About Us
About Spoke the Hub Dancing, Inc.
Spoke the Hub Dancing, Inc.,(STH) a tax-exempt, not-for-profit, dance and community arts organization founded by Elise Long, has been a prime mover and shaker on the Brooklyn new dance and arts scene since 1979.
Dubbed a “community treasure’ and “cultural pioneers” by the Brooklyn Historical Society for their groundbreaking work in the industrial Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn starting in 1985, Long and STH have spawned the area’s most enduring and innovative new dance and community arts centers, including the Gowanus Arts Exchange on Douglass Street (which morphed into the Brooklyn Arts Exchange/BAX) ; the STH Re:Creation Center on Union Street; and two different Gowanus Arts Annexes on Butler Street.
At these centers, Spoke the Hub offered a broad spectrum of Dance, Fitness, Martial Arts, Theatre, Music and Art classes for all ages and skill levels, from infants to senior citizens, taught by the area’s finest master teachers. Additionally, STH has produced the work of hundreds of new, cutting edge and traditional performance artists of all ages, career stages, and genres, providing critical rehearsal, and performance space for the creation and presentation of new performance work.
Concurrently while supporting and producing the work of legions of her fellow artists, Long has created over a hundred original, idiosyncratic, small and large-scale folk/dance/theater works featuring untrained and trained dancers of all ages. Called the “Cecil deMille of Dance in Brooklyn”, “a visionary”, and “a creative whirling dervish” by the press and public, Long’s work has been presented indoors and out of doors, in the States, Canada and abroad, at dozens of lowbrow venues (including across the Brooklyn Bridge, on the Staten Island Ferry, at the Coney Island Boardwalk, in parades and in the Brooklyn Brewery beer hall) and in higher brow venues (including Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, the World Trade Centers, Celebrate Brooklyn Bandshell, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Dance Theater Workshop to name just a few.)
STH has also offered exhibit space to dozens of visual artists and a well-equipped rehearsal, teaching and performance homebase to legions of other independent performers, teaching artists and organizations including Dance Theatre of the Deaf; Gateway (a NeuroDiverse adult dance group); Bharatha Pennsweran School of Indian Dance; Gracedrums; Maracatu Brazilian Drummers; Laurie Shayler/ Dance Connection (Ballroom Dance); Kyokushin Jutsu Kai (Karate Dojo); The Music Room (musicians’ guild); Neuromotif Music Therapists; Open Source & Koko plus many, many more individuals and groups.
STH continues to collaborate regularly with local public schools, educational institutions, and civic groups, including past work with Brooklyn Community Housing Services, 5th Avenue Business Improvement District, The Old Stone House, Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, Fountain House, Garden of Union, President Street Green Space, The Gowanus Conservancy, Park Slope Senior Center, Groundswell, Gowanus Dredgers and Methodist Hospital to name just a few.
Long and Spoke the Hub have received awards for their cultural work in Brooklyn from the Brooklyn Boro President, Brooklyn Community Housing Services, and the Gowanus Conservancy. They look forward to many more years of supporting living artists while building community in Brooklyn and beyond through providing the general public with accessible creative arts practice, contemplation, and observation opportunities of the highest caliber at a grassroots level.
About Elise Long
Elise, It was an honor and a privilege to be a part of your piece. It was also just a lovely experience. I so respect and enjoy your artistic vision and joie de vivre in every thing you do, and I appreciate your enthusiasm, love and professionalism as it is evident in and shared by all the wonderful people involved in your endeavors. Thanks for bringing us together in such a wonderful way.
Born in Coalinga, CA and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area where she received numerous awards for her art work in grammar school through high school, Long attended Middlebury College in Vermont on scholarship, graduating Magna Cum Laude, with Highest Honors in Dance and Studio Art. She moved to New York City in 1978 to study and be certified in Laban’s Effort/Shape Movement Analysis under Irmgard Bartenieff pursuant to attending NYU’s graduate program in Dance. Upon moving to Park Slope in 1979, Long incorporated her new company, Spoke the Hub Dancing, produced her first full evening concert in Manhattan, and founded the Living Room Performance Space on 9th Street and 7th Avenue in Park Slope where she created all of the community programs – classes, performances, artists services, art exhibits and special events – that continue to grow to this day at Spoke the Hub and beyond.
In addition to being the Artistic Director of Spoke the Hub Dancing and creating her own unique brand of folk/dance/theater, Long has taught Dance, Fitness and related Arts to all ages for over 50 years in colleges, public schools, community centers, hospitals, and her own studios. Has also done graduate work in Exercise Physiology, Anatomy & Kinesiology and Dance at NYU, Columbia Teachers College, Queens College, and Long Island University and performed briefly with Marta Renzi, Lisa Kraus, Meredith Monk, the Newfoundland Dance Theater, and even made a cameo appearance with The Royal Shakespeare Company at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Opera House among others. She continues to unleash her “Miles of Tiles” community mosaics up the front of buildings, around shower stalls, across table tops, down hallways and stealthily embedded in wet public sidewalks and planters around Brooklyn and Rhinecliff,, New York, and in Sandpoint, Idaho