Dancer and film star Debbie Allen brings her Imagination to TCU The nearly 150 local youth arrived at the Ballet Building. They tied their tennies in Studio A to the pounding beat of hip hop music. Heads bobbed, feet shuffled, shoulders bopped as they lined up — and even showed off — during the two-week dance institute sponsored by the Kennedy Center’s Imagination Celebration.

Of course, it helps when the event’s mastermind is choreographer and producer Debbie Allen, renowned for her roles in the hit film and later TV series, Fame. She also produced the critically acclaimed film Amistad with Steven Spielberg and Colin Wilson and has choreographed the annual Academy Awards for five years.

“I want to promote dance at its highest level,” Allen told the dancers, as her faculty of five professional dancers stood at her side. “You must be versed in many dance languages because the art of dance is going in so many directions.”

And true enough, many of her would-be pupils, ages 7 to 18, had been trained in classical ballet or tap, but few had experienced the rolling, pulsing, get-down movements of ultra-hot hip hop and pounding beat of genuine African dances. A large dance vocabulary was just one of the goals Allen had for the third annual Debbie Allen Dance Institute held at TCU.

She first came to Fort Worth to present a ballet and was so enamored with the community that she contacted TCU about space to hold her institute.

“The best part is seeing kids who have never danced an African dance, or Hip Hop, or tap to suddenly ‘get it,'” she said. “It’s so wonderful to see their enthusiasm.”