Company Category: Arts

DA:NCE (Dance Awareness No Child Exploited) educates and equips caring adults, dance educators, and community leaders to recognize and respond to the growing cultural shift from healthy, age-appropriate children’s dance to harmful, hypersexualized performance trends. This shift, seen in adult costumes, provocative choreography, and explicit music choices, is not just a style issue. It’s a reflection of a larger cultural movement influenced by the internet, the media, and the pornography industry, which together serve as a gateway to child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and the exploitation of children. Our mission is to bring international awareness and education to stop the exploitation of children through hypersexualized dance. Our vision is to promote the art of dance and its benefits to children by creating educational materials that advocate for their safety and protection in all dance environments. At DA:NCE, we believe that dance should be a joyful, creative, and empowering experience for every child. Healthy dance nurtures confidence, discipline, teamwork, and artistic expression. It allows children to grow in strength, creativity, and character without being asked to perform adult concepts they cannot yet understand. Through our online resources, we offer free educational tools, research-based guides, videos, and awareness campaigns to help adults and educators identify harmful trends and make positive changes. Our work connects the dots between what happens in children’s dance and the broader cultural forces shaping our society, encouraging communities to take meaningful action. For passionate adults who want to protect children, our website provides clear action steps you can take right now: – Learn to identify the differences between healthy and harmful dance. – Share evidence-based information in your local dance community. – Support or nominate studios committed to child-appropriate dance practices through our Healthy DA:NCE Directory, a national database of safe, age-appropriate dance studios. – Join the DA:NCE Coalition, an international community of educators, parents, artists, and advocates working together to protect children in dance and celebrate healthy movement. We also invite you to explore our Trailblazer Award, which recognizes individuals making a significant impact in advocating for the dignity, safety, and well-being of children in dance. At DA:NCE, we know change happens through awareness, education, and collaboration. Whether you’re a teacher, parent, student, or simply someone who cares about protecting children, your voice matters. Together, we can restore dance as a safe and uplifting space for every child, a place of artistry, not exploitation. Visit us at www.danceawareness.com to explore our free resources, learn how to get involved, and join a growing movement to make a difference in the future of dance.