TYPE OF WORK
Contemporary dance work with people of all ages and abilities marginalised through economic and social deprivation and conflict.

TARGET GROUPS
Poor urban communities and street children in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Lima, Peru. Team-building and educational attainment with young offenders in UK prisons. Special needs and cross-community work in Northern Ireland. Conflict resolution in Kwa Zulu and former Yugoslavia.

GEOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT
UK, North Africa and Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, South America, Central and Eastern Europe.

COMPANY POLICY
Dance United uses contemporary dance to inspire marginalised and socially excluded people to realise their full potential, and help them challenge the cycles of misunderstanding, prejudice and abuse in which they are often trapped.

The Dance United team uses a well-tested process of teaching and rehearsal leading to a final public performance, in which participants, often for the first time, reach heights of focus, discipline and motivation. The work is non-issue based and delivered with a challenging and disciplined approach to the highest professional standards, surpassing participants' and audiences' expectations.

SCALE OF PROJECTS
Number of practitioners: 2-4
Number of participants: 10-250
Preparation time: 2-8 weeks
Contact time: Intensive sessions 5 days/week

PERMANENT STAFF
Mags Byrne, Artistic Director
Andrew Coggins, Artistic Director
Royston Maldoom, Artistic Director
Suz Broughton, Associate Artistic Director
Tara Herbert, Associate Artistic Director

Adugna Community Dance Company (Ethiopia, 1997-2003)
Over the last six years the Dance United team created and delivered a groundbreaking training and capacity building project in Addis Ababa. The work began with a high profile dance theatre performance involving over 100 street children. The project gave these children both voice and presence within a city then operating a "cleansing" policy. The 5000 people who attended the performance (including many other street children, NGOs, beneficiaries, ambassadors and influential Ethiopians) celebrated it as a major public relations coup highlighting the plight of street children and their potential as agents of their own change.

Eighteen children from the initial performance were then selected to undertake an intensive five-year training in contemporary and traditional dance emerging as performers, teachers and social outreach facilitators with accreditation from Middlesex University. The training programme was delivered by Dance United and a team of affiliated arts practitioners, under the auspices of the Ethiopian Gemini Trust, an indigenous Ethiopian NGO.

After graduating, the dancers decided to continue working together and formed the Adugna Community Dance Company. Their aim was to build an appropriate infrastructure to support their project delivery and to help transform other people's lives as their own have been transformed. Adugna now has a strong reputation in Ethiopia, and there is growing demand for their repertoire of workshops, training programmes and performances.

Homeward Bound
A powerful advocacy initiative that seeks to integrate dance as a long term tool of development for work with the young homeless of central London. In partnership with The London Connection and The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. (London, UK, summer 2003)

Wheel of Fortune
An advocacy training project seeking to change negative attitudes and promote the talents of child and youth workers from one of Lima's poorest areas. (Los Olivos, Lima, Peru, autumn 2003)

Andrew Coggins
Dance United
171 Glenarm Road
Hackney
London E5 0NB

T +44 (0) 20 8533 0001
F +44 (0) 20 8985 4424

E info@dance-united.com
W www.dance-united.com

“Unlike so many efforts by northern NGOs to do things to/for Africans, this one combines what seems like real empowerment, self-help, self-reliance, social enterprise, and social transformation.”
Chukwu-Emeka Afford, African Foundation for Development

“Adugna are a beacon in what is often a pretty bleak landscape and their evolution has come far nearer to my ideals of how the arts can be used as an agency for human empowerment and transformation than almost any other project I have knowledge of.”
Dr Jane Plastow, University of Leeds, Comic Relief external evaluator

“The confidence, self-esteem and individual development that dance can instill in people of all ages convinces me this initiative is truly inspirational and life-changing.”
Maggie Baxter, former Head of Africa Programme, Comic Relief. Now Executive Director of Womankind, and Dance United Trustee

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