See Beautiful Applicant: Carolina Dance Collaborative

The feature below is brought to you by Carolina Dance Collaborative, an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about all of our giving initiatives, please click here. 

To learn more about Carolina Dance Collaborative, please visit their website page: here.

The Carolina Dance Collaborative is a mobile dance outreach organization with an extensive dance education curriculum that incorporates individual creativity, healthy living, and developing life-skills to reach all populations and demographics in Greenville County and the Upstate, South Carolina. We see beautiful each and everyday when we have the privilege of working with children in underserved communities, senior citizens, disability organizations, schools, and community centers. We travel to their space and help participants develop healthy life-skills that will impact them beyond the dance classroom and into their homes and everyday lives.

CDC is making the Upstate of South Carolina more beautiful through giving all people access to dance education regardless of location, ability, and resources. Dance is an art form that uses the beauty of the body and movement to communicate with both the soul and the outside world. We believe that every individual should experience and embody the life changing power of dance. Beauty is found in the students that we serve, in their differences and ability to come together as a supportive group to create peer to peer relationships. 

Each student's background, their body shape & color, their creativity, and their personalities make our students beautiful and are to be celebrated. Our organization's concentration on reaching diverse populations through the arts goes beyond the individual and into the community we serve. We value collaboration, empowerment, and equity in our classrooms and believe that each child has value and importance in our sessions.

CDC's programs range from working with small pre-schoolers to older adults. Each program differs from the other in terms of length of time, curriculum, location, and population served. We specifically want to bring attention to one of our after-school programs that work with under-served youth.

​Each and every one of these kids are beautiful in their own way. They may come from difficult circumstances and their resources may be sparse, but their ability to experience movement and dance education is just as real as the child that comes from an affluent family background. We partner with a variety of organizations and this particular program is in collaboration with the Salvation Army Kroc Center in Greenville, South Carolina.

The Creative Arts Academy is a free weekly youth ministry for K-12th grade where students get homework help, learn and practice character development (life skills, family, faith, & personal development), participate in art electives and are fed dinner. Our organization partners with the Arts Academy to bring dance education to the students involved. When these students enter our classroom they are typically experiencing a structured dance class for the first time, as we normally serve the elementary aged students at this location. The program ends with a performance bringing all the electives together for a large musical where all the art forms share their experiences and parents get to watch the power of their child unfold.

We see beautiful in how these under-resourced students are impacted through developing them as learners and leaders in a sustainable program focused on the performative art of dance. The project connects learning and creativity to promote physical and social emotional wellbeing for the youth directly involved and the families surrounding them.

Beautiful is all around us, although CDC sees beautiful in the simple movements, in the creativity of our students, in the relationships and community formed in our classrooms, and lastly in the growth and self esteem that emanates from our students after they perform in front of an audience. We value each beautiful body and soul in our classroom and find that their beauty in their differences make them unique and worth celebrating.

Submitted by Kelsey Crum

Executive Director, Carolina Dance Collaborative