Dance ARC Youth Performance Projects.

About the Dance ARC Performance Ensemble

Dance ARC aims to develop strong, joyful, resilient dancers by providing high quality dance experiences in a disciplined & caring environment. Our Youth Performance Ensemble focuses on dance as an art form through which young people can express ideas and have a creative voice in the community. We will participate in and create a diverse range of dance projects for all sorts of different contexts, from the theatre to public spaces and natural wonderlands. Each project is self contained and involves professional artists with different creative backgrounds and ways of making dance, as leaders and facilitators. Dance ARC is dedicated to providing a safe space for young people to Move & Make.

Who Can Participate?

Young people aged 7yrs-18yrs. You do not need to have dance experience to participate. You do need to committ to all rehearsals and performances for each project. While we do not require dance training to participate any kind of physical activity that teaches control and co-ordination of the body will be an advantage. This could include; sports, gymnsatics, martial arts, parkour, or any style of dance and movement training. The youth ensemble is not designed to replace regular dance training but to develop and stretch the creative mind and body.

Feeding & Seeding Future Project - for Global Water Dances

The inaugural performance opportunity for the Dance ARC youth performance ensemble was unique!  Climate Change is a big issue for all of us but it has been our young people who are shining a light on the need to take action in recent times! In June this year, Dance ARC partnered with Circling the Brink, a local professional site specific arts program to bring about an event that would raise awareness of the importance of the health of our nation’s water landscapes. We took this idea one step further in our creative process and learned and talked about the endangered helmeted honey eater, that needs our local river ways to be healthy for it to survive. The Dance ARC Performance Ensemble performed in Coronation park, Healesville as part of the Global Water Dances event. Following the live performance Circling the Brink produced a screening of dance films on the theme of water. Many of these films were the culmination of a workshop held in Healesville, in April with Dancecology from Taiwan.

The Dance ARC Youth Performance Ensembles part in this project included 3 groups, from different areas coming together on the day to perform choreography made by the young people performing and choreography that is shared across the globe.

Below is the result of a two day dance workshop in which we all explored the idea of finding focus in this busy world we live in. What does being focused look like? Am I a busy person? What do I do to find calm? As I always find, the young performers were very engaged and creative with our subject matter and swapped easily between making their own dance and learning choreography, staying on topic with remarkable focus in the midst of magical creative chaos.