(16 Apr 2019) LEADIN In a Peruvian neighbourhood where families consider running water a luxury, young girls are learning the delicate art of ballet dancing.
The classes are led by Maria del Carmen Silva, a former professional dancer, who decided to change lives by bringing classical ballet dancing to children from a poor community where shiny pink pointe shoes are seldom seen.
STORYLINE:
Like many girls around the world, these kids love ballet.
They are lucky enough to be taught by Maria del Carmen Silva , who is bringing classical ballet dancing to children from impoverished communities in Lima.
Elcira Ruiz's daughters have won international awards for their dancing under the tutorship of Silva.
Ruiz says :"We would not be able to pay because I have two girls and both of them like it (ballet). So, I would not be able to pay monthly and the bus (to get to the classes). It would be too expensive for us."
Silva, the 52-year-old teacher, says her mission isn't just to teach girls how to plié, but to prepare them for a future outside the boundaries of their poor neighborhood.
"Ballet isn't known because it's so expensive," the former National Ballet of Peru dancer says. "You need to buy costumes, leotards and pointe shoes."
"I decided that I was going to change lives through dance because that is what I know how to do" she adds.
Excited parents peer through the studio's windows to watch their daughters practice to the sound of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's "Waltz of the Flowers."
Many say they are experiencing ballet for the first time through their children.
Silva is convinced that the discipline required in ballet will teach life lessons as well to a group of students for whom hardship has come at an early age, she doesn't charge these families for lessons.
Peru is a country where seven million people live on just $105 a month. Despite the country's economic stability, it has one of the region's lowest rates of investment in education.
All of that means ballet is usually for the wealthy.
Hoping to break down that barrier, Silva takes her students to dance with girls from Miraflores, one of Lima's most upscale districts in hopes of building friendships between those who can and cannot easily afford a new ballet costume.
She says that on stage it is impossible to tell the difference between wealthy and impoverished students :
"all the girls, no matter where you are from, are all the same. And that mattered to me."
Later this year, Silva hopes to take her students to Florida to participate in a dance competition, if she can raise enough money for plane tickets. She takes the girls into the streets to collect rubbish for recycling for which they get some financial rewards which goes to their Florida fund.
Silva's initiative has sparked new dreams in the minds of girls for whom dance, let alone international travel, long seemed like a distant possibility.
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