Volunteer blog: Rehearsals and bus songs! By Ninna from Dancers Without Borders

Time flies – it’s true! I have already spent four intense weeks with the children and staff at Project Playground and I can’t seem to get enough of them. Right now our classes are focused on the opening ceremony for the soccer tournament, which is getting closer and closer. The theme this year is ‘shine with diversity’ and the dance groups will therefore perform traditional dance, ballet and their own choreography to Rihanna. The grande finale is the Project Playground song that one of the dance teachers, So Fire, has taught the children.

So Fire’s song (or The Project Playground theme song) made for excellent traveling music on our excursion to Kirstenbosch botanical garden last Saturday. 55 kids singing, clapping and banging on the roof of a bus must be perfect proof of pure excitement and joy! We sang all the way there and it made me think of the Swedish song “Our bus driver is a man with nice temper” – quite dull in comparison…In the garden the children enjoyed walking around, playing games, a picnic and finally dipping their feet (and t-shirts!) in the refreshing water of the pond.

In other news the University of Cape Town is now on board. Yes! This means that for the first time two of their students will soon come to teach ballet at Project Playground. Hopefully this will be a long-term collaboration that will provide the children with ballet once a week. But what’s ballet without barres, right? A reliable source in Cape Town told me that scaffolding makes for pretty good barres. Well then, let’s go for that!