Despite Brooklyn, N.Y. being more than 500 miles away, the well being of the city’s youth is not just another mindless thought for an Ohio University freshman.
Jordan Allen, a freshman studying media arts, is involved in the “Mindlezz Thoughtz” program, a dance program based in New York City operating out of the Brooklyn area.
The program is rooted in breakdancing and “Chicken Noodle Soup,” a style of dance that developed in Harlem and the Bronx in 2006 and has since spread to an underground nation of more than 1,000 dancers, Allen said.
The program will host two events in Brooklyn this winter, with costs totaling around $5,000 for both.
Allen hopes that these events will raise enough money to fund the idea for the Brooklyn School for Collaborative Studies, which aims to teach kids about music production and audio engineering. It also offers dance and songwriting classes, said Najee Brown, CEO and founder of Mindlezz Thoughtz.
“We already started the school last year and taught kids how to create their own music videos, and now we hope to expand and offer dance classes, amongst other things,” said Brown, the first to envision a place where youth could interact in a creative, positive environment.
Since arriving on campus, Allen has been offering photo shoots for $25 a shoot and promoting the program around campus to raise money.
“We need all the help we can get,” Allen said. “I want to get Athens involved and help raise money here so we can achieve our goals.”
The main goal of Mindlezz Thoughtz is to have a positive influence on the culture that surrounds the inner-city youth, according to Allen.
“This new type of dance and expression has given inner-city youth an environment where they can express their culture and what they love to do,” he said.
Allen, who works as the creative direction officer for the Faces of Artistic Movement department, hopes that this will help the program branch out and help more kids.
“As a kid who grew up in New York City, I want to see this grow and influence the culture,” Allen said.
According to Brown, Mindlezz Thoughtz recently had their first major success by getting hip-hop artist “Dyme a Duzin” signed by Warner Bros.
“Everyone knows about the negative things that happen in New York because of the news, but we want to make sure people know about the positive stuff as well,” Brown said.
jr200009@ohiou.edu
