Jackie Henderson, director/choreographer of Off the Curb Hip Hop dance group, teaches youngsters how to dance during a Summer End Festival in East Greenwich.

THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL / RUBEN W. PEREZ

MIDDLETOWN — Jackie Henderson is closing Off the Curb dance studio after 16 years schooling area youths in the hottest hip-hop moves and the lessons of nonviolence and drug resistance.

Henderson cites a number of reasons for the difficult decision to shutter her studio, whose diverse dancers have performed overseas, in a PBS documentary, in a Wesley Snipes movie and for incarcerated and HIV-positive children.

When she first opened the studio in 1992, in Newport, as a safe activity for area teenagers, Henderson offered the state’s only “street” dance instruction. She’s said she started Off the Curb at the suggestion of two 14-year-old girls, and the troupe went on to open at concerts for hip-hop artists Lil’ Kim, LL Cool J and Busta Rhymes and to appear at schools and other events to promote a drug- and violence-free lifestyle.

But now just about every dance studio offers hip-hop classes alongside traditional ballet, tap and jazz courses, Henderson said. The novelty of Henderson’s troupe is wearing off.

“There’s a decline in the art form,” she said. “We were the first choreographed dance troupe in Rhode Island.”

Henderson has always insisted that her dancers pledge to get good grades and avoid drugs, alcohol and violence. But the students are harder to work with now than they were years ago, she said.

“I don’t get the same satisfaction,” she said.

Off the Curb, which moved in 2000 to a Middletown studio, has struggled financially almost from its outset, and Henderson said the pressure has become too much to handle.

“It’s been a couple of years of highs and lows,” she said. “It’s been a struggle to run a nonprofit organization and do fundraising for 16 years. Financially, it’s been a drain. I consider myself more of an artist, so the business side has been hard.”

Henderson said her current troupe and Off the Curb’s alumni are saddened by the news of the closure, but Henderson most of all is ready for a change. She said she wants to move permanently to New York City, where she already spends half of her week leading fitness and dance classes at Equinox Fitness Clubs and teaching youth dance classes for New York Yankee Derek Jeter’s Turn 2 Foundation. For the time being, Henderson will continue to teach fitness and dance classes at Bridge to Fitness, in Middletown.

mwims@projo.com