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BALLROOM DANCE FOR AUTISM
7047065748 • Jul 30, 2019
The Benefits of Ballroom Dance for Children with Autism
The therapeutic benefits of ballroom dance are inherent in its nature:
- Ballroom dance is a partner dance – two people, holding hands in a dance frame, dancing together.
- Compared to any dance form, ballroom dance has the highest diversity of world rhythms, so natural to the body.
- It is easily accessible at the start, no special skills are required, classrooms turn easily into dance space, and students can dance in their school attire.
- Ballroom dance can be practiced in larger, smaller groups and individually, and allows for easy transition from ballroom dance as an art form, to the competitive, DanceSport.
- Ballroom dance instruction is often used as a character education and anti-bullying prevention hands-on program.
Benefits of ballroom dance to students with autism:
- Increases student achievement through improved attention and concentration.
- Promotes expression of emotion through movements, breaking the withdrawal symptoms and engaging with others.
- Increases interpersonal bonding and communication, recognizing, associating and responding to others, increases eye contact.
- Participation in group activities and learning through mirroring promotes socialization, increased shared focus and develops trust.
- The group sessions enable in developing social skills and communications.
- As the social skills develop, it promotes understanding the feelings and emotions of others and thus develops empathy.
- Teaches and improves gross and fine motor imitation skills.
- Helps develop the movement vocabulary.
- Helps in learning different patterns of movements required for daily life activities
- Performing dance steps in a series of sessions in a row helps in improving memory and recapitulation skills.
- As a partner dance, helps in developing trust on others as well as helps in reducing sensitivity to physical contact and touch.
- Helps in improving body awareness and body image and improves general well-being
- The usage of proper movements on the different planes of motion stimulates verbal communication skills.
- Helps in better adaption to different situations.
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Proud to Show What Our AZ Autism Charter School Students CAN Do!!!
Every day, our committed employees work to support the community we serve. Now, they need our help. Our organization is committed to ensuring that our employees are able to maintain financial stability and provide day-to-day necessities for their families during the coronavirus crisis. We bring the benefits of ballroom dance to the students at their schools, in their classrooms. But due to COVID outbreak, Arizona schools are now mandated to close through the end of the school year and out employees have lost their source of income. Their situation is further aggravated by the Stay-At-Home order issued for the state of Arizona. Our organization’s most urgent goal is to retain our highly qualified and specially trained personnel, who work with children with autism. Such personnel is rare to find and costly to train and retain. Under normal circumstances, our professionals are long-term committed to the program – however if we lose them because of the COVID-19 disaster, it would be virtually impossible to reinstate the program. Retaining our personnel is critical not only to the existence of the program, but also to the ultimate recipient – children with autism in a school set-up. We kindly ask that you join us in supporting our dedicated employees. Your gift will help provide immediate financial support so they can purchase essential food, medicines, and other supplies. Help keep our employees safe and healthy so they can eventually return to their work serving our community.
INVEST IN US! Let me share why you should invest in us. We are a small 501(c)(3) non-profit and we bring the benefits of ballroom dance to the students, at their schools, in their classrooms with the highest level of instruction! We make the art of ballroom dance affordable and accessible to all students, especially for those that are low income and at risk. This year, for the first time in Arizona we are bringing the benefits of ballroom dance to 230 K-12 students with autism at the Arizona Autism Charter Schools. It is Arizona's Only Autism-Focused Tuition-Free Charter public school. Students enrolled at this school are on the autism spectrum with varying degrees of intellectual/developmental disabilities. AZ Autism Charter School serves over 40% low income students. 15% of the students are African-American,1% American Indian, 5% - Asian, 51% - Hispanic and 28% white. The ballroom dance experience at the school is part of the students’ project-based life skills curriculum. Many studies and research findings have supported the positive implication of dance therapy to people with autism. We are at the school 4 days /week, delivering 40 ballroom dance classes every week. The impact of ballroom dance that we see is INCREDIBLE, especially with the highest impacted students! We take so many things for granted, including the ability to move, speak, coordinate our body and socialize. Our students need to learn all this, and the art of ballroom dance is helping them tremendously. These students enjoy, love and thrive in our classes. Until our program, they had no such opportunity available to them, alone an opportunity to express themselves in public and show what they CAN do. Please help us get the full $3,000 match by making your tax-deductible donation today. The funds will be used for rehearsals and extended support during their public event performances. This is an unprecedented commitment toward these students with special needs. They want and need to show to the public what they CAN do. This is the first of such successful efforts in Arizona! These students need your support! Say "YES" to them! We are their HOPE! All #AzGivesDay donations are *tax-deductible and will go toward rehearsals and extended support during their public event performances. Please help us get the full $3,000 match by making your tax-deductible donation today. THANK YOU! We are sincerely grateful for those who support our mission and enable us to bring the benefits of ballroom dance to the students with special needs, at their schools, in their classrooms. www.azgives.org/DanceSportEducation *The $2 trillion stimulus package includes the Charitable Giving Incentive, which lifts the existing cap on annual contributions for those who itemize, raising it from 60 percent of adjusted gross income to 100 percent. For corporations, the bill raises the annual limit from 10 percent to 25 percent. Elka Hristova Co-Founder and Director DanceSport Education
