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Bringing the Benefits of Ballroom Dance to ALL Children and Youth
DanceSport Education • Jan 11, 2019
Anna Shahbazyan to Lead Our Efforts in Reaching out to Students with Special Needs
Anna Shahbazyan
is joining DanceSport Education as an Advisory Board Member and is excited to support our mission in reaching out to ALL children. She will guide our efforts in establishing a program for children and teens with special needs in Metro Phoenix, so that they can experience the long-term benefits of ballroom dance.
Anna is originally from Armenia. She started Ballroom dancing at the age of 14. She moved to the US in 2000 where she pursued her career as a professional dancer while continuing her education at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) majoring in Psychology and later earning her Masters Degree.
In 2012 she started working in the field of ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis) as a Behavior Interventionist and later as an Adaptive Skills Supervisor. Shortly after, in 2014 she realized how much more could be achieved if therapy was combined with dance, and not any dance, but specifically Ballroom Dancing. That is when she started her own program ASDance for Autism at the Sloan and Sloan School of Dancing in Glendale, CA, serving the needs of children and teens with Autism, Non-Verbal Autism, Dyspraxia and even Visual Impairments as well as their families through the multidisciplinary approach used through Ballroom.
Anna was a recipient of the Community Service Award in 2016 by the NDCA (National Dance Council of America) for her contribution to the community as an ambassador of Ballroom Dance. She is also the co-organizer of City Lights Open Competition in San Jose, CA. With her professional partner they were:
- British Open Professional Smooth Finalists in 2017
- Open Professional Smooth Bronze medalists at the Champions Ball in Moscow
- US National Rising Star Smooth and Ohio Star Ball Vice Champions
- US National Rising Star International Ballroom Finalists
- Ohio Star Ball Rising Star Ballroom Vice Champions
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
