See Beautiful Grant 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 our giving initiatives, please click here.
 
To learn more about the featured organization, please visit their website here.​

Dance like no one is watching.

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. We see beauty each and every day 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.

Carolina Dance Collaborative (CDC) seeks to be an example of inclusion for the arts in our city. We love nothing more than to see all ages, those with and without disabilities, and all economic backgrounds dancing together; powerfully demonstrating how dance can impact lives through creating diversity in our world. CDC’s mission provides an inclusive model and a mobile model to make dance accessible to ALL people in our community.

CDC values inclusion and equity through our mission to give all people access to dance education regardless of location, ability, and resources. We believe that every individual should experience and embody the life changing power of dance.  One of the main stereotypes that CDC tries to break is the idea that dance is reserved for a particular body type, age, ethnic origin, and financial status. Dance is for everyone and is beneficial for everyone! With that being said, opportunities to dance are not typically created for populations who do not fit into the standard definition of a dance class participant. CDC seeks to reach low income youth who do not have the transportation, money, or resources necessary to experience extracurricular activities that engage their mind and body.

With help from See Beautiful’s funding we specifically desire to give these under-resourced children the same opportunity as other children who have the necessary means to pay for dance classes. We partner with a variety of schools and after school programs to do this.  Wheatley Montessori School is one of our partners whose population is both economically and racially diverse, which adds to the beauty of their school. They are one of the few private Montessori schools in the state that accepts vouchers for tuition assistance. Sixty percent of their students receive state vouchers and the school's owners also provide scholarships to deserving students.  

The Montessori Method is of special importance in closing the achievement gap that exists between low-income and minority students and their majority peers. Through creative movement and a variety of other dance styles like African, Ballet, Jazz, and Hip-Hop, The Carolina Dance Collaborative serves to augment the Montessori Method; as dance helps students make the required concrete to abstract connections which are necessary as they develop knowledge, skill, and understanding about the world. For a majority of the students, it is also the first time they are experiencing a structured dance class which is why equity is one of Carolina Dance Collaborative’s core values that ensures that our participants have full and equal access to opportunities that enable them to lead healthy lives.

Our classes ensure that inclusion remains a focus as we do not require prior knowledge or skill set, purchased attire, nor payment to participate in this particular partnership. Therefore, we can fully serve each child by teaching them foundational content and building on the skill sets they already have while not charging them tuition. We empower the youth that we serve to make creative decisions for themselves, their bodies, and their interaction with their peers in order to foster a true sense of belonging in the classroom and know that their presence is valued.

Peace, justice, and harmony within our classes is also vital to our student’s success. Movement and connecting with others in a class setting releases chemicals to the brain that calms the mind and strengthens the body. While dancing, the mind-body connection is developed and a new sense of awareness is created. Mirror neurons in the brain also have the ability to produce a human capacity for emotions such as empathy, compassion, attachment, and social bonding through the use of dance and movement. Dance promotes emotional and physical healing for some, therefore harmony with one another quickly develops in our sessions.

Every student, every age, every background, and every ability is valued within CDC and the positive atmosphere we seek to make for our students and their experience with dance education. We are so thrilled that See Beautiful gets the chance to be a part of that (even if it is from afar). We are grateful!

Blog Submitted by Kelsey Crum

Executive Director, Carolina Dance Collaborative