Contestants in the recent Ursuline School father/daughter dance cha-cha contest never stood a chance. No matter how many Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movies they may have watched, or whether they habitually traipse through the rain like Gene Kelly, the competition was too stiff ”“ make that too nimble.
Steve Sansone and daughter Angela, a senior at Ursuline School in New Rochelle, took the prize. Both know their way around a dance floor. Angela, daughter also to Karen Sansone, takes classes at Arthur Murray Dance Studio and at The Loft Dance and Fitness Center, both in Yonkers; her father has been tripping the light fantastic at least since he taught at Arthur Murray to pay his way through college and continues to take classes at The Loft.
Steve Sansone is an engineer by training who for 25 years worked to undermine fraud in the state Office of the Attorney General. He is also, he confesses, “probably the first guy on the dance floor at a wedding.”
Sansone, 49, earned a master”™s degree in civil engineering, his emphasis on traffic, transportation and planning. On issues like real estate development under every state attorney general from 1981-2006, “I brought the technical expertise to the table.”
In Yonkers, as executive director of the Downtown/Waterfront Business Improvement District, he brings the same technical acumen to the table, plus the negotiating skills he honed with half a dozen attorneys general, but now he has added cultural variables to the equation. “Yonkers is undergoing an amazing revitalization,” he said. “Its variety of cultures and businesses are the secrets to be unlocked to keep moving forward.”
Decoding those secrets has begun, thanks to Sansone.
It turns out that what works in dance can also work on the municipal level. “I love culture, folk arts and performing arts. And I love public events planning.” It”™s a path that has led him to board membership for the Puerto Rican-Hispanic Parade and Festival Foundation. “I”™m probably the only Italian on the board.”
Though he has been with the Downtown/Waterfront BID just two years, Sansone is a lifelong Yonkers resident, attending Sacred Heart Grammar School and Sacred Heart High School. He is also a 30-year civic volunteer with the likes of the Yonkers Historical Society, the First Precinct Police Community Council, where he serves as a liaison between the police and the community, the Westchester Arts Council, the Yonkers Arts Alliance and Youth Theater Interactions. But his first volunteer love ”“ “My baby,” he called it ”“ is the Untermeyer Performing Arts Council, which attracts more than 20,000 people to its events annually, including its Cinco de Mayo celebration, billed as the biggest in the county. “I”™ve lived in the city my whole life and volunteered here for a long time, for 30 years.”
Sansone took up dance, he said, for two reasons: to lend structure to what he already enjoyed naturally as a youth and to overcome a tendency toward shyness. The shyness is difficult to believe in his presence; he sports designer specs and a soul patch and obliges a proffered cup of coffee with, “You the man.” It”™s not quantifiable, but Sansone could well be the coolest BID president in the land (not to mention the hip high-water mark for Ursuline father-daughter dances).
Sansone has taken the reins of the waterfront BID at a time of change along the Hudson River in Yonkers. He notes what is going on there now is a far cry from the grittier waterfront of his youth. Still, he noted, “We have the original pioneers, many of which were in business when I was a kid, and the new pioneers working right alongside them. Everyone calls it a mosaic. As an Italian, I call it a minestrone soup ”“ a great mixture with great flavor.”
Sansone dances whenever he has free time, adjusting his regimen as the stresses of life close in, much, he said, as runners use running. He has, in his day, taught swing (sometimes called jitterbug), waltz, fox trot, salsa, rumba (a rhythm-heavy Cuban dance and “kind of my favorite”), disco and club.
When the work bell rings, he dances to a different tune: “BID is basically these: beautification, safety, marketing initiatives and advocacy,” Sansone said. The Riverfest in September and Jazz, Blues and Film on Main Street in the summer are both BID initiatives, as was a recent visit by the Half Moon, a reproduction of Henry Hudson”™s boat. Coming BID events will embrace the region”™s quadricentennial. BID employs three office workers and 11 street rangers, whom Sansone calls “the eyes and ears of the downtown.”
