Sarah Griesbach 
Nimbus Dance has been bringing wonder and joy to audiences and providing local students with top-notch dance instruction in Jersey City for 20 years. The company continues to grow its reach as the professional dance company expands its touring production schedule and opens an extension school in Summit, NJ. Read on to learn all about the magic of Nimbus Dance in Jersey City and beyond.
Nimbus Dance is a Jersey City Treasure
Each December, the brilliant choreography, dynamic sets, and sophisticated costumes of the Nimbus original Jersey Nutcracker Ballet ratchet up the drama to make a traditional story wonderfully new. This is an urban adventure, replete with a colorfully corrupt mayor and an appearance from the Statue of Liberty. The Waltz of the Flowers becomes the Waltz of the Hipsters. The sweetness of the 1816 E.T.A. Hoffman story, made enchanting by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s magnificent score in 1893, is renewed in its sweetness and enchantment with innovations that keep the audience laughing and gasping and so glad they came. The Jersey Nutcracker Ballet is a company staple with audiences clamoring for the next year’s creative iteration all over the state.
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Nimbus has its own tradition of weaving bold new elements into the fabric of the most classic ballets. Its Firebird is like no other. The Nimbus version takes Aaron Copeland and Martha Graham’s Appalachian Spring becomes Spring when performed by Nimbus, shifting the time and place while taking every advantage of Copeland’s moving score and Graham’s emotionally expressive technique. This combination of our contemporary world with nineteenth-century ballets based on old folktales makes Nimbus productions of the classics one of a kind.
Attending approachable, relatable, evocative ballet is a treat. Seeing these world-class dance performances at a local venue performed by a local theater company is, for many, inspirational. Nimbus founder Samuel Potts was already bringing ballet to audiences throughout New Jersey when he realized that there was no pre-professional dance program in Jersey City. Children couldn’t access after-school or summer dance classes unless they commuted out of the city, a restriction that kept scores of would-be dancers from their jazz, tap, and toe shoe dreams.
A City That Needed a Dance School
Jersey City benefits in all sorts of ways from its across-the-river distance from NYC. Some things are, arguably, made more difficult for Chilltown by that proximity. Arts institutions have not fared as well as they might have without the bright and shiny competition for donations, members, and audiences on the other side of the Hudson. Samuel Potts, the founder of Nimbus Dance Company and School, had danced with the American Repertory Ballet and as a soloist with the Martha Graham Dance Company. He founded Nimbus in 2005 because he knew the importance of accessible professional dance programs to young people for whom proximity would mean possibility.
“Dance is a great leveler,” says Samuel. “When you go into a dance studio, it doesn’t matter where you have come from; you are celebrated for what you bring to the studio, to the stage. And each dancer brings their story. Within the choreography of any performance, there is an alchemy in the combination of the dancers’ stories.”
In September 2020, Nimbus relocated to a state-of-the-art center at the Lively in the Powerhouse Arts District of Jersey City at 321 Warren Street. Today, the Nimbus Arts Center is the largest dance-based arts center in the State of New Jersey, with interwoven wings of Nimbus Dance, the School of Nimbus, the Firmament Art Gallery, a Black Box Theatre, and an array of community engagement programs. The School of Nimbus offers professional dance instruction in ballet, modern, hip hop, tap, and many other dance techniques for children, teens, and pre-professional students. There’s even a class for toddlers and their parents — “Ma, Pa, & Me!” The school keeps class sizes small, and they are taught by dancers within the company.
It’s an “everybody can dance” environment until students set their sights on a dance career, and then it’s hardcore. Acting and voice classes are there for the triple threats, along with Zumba and Pilates. Pre-professionally trained 14- and 15-year-olds can even audition for the highly sought-after Jersey Nutcracker youth slots.
Nimbus is Spreading its Magic
The future is bright for Nimbus. The company performs regularly at NJ PAC, Keane University, and all across New Jersey. It is in demand. So much so that it is opening up a Summit satellite school. Through its residency program, Nimbus regularly partners with instructors who bring diverse dance forms to their students and contribute to the high-energy, edge-of-your-seat performances.
Nimbus is a word for a raincloud that brings moisture and fertility when it enters the environment and changes the atmosphere, which, Samuel Potts feels, is the effect that art has on a community. Nimbus is also a term for a halo or an aura, and the dancers, according to Samual, are surrounded by light on a stage, glowing and rather magical. His dancers certainly are. And more audiences will have the opportunity to see them that way as Nimbus continues to expand its reach and push the boundaries of the arts with innovative new work.
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