©2025 Kim Kokich
The minute Rotita Cunningham enters a room, it’s as if someone turned on all the lights and it’s showtime. Whether teaching jazz or hip hop to seven-year-olds or adults, her energy level never seems to waver. She is unfailingly positive and empathic. And it’s impossible to be in her presence without feeling uplifted.
To us here at CityDance, Cunningham is known simply as “Ro”. Her experiences as a student, as a dance competition contestant, as a performer for major production companies, such as Disney, and as a former co-owner of her own dance studio, have all led to this stage in her life where she is doing what she loves: teaching and choreographing for CityDance Conservatory’s students.
She joined the CityDance faculty in 2021, teaching for both the Conservatory and Studios. In the years since, she also created dance pieces for our conservatory concert performances. Her choreography has a high-energy style which incorporates cutting edge jazz and hip hop moves while also tipping its metaphorical hat to respected jazz choreographers of the past, whether it’s a little from Bob Fosse, “Jo Jo” Smith, or even singer James Brown. For CityDance Conservatory’s recent Winter Concert, Ro choreographed several pieces, including a suite inspired by the Broadway Musical, The Great Gatsby. She had read the book in high school, wasn’t too fond of it, then saw the movie (2012). She says, “it was kind of cool to see it, having read it, and now it’s a musical Choreographed by Dom [Dominique] Kelley…this tall black man who is absolutely amazing, so I thought, you know what? Let’s celebrate this, because having a black choreographer on Broadway is cool”.
Learning the piece involved a little history lesson, “I did talk to the students about what society looked like [after World War I and before the Great Depression] so they could understand everybody was going a little crazy”. She wants Conservatory students to learn not only dance movements, but how and why they matter.
Ro believes it’s vital for students to be allowed to be who they are and to feel safe in the classroom. She explains: “in a way it’s like dancing from the inside out. I want my students to show up and be themselves. There’s an openness that I want them to have…. young dancers are capable of learning more when they’re more open, when they’re not thinking before they move, or thinking while they move. They can simply just own themselves to be there and accept whatever comes from them…. It starts with respect…. I’m very intentional about how I speak with them, and what I say to them. I mean [at the start of] most of my classes I have a “question of the day” to break the ice, and it helps me to get to know them as people”.
In the studio, where the actual teaching of dance technique begins, Ro sets the example of how to behave in class–remembering how her first ballet teacher, Miss Annette Holt, instilled respect: “She was from a bygone era, but she was the most consistent teacher I had throughout my training. She was very strict but very understanding and she was the biggest example of how to behave–there was structure without fear. When she talked to us she was serious about what she was saying but we never were afraid of her…she would say if you were 15 minutes early, you’re on time, because she wanted you to be semi-warm before class warm-up”.
So, in addition to learning the vocabulary of dance and the basic physical exercises to build strength, Ro’s students learn to be on time, fully present, to avoid injury, and really move. And to accomplish this, Ro’s method is structured but it’s also open to change: “I build my curriculum, write it out, before I step into the classroom. And to apply it, I always leave space, and grace, for my audience—the students—because my curriculum is just words. Of course, it differs for each skill level and age, and capacity, but it’s just really important to [be flexible] so that I can reach them the appropriate way”.
Ro’s varied dance background began when she was very young, in Richmond, Virginia, where her mother, who was a dancer, enrolled her in a pre-ballet class at age three. “My dad was a street dancer, and my mom was a ballet/modern dancer up to college and she stopped when she went into college. She would say that I could identify a rhythm in a song before I could even take a step. It’s in my DNA”. Miss Annette Holt was the ballet teacher at the Boys and Girls Club of Richmond, Virginia and Ro was there for several years and followed Holt when she moved her classes to a new cultural art center.
Ro was getting noticed, and even though very young, she was chosen to dance with a group of other children for Disney in “Sebastian’s Jamboree”, where she says she can almost be seen wearing a pink top. She became busy working as a young dancer while in junior high and high school in various professional productions in the area. She says it was the first time she was seen as “just the talent” and the experience was eye-opening: “I think it was a little confusing coming from a space where everyone knew who I was. I was safe, you know. They had my best interests…so I had to quickly understand that you’re literally just there for the job, whether you got it because you look a certain way or you dance, you’re just simply there for the job”. It was this experience that solidified Ro’s intention to really know her students.
Ro kept up with her dance training and went on to earn her degree in Early Childhood Education. Her time as a Dance Team Director eventually moved her towards being able to open her own dance studio with her husband. When COVID hit, everything changed. Her husband’s job moved up to the DC area just as they were considering a new lease on their studio in Richmond. They decided not to renew, and Ro moved into the Montgomery County area four years ago with her husband and young daughter.
Ro Cunningham is philosophical about the path that she is on, that brought her to CityDance Conservatory, “I’m doing what I said I was going to do…All the girls I grew up dancing with are also teaching, which is a beautiful thing to see because life can make you alter your direction. I have been very blessed, and I’m honored to be here to share the gems that I’ve collected over the years with my students. They decide to use it if they decide to use it, and I’m okay with that”. It’s that kind of calm confidence that allows Ro’s students to take a breath, relax, and get ready to learn.