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Exhibitionists·Video

Cut loose, footloose with these dancing kids from the Alberta School for the Deaf

"If you're deaf and you can't hear the music, you can definitely feel the vibrations. And that can really help you dance."

'If you're deaf and you can't hear the music, you can definitely feel the vibrations'

Tamarra Canu · CBC Arts ·

Cut loose, footloose with kids from the Alberta School for the Deaf

8 years ago
Duration 2:41
"If you're deaf and you can't hear the music, you can definitely feel the vibrations. And that can really help you dance." Student Pewhysis Thunder on her week with DanceED Movement Project

Alberta School for the Deaf vice principal Shelly Prain remembers that when she studied at the National Ballet School, people were surprised that she could dance. Being deaf, the assumption was that she couldn't hear the music — and therefore, she'd have a difficult time moving to it.

But Prain points out that dance is about movement, about knowing the rhythm. And she takes apart the stereotype, saying, "We have deaf doctors, deaf lawyers, deaf dancers — we can be anything...I think people need to take down that mindset."

Enter DanceED Movement Project, a program in Edmonton started by dancers Andrea Gregorio and Krista Deady. The Alberta School for the Deaf is among the many schools they take their empowering dance workshops to. Recently, Gregorio, Deady and a bunch of enthusiastic kids spent a week learning some dynamic routines in a gym equipped with a powerful subwoofer and danced it out, getting ready for a performance in front of their parents and the community at the end of the week.

(CBC Arts)

In this video, sit in on the group's rehearsals and learn about why this program means so much to Gregorio and Deady and the kids they work with.

Watch Exhibitionists on Friday nights at 12:30am (1am NT) and Sundays at 3:30pm (4pm NT) on CBC Television.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tamarra Canu

Tamarra Canu is a freelance filmmaker, recently a grant recipient to produce her film The Act of Being Normal. She was Additional Camera and Production Assistant for Vital Bonds on CBC's The Nature of Things and Production Coordinator for CBC's Equus- Story of the Horse. She began her career at CBC News Edmonton as Associate Producer and is proud to be able to keep telling stories for the CBC.

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