazing.
Jody Arnhold (29:01)
Their bank was in Dresden. It was the first bank Aryanized by the Nazis. John's grandfather had a stroke and died, leaving his mother with five kids. She left with three of them. John's dad went to Switzerland to boarding school. The baby, Esther, wouldn't leave.
because she was 15 years old and she was in dancing school. She was with Palooka. That was her life. She wouldn't leave. They all left. She was left there all alone until it got so bad her mother says, come now. And she left. And they all made their way to the United States. But Esther was...
A real modern dancer, I came to find out after studying the history, in Dresden there was Greta Palooka and there was Mary Wigman. That's the beginning of German modern dance, parallel movement to American modern dance. ⁓
Rabbi David Ingber (30:08)
So
when John heard that you were an answer
Jody Arnhold (30:10)
dancer, you know, he knew what that was. I always think that he knew.
Rabbi David Ingber (30:16)
But certainly your passion for dance and that it had become a calling and that teaching was such a core piece of it being a master teacher and knowing that there were children and others that needed to be introduced to this. so John, as you said, was very supportive. with him. And it resonated with him. First of all,
Jody Arnhold (30:35)
John could
have been a kindergarten teacher, always wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. Yeah, to this day. I think that's why he's so bonkers about our grandchildren now. That's what he loves. And here I was teaching them and teaching them dance. you know it.
Rabbi David Ingber (30:39)
Really.
And so your passion for dance becomes also a great source of what you want to bring to others. yeah, yeah. tell us a little bit about how this also became part of your life's work after 25 years of teaching. And you have John's support, and you're now capable, know, been blessed to be able to also think. Teaching. Philanthropically, how do you support things?
Jody Arnhold (31:16)
I'm teaching. I went back after Paul was born, after three months after Julia was born, I had a sabbatical, but then I went back as a mentor teacher. was, you know, no thought at all of leaving. And ⁓ I think what happened is I had a taxi accident and I had to stop. had a...
Rabbi David Ingber (31:33)
You're going call
this a detour moment. Detour. You have a big detour moment. light goes off.
Jody Arnhold (31:37)
My kids
are little. I have this accident. It really took, you know, two years of rehab and that got me out of that day-to-day teaching and then by this time I had developed a whole way of training teachers. I got a little grant.
that put me in a book that described the dance program at PS75. if you're interested in that, you can call this number and you can come see, or Jody Gottfried can come visit you and help you get started. And then I was giving workshops all over the place teaching dance in the elementary school. And I developed.
with a partner. I worked with Joan Sachs. I worked with Kyle Haver, who was very important. Kyle wanted to student teach with me. He was in curriculum and teaching at Teachers College. And they said, no, you have to student teach with a real teacher. And he said, she's a real teacher. And they said, we'll go look. And they came as a committee, and they spent the day. And they said, she's a real teacher. That's when it started to have student teachers from curriculum and teaching, teaching dance with a dance ⁓ teacher.
That was big.
Rabbi David Ingber (32:44)
That was big. And so then this becomes like a focal point of your philanthropic support. You're still just doing your thing and building stuff and working with people and trying to.
Jody Arnhold (32:50)
No philanthropic.
Slowly
getting into the philanthropic part of it in that, you know, my first foray was, you know, Ballet Hispanica, which was in residence. met Tina and kept the connection with her. She was very helpful to me as a dance teacher. I was helpful to her. I sent her students. She gave me records. She gave me books. She taught me Bamba.
Rabbi David Ingber (33:10)
25.
We lived around the corner from Belly to Spanical for many years. Remarkable.
Jody Arnhold (33:26)
went to a dinner party with John and I sat next to this man who said, have you ever heard of Ballet Hispanico? I said yes. His wife was on the board and lo and behold they asked me to be on the board of Ballet Hispanico and I really, literally I said, what's a board, literally. But I joined that board and I learned, you know, I ended up chairman of the board. That's where I learned to build something. ⁓
Rabbi David Ingber (33:47)
There's a theme.
Jody Arnhold (33:50)
with those with Tina Ramirez, the artistic director of Ballet Hispanico, then the executive director of Verderi Roosevelt and the development director Maggie Grove. We built it.
Rabbi David Ingber (34:01)
I would argue, just listening for the past 45 minutes, that you learned how to build things as an eight-year-old sitting on that bench and watching Erica and that remarkable way of creating a company and becoming a choreographer. That to be a leader as you are and to build something is to be creatively using all of your resources and all of your people. There's not one person that you've not mentioned. You remember each person. Oh, they made an impact. And they were each your dancers, as it were. And you were helping sculpt. So you don't know what a board is, and now you're the chairman of the board.
Well, took a little...
Jody Arnhold (34:32)
I joined
the board and you know took a little while and you know there's a little board and we were in a back room it became a big board in a big room and you know we literally built the building
Rabbi David Ingber (34:41)
built that building on 89th Street, over the horse stables on the other west side.
Jody Arnhold (34:45)
built,
you know, it was always on the Upper West Side, was always, you know, the culture, the Hispanic culture, it was always a professional company, an outreach program, a school of dance, it still is. All of that.
Rabbi David Ingber (34:59)
So those are the beginnings of your building. And then you begin to have a vision. And we could probably say the vision is that every child should be educated to dance, right? every... That's true.
Jody Arnhold (35:11)
If somebody had said that to me, I would have said that's true, but that wasn't yet my big idea. got to the Y and I was a mother in the nursery school and I tried to bring dance into that nursery school then and I failed, but I didn't fail this time. There's dance there. Now there's dance there. But I'm the one that could not leave when my kids left.
Rabbi David Ingber (35:17)
But then I got...
No, we know now, yes. ⁓
Jody Arnhold (35:40)
My mentor at the Y, Janet Fisher, asked me if I wanted, had any interest in being on the board. By that time I knew what a board was. I joined the board of the 92nd Street Y, the big board of directors of the Y, at the same time as Joan Finklestein, who was the new head of the dance department and a very brilliant person who I was very happy to attach myself to.
Rabbi David Ingber (35:59)
Right.
Jody Arnhold (36:10)
And Joan said to me, what are we going to do? What are we going to do with this dance department? And we had a meeting about 35 people from all over the city, leaders, movers, shakers in dance. I mean, there were a lot of ideas. And at the end of the meeting, Charlie Reinhart, a very great modern dance.
visionary said to me, what do you want to do, Jody? And then I walked out of that meeting with Joan, just me and Joan, and Joan said, what do you want to do, Jody? And I said, I want to train teachers. And she said, that's interesting. And then she, because of the mind she has, immediately gave a whole rationale of why we should train teachers at the 92nd Street Y, how it fit into the history. And then I started to get nervous. Seeing my work,
go right down the drain. She was gonna train the teachers. I wanted to train the teachers. So I was thinking about this. you know, yesterday, it came to me that really everything that I've done has been to do my work. Just to do my work. So I said, Joan, come to my apartment. I wanna show you my work. So she came over to our apartment.
And I laid it all out on the dining room table. The charts, body, effort, space, relationship, the lesson plans, the pictures, the whole thing. I laid it out and she said, whoa, this is really very interesting. Okay, let's do this. And we went to the head of the Y, told him what we were gonna do, what we wanted to do, how to have his blessing. And he said, you mean you wanna do this even if nobody comes? I said, yeah. ⁓
Rabbi David Ingber (37:38)
25 of your work.
Jody Arnhold (38:01)
Okay, do it. So we started, we gave one workshop, I did it with still my partner, Anne Biddle. We gave a workshop on, we made the thunder and lightning dance and we had a room full of people, it was fantastic. And then Joan said, next year let's have a course. By that time, the name had come to us, Dance Education Laboratory, Dell. That next year we gave a year long course, it was, you know.
20 weeks with seven weekend workshops, we had 25 people and that was the first. That was 30 years ago. And in that class and in the next two, three years are all the leaders that are all over the city now.
Rabbi David Ingber (38:38)
People can't.
And so you, from that passion and that vision, and even if nobody comes, you've seated teachers all around the city who teaching.
Jody Arnhold (38:58)
That's been going on.
That's been the catalyst for everything. The dance education laboratory at the Y has been the catalyst and it's going on. It's morphed, it's changed, it's you know went online during COVID. We found out we could teach dance online. What could we do that was successful? We could build community and we could give the information. And we just kept right on going and use technology. 100 % to our advantage can't go back from that.
Rabbi David Ingber (39:25)
And then you also went back to Columbia, your alma mater, you trained as and.
Jody Arnhold (39:29)
Well,
that wonderful, wonderful program was eliminated. No more masters in dance education. What? I started having lunch with the president, Susan Furman. Every three months we had lunch. Every three months I said, that program back until one day she looked at me and she said, we're not putting that program back. You have the masters at Hunter. We can't compete with that. It's a public university.
We'll start a doctorate. So, you know, that happened. It's the only doctorate, we think, in dance education now in the country, in dance education. But I've skipped the whole thing, the whole progression, from Dell to the people that came out of that program to the Department of Education, where Joan, Joan after 12 years at the Y, went to head
the dance program at the department. And the first charge, her first charge was to write the blueprint for dance education, K to 12. I, Tina Ramirez and I, were the co-chairs of the committee. We worked all year bringing in every constituent, every interested party in the city to develop this Bible of what a dance education in the public schools is pre-K to 12.
Rabbi David Ingber (40:27)
at the final execution.
It's all of this work. It's a masterpiece.
Jody Arnhold (40:54)
So from Dell to the DOE. ⁓
Rabbi David Ingber (40:57)
from Delta to the UAE and then eventually right to the...
Jody Arnhold (40:59)
All this work at the DOE,
all kinds of stuff happened, all kinds of brilliant people. We needed a master's degree. We needed a pipeline. So I went to my mother's alma mater, Hunter College, and my Aunt Fritzie and my Aunt Ruth and my cousin Rachel. They all went to Hunter. I told you they were all from New York. I got to Hunter and Jennifer Rabb, the brilliant president of Hunter, wanted a dance program.
She wanted a master's in dance education. I said, yes, that's very interesting. We talked about it talked about it until she said, you don't want an MFA. You want a master's in dance education. I said, yes. That's what I want. I want a pipeline of prepared, certified dance teachers, dance educators for the public schools. And that began. that's every year, 10, 8, 15.
people graduate and they teach and they are prepared and certified. They teach all over the city.
Rabbi David Ingber (42:03)
Was it hard for you to move? What was the sense that all of sudden you went from, I'm a teacher and I'm trying to move the needle. And all of sudden you had financial capacity to move the needle. Was there a sense of burden? Like there's so many things that you want to support and so much that you want to do. Or, wow, I can really make a difference now. I can do something that will move the needle.
Jody Arnhold (42:23)
Well,
you know, I've said this before, I really don't think of myself as a philanthropist. really don't. I'm a dance educator. with this idea and everything I do is related to getting that idea accomplished.
Rabbi David Ingber (42:32)
I mean,
know, I've got them. People who have great ideas can also help underwrite their great ideas. That's a marriage made in. Exactly. Yeah. So you were able to actually manifest not just you have a great idea, but you help make it real and a tangible. Amazing.
Jody Arnhold (42:39)
Pay to play.
And also that John supported me
every step of the way. He likes it. He likes what I do.
Rabbi David Ingber (42:53)
Well,
that's how lucky is that. It's everything. So just want to just thinking to myself about this, the remarkable legacy and I'm what's animating it from a bit of a higher perspective from you. Like if like finishing these sentences, like if there are more children who are exposed to good education, you know, dance educators, if there's more dance in the public schools, if there's more dance in the world, what does that look like for you?
Jody Arnhold (42:56)
That was really lucky.
We have a better democracy.
Rabbi David Ingber (43:21)
a better democracy.
So I just wanted to ask about that because I think arts right now, just to bring us into the current moment, like there's certainly some who might listen and say like really is that what we need more dance in the world or you know more liberal arts education that kind of thing but we know that this is connected to human flourishing. This is connected to human beings ability to express themselves is connected to many different pieces of the human experience. Like what's the piece here for you that like a world that has more dance in it and more access to dance is a better world.
Jody Arnhold (43:49)
The world with better
citizens. Well, dance, it's education and it's arts education, which completely parallels, going back to education, the agenda of the dance education program is the same as the agenda, the purpose, the reason, the rationale for education. And what it builds is all those things, creativity, cooperation, conflict resolution, problem solving. ⁓
Rabbi David Ingber (43:50)
Can you walk us through that?
Jody Arnhold (44:18)
kid who dances is a different kid. A class that dances together, that makes a dance together is a different class. A school that has these classes is a different school. It affects the community. It really does. And it's just a powerful tool for education. But you can't stop just with the technique. It's not steps. It's not about steps. It's about dance making.
it's that choreography. And know, the blueprint, you know, takes you through it. It's the blueprint, the strands of the blueprint are dance making, dance literacy, making connections through dance, dance and the community, dance is lifelong learning. You know, my daughter, she was 15 years old, you know, at high school.
We were having lunch and she leaned into me and she said, I mean really serious, mom I know what you want. Like she had figured it out. I know what you want. I said, what do I want? She said, you want every child to dance whether they want to or not. I said, yeah, that's it. You know, nobody asked them if they wanted to take math.
Rabbi David Ingber (45:31)
Right? Dance as unconditioned.
Jody Arnhold (45:34)
Yeah,
everybody should have advanced education. Do I still dance? Well, in my dreams, I sure do.
Rabbi David Ingber (45:38)
So do you still dance?
I just
want to say for listeners who might hear the there might be a sound that will come through even if we edit we don't know but there's a sound of squeaking a little bit and that's feet are continuing. don't stop. You never stop moving. No. You're dancing all the time.
Jody Arnhold (45:55)
And I teach and I always study dance in some way, whether it's social dance or Tai Chi or something.
Rabbi David Ingber (46:03)
Did
you study Tai Chi by yeah. Me too. ⁓ yeah, I did Tai Chi for many years. I actually, one of our connections was that I was very involved tangentially with dance communities in my 20s and 30s, both in New York and in Israel. I was a gyro-tonic instructor and I did gyro-tonic and I happened to be living in Israel for a year and working down at Suzandalah, which is the center where the Ba'achava, the national dance company of Israel is located. And I had many of the dancers as clients of mine teaching Pilates or gyro-tonic. Unbelievable.
But I was doing a lot of Tai Chi at one point. And at one point when I just had started at the Y in 2023 in January, think that Butcheva was arriving and I had a chance to speak at the opening of their stint down at the Joyce, think. So was a really wonderful kind of melding of different worlds.
Jody Arnhold (46:51)
Yeah.
No, I love Bat Sheva and visited them in Israel and, you know, have become really quite involved in Bat Sheva and have got them to the Y. We had them recently, the second company. Very wonderful.
Rabbi David Ingber (47:03)
Well, that brings us just we're talking about, you know, we're talking about Israel, talking a little bit about Cheva. And we don't have to go directly into anything in the current moment related to overt politics. But obviously, you're speaking when you talk about democracy and talking about having a better democracy. And we'll put into the the line of notice of the episode a remarkable address that you gave at Columbia University. And in it, you articulated a number of really important pieces of what you kind of touched on a couple of minutes ago about the power that dance had.
as to create citizens where freedom of expression and freedom of articulation is there. So maybe speak to, you know, at this present moment, the kind of, the world that we're living in in terms of what we need to remember. You told the students to remember a couple of things very clearly, and maybe you could share with our listeners.
Jody Arnhold (47:52)
Well, I
remember I said, you know, have a big idea. A big idea. know, with Dell, that was the beginning of the big idea. Dance for every child. And now the T-shirt. Dance for every child.
Rabbi David Ingber (47:57)
Have a big day.
And
what would a world look like where every child was dance-literate?
Jody Arnhold (48:11)
Yeah, well, that people be able to talk to each other and figure things out and understand that there's more than one way to do something and, you know, come up with something together, create children, people that work in that way.
Rabbi David Ingber (48:24)
They have a different skill set, a different toolkit. That's amazing.
Jody Arnhold (48:28)
And I also said in that speech, I thought, in writing that speech, I thought about all the mentors I've had and, you know, something that I always say to young people, find a mentor, be a mentor. Even now, you have something, play it forward. And, you know, everything is developmental. College students who are studying dance are...
not thinking about teaching. They're thinking about dancing, they're thinking about maybe they're thinking about choreography, but I think that they should all understand dance education because some of them is going to really ⁓ resonate with them, it's going to take over and all of them should know because all of them have to be prepared to give back. Where did they come from? Where did you come from? Who were your teachers? Who are you going to teach?
Rabbi David Ingber (49:23)
It's such a fundamental question, I think that like, you any of our listeners, if you just listen carefully, listeners, to the way that Jodi has been speaking about her journey, your journey, Jodi, you have not failed to mention moments where you needed mentorship or where you were provided mentorship, even on the board. When it came to the while you had a mentor, you consistently are walking out that talk that you find someone to mentor you or you become a mentor and you give back in that way. And that's kind of an ethic that you embody.
And even as you became a master teacher, like you are now giving back by creating more mentors and more for children, which is remarkable. Okay, see you holding up your finger.
Jody Arnhold (50:02)
And this is really important.
You've heard this before, but it is really true. By your students, you are taught. You I get inspired all the time by the work I do because of the people that I've known when they were beginning and watched till now they're teaching me and I get to learn.
Rabbi David Ingber (50:26)
It's amazing, like there's a phrase in the Talmud, that I've learned from all of my students more than I could ever have studied, Like, that my students taught me more than any other. We have that also from our children too, that there's a way that they show us things that we wouldn't have seen, and having that feedback, having those mirrors. It's an amazing thing just to think that at this moment that there's a paucity of humility around
perspectives, like there's almost like a posturing of certainty when there should be collaborative problem solving as opposed to a kind of false provado about knowing something at this moment, kind of acting like you were an expert when you were not, that kind of thing that's happening at this moment. And dance provides a kind of a model of how one is listening even as one is moving, one is also adjusting. That's a kind of...
hands-on experience of what it is to negotiate and to learn and to be humble. This moment's a bit scary though, let's just be honest. mean, how are you navigating? What's giving you hope and what are you drawing from in this moment? ⁓
Jody Arnhold (51:32)
You
know, the hope ⁓ is the teachers. You know, the people that I see doing the work, the artists, the teachers, they give me hope. The students at Hunter give me hope. The students at Teachers College give me hope. That really gives me hope. Those people are graduating and going all over the country.
and you know they even have a think tank. We started an institute for dance, education, research, policy and leadership. So it's a real think tank up there.
Rabbi David Ingber (52:10)
So people who are going to be those mentors and help bring out the wisdom of dance to others are giving you hope. They give me hope. That pipeline is not drying up. They're still there.
Jody Arnhold (52:20)
I don't think it can be stopped at this point because of those people. And I'm still looking for the next big idea, so, you know.
Rabbi David Ingber (52:26)
Right, you're like, that's a idea. So for leaders out there also who are listening to you and also know that you fearlessly went into different areas that were new for you and kind of like you said, okay, I don't know how to do that, but I'm gonna learn, gonna lean in. I'm gonna listen and I'll find a mentor and I'll kind of make my way.
Jody Arnhold (52:39)
to listen.
Who am I going to listen
to?
Rabbi David Ingber (52:45)
Yeah, that's great. Just who am I gonna listen to? Just love that as a phrase, who am I gonna listen to? Leadership begins with that. And also, learning a new skill is who am I gonna listen to, who am gonna follow, who's gonna show me? You were the...
the chair of the board of a global cultural institution at a time of great, I would say, challenge, trials, tribulations, October 7th, kind of the elections, and I just mentioned, of course, that it's a bit scary time right now. Were all of the skills that you learned as an educator, as a master educator, were those what helped you navigate this? I I just say that as someone who works at the 92nd Street Y and had not known you until I came to
the Y a couple of years ago, I was always taken by the ways in which you model some of the things that you've been speaking about today.
Jody Arnhold (53:36)
I brought myself to that role, I really did. There's really nothing else that I could do. you know, maybe somebody might look back someday and think, you know, she was different. Because I'm not a corporate person. I'm not a corporate person. But I'm a strategic person. And I really have relished, loved every minute of being chair of the 92nd Street Y.
I was surprised when I found myself, share of the 92nd Street Y, but I've loved every minute of it.
Rabbi David Ingber (54:10)
One of the encounters that brings a smile to my face every time it happens is when I see you at the Y outside of a dance class or there to be with your grandkids, right? Just like you said about John, that he loves being, would have loved to have been a kindergarten teacher. You're still a teacher. You're still in the classroom. still love being around children.
Jody Arnhold (54:26)
No, I'm a teacher and I'm dance educator and a dance advocate. And I want the dancers around me that can hear my mission and find a way to help, find their way to help.
Rabbi David Ingber (54:40)
So should we all be going and pick a dance class? Would that be like a good next step as it were, so to speak? Like everybody get out there, take a tap class, go take a.
Jody Arnhold (54:47)
you should
go to your kids school and say, who's the dance teacher? We don't have a, you don't have a dance teacher? Yeah, well get one, you Now do that. Then go take.
Rabbi David Ingber (54:55)
Well, have we got a...
We can help remedy that.
And go take a dance class. Well, I know that... advocate. First advocate. Yeah. Right. Well, I just say that it was a pleasure talking to you. just... There's a warmth that you exude and there's an approachability and accessibility. You're really just...
Jody Arnhold (55:04)
Advocate.
Rabbi David Ingber (55:17)
Like that eight year old, ⁓ just being drawn to the light, being drawn to something that inspired you and something that I think a lot of us at The Y would love to see you with that drum, taking it off the wall and getting us moving a little bit. Yeah. Who knows what the next big idea is, but I think they're just listening to your story. There is a real clear sense, I think, that anybody who's listening to this, that once you find that next big idea, that'll be something that you'll be passionate about, but also that will help others in a profound way.
Jody Arnhold (55:30)
Maybe I'll do that.
Well, you know, recognize your passion. That's my advice. Free advice. Recognize your passion and go for it. Find a way.
Rabbi David Ingber (55:56)
Well, we just want to say thank you for your passion and for your legacy that you are leaving as you're living it. A legacy of teaching and of following your passion and inspiring others. And it's pretty remarkable, Jodie. ⁓
Jody Arnhold (56:10)
trying to think of what
I left out and whether this could possibly have made any sense.
Rabbi David Ingber (56:14)
I think that it made a lot of sense. hope. Yeah. Thank you for being with us. Thank you.
Jody Arnhold (56:18)
So. ⁓
Rabbi David Ingber (56:28)
I want to thank our team producer Efrod Bigger, our editor Maya Geyer, and music by Shimon Smith. Thank you to the 92nd Street Y and a special thanks to Eden Sidney Foster. I'm your host, rally David Ingber, and this is Detours and Destinations. See you next Tuesday in the next episode. And until then, all of your detours be destinations.