In my second year at York St John university we had a chance to go on placement for 6 weeks, recently before this a dance company called ‘Dance United’ came in to carry out an intensive week with us, trying out their new choreography for a future project. This was something I really engaged with and enjoyed, which made it an easy choice for me to choose ‘Dance United’ as my placement.  

“Dance United Yorkshire delivers bespoke projects, modelled on contemporary dance training and performance, working in partnership with frontline organisations across the West Yorkshire region.” (Dance United, 2011) They deliver these projects to marginalized young people from youth offending teams,pupil referral units, families first teams, and those at risk at sexual exploitation. 

One thing I picked up on the workshop was a phrase ‘Dance United’ use when dealing with these children, ‘Respond not react’. It can be difficult working with these children In different situations however having a moto like this is something you can always relate back to if needed. Now I have worked on 4 ‘Dance United’ projects so far, and have some upcoming projects that I’m involved in,  which im really looking forward to. It’s also a privilege to be asked back on these projects as a support worker as its something I’m really passionate about, and for them to ask for me to come back builds my confidence in an area I love.

During ‘Dance United’ we learnt lots of different ways of how to deal and react with tricky situations with the young people, to learning that these young people are capable to do anything when they put their minds too it. Working with the young people that have come from marginalized backgrounds, very low self esteem, not engaged in any form of education, and generally are troubled, you have to learn quickly how to deal and react with them. Which at first came at a bit of shock, as simple things such as manners, facial expressions, and body language didn’t come naturally to them. A lot of these young people need constant reassurance, making sure we praise them doing well directly is such a huge thing to them, and gives them that slight confidence boost to carry on doing well and believe in themselves. 

Challenging aspects for me as fitting in at the beginning, these young people came across as quite intimidating, and I felt quite out of my comfort zone because of how confident they were, not so much confident in themselves, but expressed themselves very vocally, and exaggerated hand gestures were used quite a lot, something I wasn’t quite used to. To overcome this sense of overwhelming feeling, I had to be confident in myself and show the young people I wasn’t  there to create friendships, but only to participate In supporting the young people. Another hurdle I had to get over was the young people had lots of negative thoughts about teachers/helpers in general due to not engaging in education, so I had to find that balance of being a supporter but also being a role model to them so they don’t get confused of why I was there and what my intentions where.

From these experiences in ‘Dance United’ I was constantly learning on the job, how to teach, how to approach situations, how to get the best out of the young people and overall how to be a good support network for the young people. The reason why im so passionate about this area is because you get to see each individual young persons’ journey in the 5 weeks. They often start off with  very low self esteem, unconfident, and very disengaged. But as weeks go on, most start to build confidence, let their guard down and express themselves in ways they haven’t before. The outcome is amazing to see how far they have come, and to actually perform on stage in front of loads of people is such a big achievement in itself, never mind performing when they’ve never even danced before is exhilarating, which makes me so proud to of been there and contributed to these young people, I like to think I’ve made a difference in young peoples lives and thats what drive me to carry on in this proffesion.