Elite dancers at this Sundowner school
SUNDOWNER – Elite College of Excellence is the destination where dance an education overlap and need your help to keep dancing like they will be doing at the Roodepoort Theatre on 25 and 26 July.
Elite College of Excellence is based in Sundowner, and this is where dance and education meet. The school is an emerging dance school which plans to have classes from grade R to matric.
Thirty learners are taught at the school currently where visitors are greeted with a dance curtsy. Elite has structured their curriculum in a way that dancers are taught academically and have the opportunity to learn contemporary, ballet and modern dance all in one place.
The school has been funded by Johannesburg Arts Conservatory or JAC, a non-profit organisation from the United States. The trust is facilitated by fellow director of the school, Holly Gruver, and has chosen the school because both bodies focused on dance excellence. The Christian school has given learners the opportunity to excel in dance and school. Parents have been relieved of the pressure which comes from the incessant drop and fetch after school hours, while their kids received a private school education. Gruver mentioned that JAC funds Elite, ‘for the love of dance’ so students who wish to dance exclusively, sans academics, through the school are also welcome and vice versa.
Since the school is very new, it has hoped for growth and has opened its doors to funders and all students interested. Professional ballerina turned principal Karen Beaukes said ‘the sooner learners start with dancing, the better’. Currently the school is located on the grounds of the Johannesburg Church of Christ. The floors in the second studio were built using hard and not sprung wood and the school needs to raise R75 000 to R80 000 for Shutterply sheets. It also welcomes additional financial assistance for the purchase of their own grounds and additional operational costs.
The school’s directors Karen Beaukes, Lucinda Bossert and Holly Gruver are trained educators and dancers respectively and are eager to grow opportunities for young dancers through education in South Africa.
Details: academichead@eliteballet.co.za or www.eliteballet.co.za
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