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Dance workshops in Kenya

Dance workshops for children and young adults in Kenya

January 2019: two of our ambassadors, Léonore Baulac and Dor Mamalia, gave a first Dance Summer Camp in Kenya. Have a look at their interview! They taught young students living in the impoverished area of Kibera, near Nairobi, who have been following the dance classes given all year round by our partner organization Anno’s Africa .

As we want our action to be sustainable, our ambassadors also teach to local dance instructors, giving “train the trainers” sessions.

We went back to Kibera in July 2019 to continue our action there supporting our partner Anno’s Africa.

Our ambassadors Ji-Min Hong, Yen-Ching Lin and Alexander Jones gave classes and two of them took part to the fundraising gala organized by our partner Anno’s Africa to build a new Arts Center for their young students living in the impoverised neighborhood of Kibera.

Two young tudents of Anno’s Africa, Abigail and Christine, got the opportunity to attend ballet classes in France during Summer 2019, thanks to our ambassador Léonore Baulac and her mom Cathrine Thorstensen.

January 2020 : more ballet training was given to the students of Anno’s Africa by Léonore Baulac.

Bring dance to children who are facing illness.

We partner with the Necker Hospital (Paris), where we have held six events between 2018 and 2020. Dancers perform for and meet with young patients, their parents and some of the medical staff, thanks to the cultural events team of the hospital, “Espace Plein Ciel“. Here below a group of artists from Taiwan, Yen-Ching Lin, I-Fen Tung, Hung Wei Yao and Rina B. Tsou during the first event in July 2018.

Here below few pictures of our second event that took place in September 2018 with Léonore Baulac and Hugo Marchand of the Paris Opéra Ballet. The evening left children and their families (end the lovely hospital staff) with stars in the eyes!

Our fourth event at the Necker hospital took place in May 2019. Have a look at the beautiful film that came out of the event thanks to the wonderful Jérome Sivien!

January 2020 : event number five at the Necker Hospital, with the dancers of the Paris Opéra Lucie Fenwick, Hugo Marchand and Axel Ibot. PC : Laura Gili

Here below the beautiful pictures by Gérard Uféras taken in November 2020 during our event number 7.

© Gérard Uféras What dance can do 05_11_20 Hugo Marchand et leonore Baulac interviennent à l'Hopital Necker de Paris

We are extending our action in the hospitals to other European countries. We had our first event at the Zurich Kinderspital in January 2020 and are excited about this new collaboration! We are hoping for a new partnership in Belgium to materialize in 2021.

What Dance Can Do New Zealand

Our wonderful team in Wellington has organized several classes and workshops for a group of children from the Kahurangi School. The group has been very motivated and eager to continue into the new year.

Here a film of their participation to “Animal Kingdom”, an initiative in collaboration with Akram Khan Company.

Meaningful partnership with a brand with a heart

October 2018: We launched a collaboration with the fair trade brand SeeMe that employs women who are victims of domestic violence. During the whole month, any piece of jewellery bought helped us, as 20% of the sales went to WDCD!

Partnership with Captum Advisors

October 2019 : We are excited and grateful to partner with the Captum Advisors Team and to see The What Dance Can Do Project be selected as their CSR project.

Thank you to Repetto Paris and Gaynor Minden for their help providing great dancing gear to the children we support.

Thank you to the Centre de danse Acquaviva in Lyon France for their support organizing an event as soon as the situation will allow again.

Thank you to Studio Joune for their amazing work on our new logo and branding!

Events

Exhibition

In collaboration with the Royal Danish Theater , our first photography- and text-based exhibition took place in Copenhagen (May 12, 2018 for a month in the department store Magasin). This exhibition was made possible by the sponsorship of The Royal Danish Theater and Magasin du Nord.

The Project also was the guest of a production on the topic of « What Dance Can Do » (19th of May and 5th of June 2018) on the old stage of the Royal Danish Theater with a talk by Aurélia Sellier and a performance by Ahmad Joudeh.