Video transcript
The Arts Unit Dance Program promo

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To make a performance work and to connect with someone else's heart, they also have to be honest. And one of the things about dance is that you have to be honest, because your body is being honest. And the giving back in performance and the ownership of performance is something that is quite a sophisticated skill.

It's giving students an opportunity to experience that sense of value that you get from a creative pursuit, and that it challenges students to go beyond what they're capable of doing within a normal school setting. And it gives them an incredible amount of value to the love that they bring to the table.

The biggest thing that I try and teach kids is how to change their perspective. I think it's more important to be able to allow someone to change their minds, because with the change of the mind will come the change of the body.

Dance teaches children to be very responsible.

I think it can give them individuality.

A sense of integrity.

A musical sense.

To be really committed to whatever it is that they put their mind to.

Dance education is more than just technique, and physicality, and learning how to move. It's also about the mind, and about creativity, and about confidence, and about teaching kids what is it like to be human, really.

The programs that we offer really exemplify the strength of public education. What you can do for a child as part of the greater education system, as opposed to what individual school can do.

The arts help schools find ways of meeting the individual needs of their students.

Students are valuing so much more of their education generally because dance gives them that hook, it gives them that ability to be passionate about something that then drives them to stay at school, love what they're doing, and excel. They have a really, very, very secure, developed sense of group as well as themselves.

I like to think that I instill in them to be very present in the class.

I often say to them that it's not learning to dance, it's learning through dance.

I think that they can analyze and right into dance and find their own meaning.

You feel like you've helped them overcome something that they found difficult.

The arts is a melting pot of experiences that you can pick and choose from. And if you're open to it, you get a whole heap of stuff thrown at you.

I was so lucky to fall into dance, and I'm so glad that I stuck with it.

School Spectacular was the most exciting time of the year for us.

I got to see the world. I got to travel the world and I performed on stages all over the place. There's so much stuff that comes into your sphere that it just opens up immense possibilities.

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