Volunteer blog: It’s great to be back! By Ninna from Dancers Without Borders

For the third year in a row I am back at Project Playground to see all the wonderful people I have come to know during the years. My name is Ninna and I, together with my colleague Tilman, am one of the founders of the organization Dancers Without Borders. We have taught the approximately 70 children who constitute the dance groups twice before and our workshops have mainly been focused on ballet. Project Playground has already got professional dance teachers with great knowledge, but our background within classical ballet helped us to contribute with something new that the children had requested.

To see some of the young dancers so focused, engaged and willing to take on a new task made us realize how important it can be to try new things and have a goal to strive for, whether that goal is to become a ballet dancer or just being able to do those painful splits without screaming.

My goal (other than those splits) for this two-month long stay is for Dancers Without Borders and Project Playground to set up a more permanent program with ballet class once a week. While doing that I will also continue to work closely with the dance teachers and conduct fieldwork for my bachelor thesis in anthropology.

It is amazing to be back and I look forward to learning a lot from the children and the staff. I hope we will reach our goals and I am very grateful for Project Playground to give me this opportunity. What do you think about ballet and steel drums for the opening ceremony of the soccer tournament in March? We’ll try!