About

How we work

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Photography: Pari Naderi
  • We have developed a distinctive methodology, modelled on professional contemporary dance training and the focus, discipline, strength, coordination and creativity that this develops in a person.
  • We enable our participants to push themselves beyond the limits they put on themselves. Uniquely within the sector, our projects are full time – five days a week, six hours a day – and the activity demands commitment and endurance.
  • Through dance we help people to develop their confidence, their physical and emotional health and wellbeing, and their ability to work with others.
  • We enable participants to broaden their horizons, embrace ambition, and open themselves up to leading more productive lives.
  • We work with participants to ensure sustainable change and to put in place the next steps to achieving their goals, whether this is returning to school, pursuing further education or seeking employment.
  • We employ an integrated team to support participants throughout the course. We offer all participants mentoring for a 12 month period on completion of the programme.
  • We run performance companies for people who want to continue their dance training after an initial project or who just want a way to meet regularly in a supportive environment. Performance Company members learn new choreographies and perform to audiences at venues and festivals across the country.
  • We commission choreographers who can push our dancers artistically and technically, and who create new pieces for our repertory.
  • We make high-quality films that give people insight into the enormous journeys that participants in our projects achieve. We show these alongside live performances and distribute them through television networks and festivals.

Vision

Photography: iFlo Media Limited
Every life has meaning and we believe that everyone should have the chance to succeed.
We are passionate about dance and champion its power to instill focus, creative thinking and clarity of purpose in people who are excluded, at-risk and vulnerable.
We are committed to artistic excellence and the highest standards of dance teaching, and through this we will ensure that all those we work with recognise their potential and develop the skills to lead productive, fruitful lives.
Having gathered a sound body of evidence in support of the transformative power of what we do, we strive for our intensive dance-based interventions to have a recognised place within mainstream programmes of education, social inclusion, mental health and criminal justice.

Mission

Photography: Pari Naderi

Transforming Lives Through Dance

Dance United positively changes the lives of marginalised and hard-to-reach people through high-quality dance training and performance.
  • We create bespoke dance projects and interventions to meet the needs of different groups of people who are struggling with difficult circumstances – for example, youth offenders and gang members, people accessing mental health services or who are fighting addictions, and disengaged young people with seriously challenging behaviours.
  • We train dance artists to work in this context, exploring strategies for working with non-engagement, resistance, and volatility when delivering dance activity.
  • We collaborate with frontline partners and bring our dance expertise to bear on the development of new ways of working that improve outcomes for the people in their care.
  • We commission exceptional choreographers to create inspiring new dance works for our participants to perform.
  • We publicly demonstrate our young people’s achievements showing our repertory at venues and festivals across the country.
  • We develop new audiences for dance.
  • We advocate the use of dance as a powerful tool for personal and social development to the general public and across the social inclusion sector, government agencies and the mainstream dance world.