January 2017 | Going Global

The bell rings at Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts (SOTA), signaling the end of lunch and the start of afternoon arts classes. I am standing in the high school’s large, quiet dance studio when the door bursts open and a group of teens files in, talking and laughing. This is the inaugural class of SOTA’s World Dance program, and the students are here for their West African dance class, which meets three times a week. High-energy recorded music suddenly fills the space, and