Outreach Work
Reaching out to the community!
Ensemble dancers with students in the Beacon Program after their performance earlier this year
The Interactive Workshops are designed to inspire artistic expression and help define individuality, confidence, and self-respect. The first half of the workshop involves a performance of various dances in different choreographic styles. In the second half, the Ensemble leads their peers through a series of interactive exercises experimenting with rhythm, speed, spatial awareness and imagery. Everyone dances!
Participants learn to use their bodies to communicate, to tell a story with movement, and in turn to experience the freedom and exhilaration of self-expression through dance.
Organizations the Ensemble is currently working with…
University Settlement sits at the heart of the Lower East Side, a beacon to the new immigrants and economically diverse families that live in this community. Every day, we strive to address their ever-changing needs, compassionately, holistically and precisely. Every year, we make a tangible difference in the lives of the 20,000 people that we serve.
Beyond the day-to-day, University Settlement consistently looks to the future, pioneering new ideas, advocating for those most in need, and reinventing the settlement ideal for successive generations. It is this convergence of tradition and innovation that makes University Settlement a standout among community-based social service organizations.
Services at the Beacon include a complete after-school program for elementary school children, tutoring, homework help, and art therapy, as well as a comprehensive teen program which provides college preparation and counseling, leadership development, creative arts classes and workshops, organized athletics, English classes, and special events and workshops. The Beacon also provides day programs for children during the winter, mid-winter, spring and summer recesses. All services at the Beacon are free of charge.
The Turn 2 Foundation and the New York City Parks and Recreation Department formed a partnership in 2000 to administer four, free after-school programs that reach approximately 300 children in the boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. These activities strive to carry out the NYC Parks and Recreation Department’s mission to provide a safe, supportive, structured environment that builds the overall health and well-being of children. The activities also fulfill the Turn 2 Foundation’s mission by supplying signature programs with activities that motivate young people to turn away from drugs and alcohol and “Turn 2″ healthy lifestyles.
This coming 2010/2011 Season will be the Ensemble’s third year working with both organizations. The collaboration between the Ensemble dancers and the young participants is pretty unique, they build bonds that cannot be broken and all participants gain a huge amount of respect for themselves and the ones around them.
Ensemble Director, Shelley Grantham leading a warm-up before a session with students from the Beacon Program
These “Interactive Workshops” are a very special part of the Peridance Youth Ensemble, here through community outreach work the dancers learn how to be a mentor, deal with difficult situations, time manage, problem solve and share what they know best… the love of dance. Not only are they enriching their lives but they are taking time to enrich the lives of others who might not normally get the great one on one mentoring that they get from the Ensemble dancers.
Our goal as a school and educational environment is to instill the art of giving and community service in these young dancers and hopefully the participants in all of the “Interactive Workshops” we have hosted in the past 10 years.
Past Paticipants
Union Square Community Coalition Children Carnival
Bronx Montifiore Children’s Hospital
Free Arts for Abused Children
Dancers Responding to AIDS
The American Red Cross
New Alternatives for Children
Looking to the Future
With the growing need for arts education in public schools and in most communities, Peridance Youth Ensemble has become increasingly more instrumental in providing these needed services. The premise of offering life-long skills to their young peers and instilling positive change within the community, have been the reason and inspiration for the Ensemble’s growth and success. Looking forward to its development into the future the Ensemble now needs the support of the business community, local and corporate alike.
It is the Peridance Youth Ensemble’s hope that many more out-reach children’s dance companies will sprout across the globe and dance education will have no boundaries or discrimination.
