I started dancing at a small ballet school near my home in Maryland. I first practiced gymnastics. At some point, I had to choose between ballet and gymnastics. I had started to get scared to perform certain moves like backflips and dance appeared like a new reassuring option. We had talent shows at school where my friend and I were choreographing and performing on the soundtracks of “Finding Nemo” or “Harry Potter”. […]
I was 14 when I auditioned to get into the National Ballet School of Canada. I then moved from Seoul to Toronto by myself. After a short while there, I fell very ill and had to stop dancing for 4 years. Those were the darkest times in my life. Ballet defines who I am. It is a part of myself. […]
I was born in Gary, Indiana. Raised by a single mother in a family of three children, I am the oldest. The first man to take care of me as a child was my grandfather, before my mother met my stepfather. He was the father figure, the male role model in my life. […]
MBali is a young Johannesburg-born dancer and gymnast. She is is part of the iKapa Youth Development Program. MBali likes the feeling of freedom dancing gives her.
– “I enjoy practicing ballet because of all the French vocabulary we use. I love the words like “pliés” or “allongés”. They make me travel in my mind” […]
I grew up in a village between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. As a young boy, before I started dancing, I was impossible to live with. The youngest child in a family of three, I was a difficult oddball. I lived in a fantasy world. As I was tight-lipped, people had a hard time to understand me. I was bubbling with energy which was somewhat overwhelming for everybody around me. […]
In 2016 in Copenhagen, a group of people of different nationalities seeking asylum in Denmark were provided with a stage and some dancers, musicians and costumes. […]
I am a former soldier who fought in Bosnia and Afghanistan. I suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. When I came back from Afghanistan, all went downhill. I was depressed; I did not want to live anymore. I thought these feelings would go away with time but they did not and had terrible consequences on my life. […]
When I first arrived in Holland my primary goal was to increase my skills and deepen my experience as a dancer. I never planned to become a “public figure” and was not looking for media exposure. Still, I found out during my journey that my story can help people and I want this to continue. […]
For Kholisile Theo Ndindwa, his first experience with dance came when he was ten and living in an underdeveloped urban area (a “township”) just outside Cape Town shortly after apartheid ended. While playing football at a community sports centre, as many South African boys would do, he saw girls in tights, practicing ballet. […]
At this moment, I have a slightly fragmentary and somewhat abstract vision as to what dance can do. Could it be a stepping stone to serve another purpose than art or beauty? I do observe initiatives here and there and I have contributed my support to an association in the past. […]