Review of Children’s Museum of Manhattan’s Brand New “Let’s Dance!” Exhibit
By Lee Walker Watson, 11 years old, Manhattan
On Saturday, July 1, a new exhibit, “Let’s Dance,”opened at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan showcasing the importance of dance throughout the world. This motivational exhibit allows you to move your body, try different percussion instruments, and lets you see professional dancers weekly.
“Let’s Dance” was created because the curator, Ellen Bari, wanted a place where people could experience all different types of dance, and celebrate the joy of dance in many different ways, including pictures, film, and music. Ms. Bari said “We thought it best to open the exhibit in summer because when kids are on break, they can easily come here and experience the magic of dance themselves.”
One of the features of the exhibit is a little screen that plays a one hour film, P.S. Dance, a documentary that reveals the impact dance has on kids in grades K-12 thought New York City schools.
My favorite part of the exhibit is the dance portal, a dome shaped screen with a projector that projects images of professional dancers in New York City dance companies. 
Next to the dance portal, there are some soft multi-colored pillows called choreography pillows, which have different types of movement on them such as hop, skip, and jump. If you arrange the pillows in any way, you will have the beginning of a dance. 
Opposite the choreography pillows there is a multi-colored shadow podium for you to show off your moves, with lights on the ceiling that reflect your shadow in many different angles. There is a wall of mirrors for you to look at yourself while you’re dancing. There’s even a miniature ballet bar and a dress-up corner with snazzy costumes for kids to try on.
The exhibit will have dance parties every afternoon, with dance workshops with guest teaching artists weekly, starting July 6 and ending August 17, and weekly performances, starting July 9 and ending August 6.
I would recommend seeing this exhibit. “Let’s Dance” shows you why it’s important to dance. Dance helps you improve your memory, teaches problem solving, improves your mind, builds social skills, boosts self-confidence, builds imagination, heightens the spirit, makes you strong, and is a beautiful art form. All of these reasons are why dancing is so important to our lives, and that’s why “Let’s Dance” is perfect for families.
Dance on over to “Let’s Dance” at CMOM!
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