At Risk Children Dance for Social Change

Dance is the language our children have chosen to connect with the world, a beautiful international language. These past few months have been full of new lessons and experiences on and off stage from an ample diversity of cultures, nationalities, dance styles and techniques.

Recently our children had the opportunity to receive two master classes from dancer and choreographer Diego Álvarez Sánou from Costa Rica’s Colectivo Clá. With him, they worked on new sequences and movements inspired from hip-hop and urban culture. Additionally, two of our students began classic training once a week with the Ukrainian dancer established in Panama Ilya Kun, who’s also a dancer of Panama’s National Ballet.

In order to end the first of the three terms of 2016, the children made a small recital in our Dance Classroom, where they presented a series of theatre sketches and work-in-progress from their ballet and contemporary dance classes. Parents, teachers, volunteers and friends filled the room and the children dazzled us with their concentration and exciting simplicity.

Following this, we received the biggest surprise we have received all year: our oldest student, Juan, was selected to participate in OPUS I, an international youth dance competition in nothing less but Slovenia! He traveled with his dance teacher José Leonardo Amaya to this European country. It was a long journey and on their way there, they stopped in Paris for a day and a half, where they visited as much as they could of the iconic sites of this beautiful city. Juan was ecstatic and mentioned it had always been his dream to go there, he could not believe his eyes when he saw the Eiffel Tower and said he would go back in a heartbeat. Once in Slovenia, they were greeted by the competition organizers; they had never received participants from Central America, let alone from Panama. José participated in the dance workshops previous to the competition, and one of his teachers there, the director of the Afro-Contemporary Dance Group Momentum, Mâsa Kagao, invited Juan and his teacher José to dance in her presentation in the Španski Borci theatre of Ljubljana, a day before the competition where Juan presented his solo “Open Waters” in front of more than 500 people. Needless to say, it was a wonderful experience for Juan and for his hosts, who were impressed by his talent and humbleness. Once back in Panama, he was received by his peers and teachers with a lot of excitement and admiration. He said he loved Slovenia, and the fact that he made many new friends that dance too!

To continue the journey through performing arts’ diversity, the kids were invited to see the Russian National Ballet from Moscow, in its international tour of the classic “Swan Lake”. They were delighted and startled to see the classic technique in its purest form. They learned about Tchaikovsky’s music and the technical difficulty and high standards this ballet requires. And if that was not enough for this month, the children had the opportunity to see another classic, but from musical theatre: “The Wizard of Oz”, performed by a local theatre group.

To end this period on an inspiring note, we also invited the 157 students we work with from the Instituto de Nuestra Señora de la Merced (Institute of Our Lady of Mercy), to see the contemporary dance piece “Deesevuelo”, by the Brazilian dancer Carolina Figuereido.

Enlaces’ children dance vocabulary is in continuous expansion. Every time they see a new show, learn about classics and dance with other dancers from different backgrounds, not only they accumulate knowledge, but their vision of a brighter future broadens.