St. Kitts and Nevis

DARE hosts dance workshop for students

Sun St. Kitts/Nevis - April 11, 2006

A welcome component has been added to the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) programme and some 30-plus children from the primary schools of St. Kitts are the beneficiaries.

These children are participating in “DARE Dance” which has been described as “an effort to bring dance, as an athletic, creative, fun, and healthy art form, to schools as a positive alternative to drugs and violence.”

Last Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the children congregated at the Youth and Community Centre at Victoria Road where DARE Dance teachers Lynn Bowman and Aisha Upchurch of the United States of America held sessions with the enthusiastic children.

Bowman who spoke with the SUN said that one of the main purposes of DARE Dance is to promote healthy lifestyles while impressing upon the children the need for them to live drug free lives.

“We are here for DARE Dance and it is a programme which helps promote children not using drugs, not using alcohol and just promoting a healthy lifestyle. And part of DARE is DARE Dance which is where we come and do a traditional dance class.

In the USA, DARE Dance is usually an after-school programmes so the kids have somewhere to go and something positive to do, something healthy and something that gets their bodies moving.”

The children, who seemed quite excited about the exercise, meet with the teachers for approximately five hours per day and Bowman expressed that she views the programme as “a learning experience for both students and teachers.”

“It might be a little different to the culture here in St. Kitts. Dance across the world has similar movements. We might bring in some specific types like modern, ballet, jazz, hip-hop and African dance but we hope to learn from some of the students on St. Kitts their specific dance and what they are used to doing, so we will be sharing.

"We will share our moves and they will share their moves. We brought some of our music and we are hoping that they can bring some of their music and we can sort of combine our forces and create something together.”

 “The children are doing a really good job,” Bowman said.

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