Founded in 1932 by left-wing students from the New York Wigman School and originally called the Workers' Dance League, the New Dance Group aimed to make dance a weapon of the working class and a recreational activity for all. It sponsored concerts that often took place at union locales and offered inexpensive classes in modern dance and other forms. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s the Group remained committed to social justice. It was a major training ground in New York City for African-American dancers, and among its alumni were Pearl Primus and Donald McKayle. Its faculty, which included such outstanding teachers and choreographers as Jane Dudley, Sophie Maslow, Jean Erdman, and Jean-Léon Destiné, mirrored the breadth and interests of New York concert dance; its curriculum was refreshingly nonsectarian, and its showcases, led by the Dudley-Maslow-Bales trio, which it supported from 1942 to 1954, espoused humanist as opposed to purely formal concerns. After more than seventy years, the New Dance Group remains a thriving institution, occupying studios in the heart of New York's theater district.