"Teen uses dance to inspire kids in foster and homeless systems,"
By Jake Pearson - New York Daily News

Whenever Davida Walker wonders why she was abandoned by her birth mother and dumped into the foster care system, she dances.

"I get to be myself ... when I'm dancing," said Davida, 17, who still remembers waiting in vain for her mother to show up for weekly visits at the foster care agency. "I don't have to explain myself."

For the past year, Davida has been sharing her love of dance and its power to soothe anxiety and stress by teaching 15 kids who live with their families at the Flatlands Family Shelter in East New York.

"The dance is lyrical; it's expressing your feelings through music," said Davida, who was placed into a foster family at just 2 years old along with her three brothers after her drug-addicted biological mother neglected them.

"I take the kids and ask them what they're feeling and to put it in a dance move instead of speaking it."

The dancers, ages 11 to 18, are currently rehearsing for a Feb. 11 dance recital at Medgar Evers College. Since February 2009, they have turned a second-floor room of the shelter on Linden Blvd. and Avenue D into a dance studio.

Once a week with Davida - and almost every day on its own - the troupe practices moves to R&B and gospel music. "When I'm up there, I just do me," said dancer Shantelle Thomas, 12, who came to the Flatlands shelter with her mom eight months ago after they were evicted from their Flatbush apartment.

"These are great kids ... When we dance, we're just getting out all the problems we went through in our lives." Davida and her brothers were placed through the Miracle Makers foster care agency on Atlantic Ave. in the home of Bedford-Stuyvesant foster mom Catherine Walker, where she has been ever since.