Kisha Cunningham, Paisley Academy of Performing Arts

What I do: Kisha Cunningham shows how the arts and sciences can get along.

Cunningham, 35, teaches technology part time during the day, holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in technology education, and has a doctorate in work force education and training development.

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Karl Ritzler / Special

Kisha Cunningham has the flexibility of a dancer — working in technology and the performing arts.

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But nights and Saturdays, she takes off her technology hat and becomes a dancer at the Paisley Academy of Performing Arts in Marietta.

As executive director of the academy, she wears another set of hats as both administrator and teacher.

“I’m all over,” she said from the academy offices, housed in one of the buildings of Turner Chapel A.M.E. Church. “I’m the administrator, teach ballet and work with the baby groups. … I’m in every part of it, from marketing to costuming on a dime.”

The academy teaches about 85 students — most, by far, are girls — from 18 months to adults in ballet, jazz, hip-hop, lyrical, tap, liturgical, African and modern dance. The academy also offers theater classes.

“We teach them the art of dance and performance,” she said. “They all know I expect them to do their best.”

The lessons culminate with several recitals and performances during the year. She choreographs the performances and works in the history lessons that accompany the dance and music during the Black History Month performance.

Recently, when the performance focused on the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and ’30s, her students got their first exposure to jazz and scat styles. She recalled seeing a student walking down the hall reciting some rhythmical, nonsense scat syllables, something she didn’t expect from a child of the hip-hop era.

“I’m also a mentor and help with homework and teenage crises,” Cunningham said. “I can be a role model.”

While many of her students are Turner Chapel members, “they come from all over” for the family feel. “That’s what I try to offer the kids here,” Cunningham said.

What got me interested in this: “I started dancing when I was 3,” Cunningham said. “A love for the performing arts was always there.”

She graduated from the School of the Arts in Rochester, N.Y., but “when I graduated from high school, I decided I wanted to be an engineer.” While studying technical education at North Carolina A&T State University and while pursuing her doctorate at Penn State, she kept dancing.

“This is the path I was meant to take,” she said. “When something is in you, you can’t get rid of it.”

Best part of my job: “Seeing a smile on a child’s face, seeing a smile on an adult’s face” when they perform or watch someone special dance, she said.

“When they come to class, they transform into a new being,” often leaving their everyday troubles at the door, she said. “No amount of money or fame comes close to what that feels like.”

Most challenging part: “Resources,” Cunningham said. “Trying to keep it open.”

The academy has four instructors year-round and an additional five in the summer to help with the workload and to prepare for the big summer production.

Still, she said, “When I leave here, I’m filled with joy even though the resources are tight.”

What people don’t know about my job: “Most of my ideas come when I’m driving in the car,” Cunningham said.

What keeps me going: “The children and love for the performing arts itself,” she said.

Preparation needed for this job: You need a dance background, especially in ballet; the will and desire to work with children; patience; and a head for business, Cunningham said.

“If you don’t learn to do the back end work to run a business,” it can be doomed, she said.

Besides her technical education, Cunningham also has taken private dance lessons, and she majored in dance and clarinet at the arts school in Rochester. She continues to take dance and master classes. The academy is working on becoming certified by the Dance Educators of America.

While in college, she performed for five years with the E. Gwynn Dance Company, an African dance troupe in North Carolina; became interested in liturgical dance; and taught dancing to teenagers. She danced with the Nommo Performing Arts Company and taught classes in both work force education and dance at Penn State. She also dabbled in acting with a theater company in North Carolina.

During the day, she is a parapro in the computer lab at East Valley Middle School in Cobb County, where she also teaches choreography. She also was a teacher at Druid Hills High School in DeKalb County.

She started the dance academy at Turner Chapel in 2004 as a half-day summer program.

- By Karl W. Ritzler, for ajcjobs. Got an interesting job that you love? E-mail your story to jobseditor@yahoo.com.

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