Brookline Community Center for the Arts opens in Aish Ha’Torah location

By Susie Davidson

Advocate Correspondent

BROOKLINE - Dan Yonah Ben-Dror Marshall realized his dream project this past weekend with the opening of the Brookline Community Center for the Arts. Assuming the 14 Green St. space formerly occupied by Aish Ha’Torah in the heart of Coolidge Corner, the BCCA, which he runs with partners Olaf Bleck, who directs the dance company SalsaBoston and holds a master’s degree in engineering and business management from M.I.T., and independent consultant Vlad Selsky, began operating Sunday, April 13. Currently in the midst of a weeklong, free program of classes, events and workshops, the center’s spring session classes will begin April 21.

Aish Ha’Torah, which is relocating to an Allston office, had been holding most of its events in other locations. A Torah scroll in the name of Lenny Zakim remains in the vestibule.

The non-profit, privately-funded center was many months in the making. Marshall and Bleck, who had met at Sophia’s dance club in Boston where both were working, saw a need for for more teaching and rehearsal spaces for area artists; they shared an interest in promoting multiculturalism as well. With the assistance of volunteers and supporters, promotion and renovation has resulted in the launching of the BCCA, which features 2350-square-foot sprung-hardwood dance floor, 50-inch video monitors, mirrors, lights, and other state-of-the-art equipment. Six dance studios of varied sizes will be completed by late May.

Classes and workshops will cover world dance and martial arts, including Kung Fu, Tai Chi, Chi Kung, genuine Bussey style and other forms of self defense, as well as tap, jazz, hip-hop, urban, modern, and ballet dance, contact and performance improvisation, theatre, drama, dance history, 5 Rhythms, Irish Céilí and step dance, Middle Eastern and belly dance, international/world dance, flamenco, salsa, tango and other Latin dances, health and fitness offerings including Hatha yoga, Pilates, fitness, stretching, and strengthening for all ages, and musical theater, creative movement, pre-ballet, and yoga for children. Hours will be 6 a.m.-10 p.m., with after-hours events as well.

Marshall, who holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and is completing a master’s degree in computer engineering at Northeastern University, studied dance in Western Massachusetts and Israel. A self-professed conservadox who wears a yarmulke and keeps kosher, he was born in Jerusalem and attended the Frankel grade school. “We spent about15 hours per week studying Torah,” he recalled. “My bar mitzvah parsha deals with the rules of decency and conduct,” he said, noting that he has continued to follow its precepts throughout his life. He occasionally reads Torah at the Sephardic Congregation of New England, located in the basement of Temple Beth Zion in Washington Square, Brookline.

Marshall’s mother Esther, the foreign language editor at Heinle Thompson Publishing, was from a religious Moroccan family of 10 brothers and sisters. She finished high school by 14 and in Jerusalem, college by 18, where she worked for embassies as a language translator. Marshall’s father, Jim, an accountant at the Four Seasons Hotel, oversees finances at the BCCA. A Great Neck, New York native, he wa active in the civil rights movement, writing his 4-volume master’s thesis on the history of black people in America.

“I went to Israel in 1967, during the six-day warm,” he said. “I taught English at Beit Hinuck high school in Jerusalem for 18 years, was a department chairman and a National Examiner in English.” He stayed until 1989 and came back to the U.S. to complete research toward a Ph.D. in American History at Tel Aviv University.

Their other son, Gad, is a neurology resident at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and their daughter Yael is a sophomore at MIT. Dan Marshall’s paternal grandmother, Evelyn Berg, was the first doctor to work with Margaret Sanger in New York running Planned Parenthood clinics.

His maternal grandparents lived next to the Beit Sanhedrin cemetery, where governmental officials, and some family members, are buried. “It was right on the cusp of an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood,” he recalled, “who were not only extremely religious, but also extremely accepting of different religious practices.”

Marshall had joined a dance company in Jerusalem in 1987; that year, its choreographer, Michal Ness, presented African-American jazz. “I was always doing pop and funk and disco as a child,” he added. He left Israel in 1989 at age 15; at Brookline High School, he was active in the Black Student Alliance. “My parents worked with people from the Ivory Coast and many other cultures, so I was always very accepting,” he said. His sister, who created a dance group called “On the Verge” and was also active in multicultural activities, received a town community service award.

At the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Marshall was active at the Chabad house. He became involved with the Cape Verdean club, and associated with a black fraternity as well. “I felt at home, because like me, they kept their culture and heritage,” he said.

To schedule a faculty interview, inquire about studio space availability, make a donation or investment or for more information, call Marshall at 617-970-1444, email Dan_Y_Marshall@prodigy.net, or visit www.BCCAonline.com. Tax-deductible donations, which the Center is actively seeking, may be sent to the Brookline Community Center for the Arts, Inc., 14 Green St., Brookline, 02446.