Jared Soares | The Roanoke Times

Hip-hop artist Toni Blackman (right) and Batula Mohamed embrace before the start of Tuesday's workshop in the dance studio of the Jefferson Center in Roanoke. Blackman worked with students to create a poem about themselves called "Who Look at Me."

Hip-hop artist Toni Blackman stood in front of 14 high school students at a dance studio in the Jefferson Center on Tuesday afternoon.

"We're going to elevate our creativity and take it to the next level," shouted Blackman. It was the second day of a week of workshops. She wore silver hoop earrings and a large silver cross from Niger. "The hesitancy, we're going to get rid of," she added.

Blackman is the first hip-hop performer to be named as an American cultural specialist by the U.S. Department of State. She has been called America's hip-hop ambassador and has traveled to about 20 nations, where she has lectured about hip-hop culture.

This week, she is the artist in residence for a new educational program at the Jefferson Center called Las Hermanas de hip-hop, or the "sisters of hip-hop," that began Jan. 31. The free afternoon program teaches theater, music, dance and poetry to immigrant and refugee adolescents age 14 to 18.

Ann Kilkelly, a professor of dance at Virginia Tech, normally teaches the group every Wednesday afternoon with the help of graduate students. This week, though, Blackman is pushing the teenagers to develop the skills they need to create and perform an original piece on May 23. Preceding the show, there will be another intense five days of practice.

Blackman is also conducting workshops at other venues this week. She taught students at William Fleming High School on Tuesday and performed briefly at Roanoke Live! at the Jefferson Center on Wednesday. She will also teach at Hollins University today and Community High School on Friday.

"You guys have this gift and this brilliance, and this is what you're doing," Blackman said as she stood with her arms crossed with Anne Elise Thomas, the Educational Program Coordinator at the Jefferson Center.

The teenagers hail from diverse countries and their English skills vary considerably. There are five Liberians, four Somalians, three Hondurans, three Vietnamese, two Haitians and one Mexican.

They have all been in the U.S. for three years or less and all of them are English Language Learners students at one of three high schools: William Fleming, Patrick Henry and Northside.

The program aims to improve the students' literacy, increase their self-confidence and provide them an opportunity to tell their stories, Thomas said.

Las Hermanas de hip-hop is part of the center's new educational programming that partners their artistic and cultural resources with Roanoke schools. Other scheduled programs include after-school, weekend and summer culture camps to teach students about diverse arts and cultures and three matinee performances for students in kindergarten to 12th grades.

The performances include jazz legend Don Byron (Feb. 12), blues musician Corey Harris and Malian kora player Mamadou Diabate (April 18) and Spanish flamenco guitarist Juanito Pascual (May 18).

The programming is a way for the center to take an active role in shaping the community, said Kim Bratic, marketing manager at the Jefferson Center.

On Tuesday, Blackman told the students to talk from "a passionate place." Even when you don't understand someone, you can hear when a person is saying something with passion, she said.

Blackman described the work she does with students as coming from a sink-or-swim mentality.

"I prefer to push to see how far I can push. If there are a few tears and some squirming, that's good because there's growth," she said.

After receiving her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Howard University, Blackman taught a class called "Hip-Hop 101" that she said was made a required class in primary, middle and high schools in the Washington, D.C., area.

Bau Graves, executive director of the Jefferson Center, met Blackman when they were both conducting similar workshops with refugee students in Portland, Maine. Blackman has also worked with Haitian and Cuban adolescents in a juvenile detention facility in Miami and has worked with female prisoners in Kansas.

Nurto Mohamed, a Somalian 10th-grader at Patrick Henry, said, "Before when you're dancing in front of people, you're shy, but I'm not shy now because every day I'm showing something in front of people."

Vivian Sanchez-Jones, the school liaison for Refugee and Immigration Services, said she hopes the program will help the students come together across cultural groups. There are more than 800 immigrant and refugee students in K-12 grades in Roanoke city, according to Sanchez-Jones.

"If they get the chance to share their stories, they'll realize they have a lot in common."