Roxbury Center for the Performing Arts
Andrea is well-known as an accomplished dancer, choreographer, and teacher. She is the artistic director and founder of the Roxbury Center for the Performing Arts.
Andrea grew up in Dorchester and began her dance training at the age of three with the Mildred Kennedy-Bradic in Roxbury. Andrea graduated from the Boston Conservatory of Music with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and also studied at the Dance Theater of Harlem.
Andrea began offering dance classes at the Roxbury YMCA as an experimental program for the organization. Throughout this experience, she realized the need for young people of color in the community to be exposed to the performing arts. This prompted Andrea to open doors of Andrea’s School of Dance. Her school grew rapidly from three to several hundred students, inspiring her to change the name to Roxbury Center for the Performing Arts in 1972. The dance school has been open for 60 years and has produced professional dancers like Christopher Huggins who joined the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
In 2017, Andrea was honored by the Boston Dance Alliance as Dr. Michael Shannon Dance Champion and in 2023, she was recognized as one of “Boston’s most admired, beloved, and successful Black Women leaders” by the Black Women Lead project.
Andrea’s legacy lives on through the thousands of dancers that have gone through the Roxbury Center for the Performing Arts.
To learn more about the Roxbury Center for Performing Arts, visit www.rcpaboston.org.
