Who: Lineage Performing Arts Center
What: Dance for Joy Youth with ADHD
Where: 920 E. Mountain Street, Pasadena CA 91104
When: November 5 – December 17
Lineage Performing Arts Center is excited to offer another Dance for Joy Youth with ADHD class. The Dance for Joy program has existed for many years offering free dance, acting, and music classes to people with neurological challenges (Parkinson’s, MS, Stroke recovery, etc.). It is now expanding this program to include youth who have been diagnosed with ADHD, offering classes using movement to help manage their ADHD.
Participants will play games, dance, create, and learn how to apply new strategies, at home and at school. This program uses movement to help students with “organizational training, teaching children time management, planning skills, and ways to keep school materials organized in order to optimize student learning and reduce distractions. This management strategy has been tested with children and adolescents” (Centers for Disease Control).
Cindy Goldrich (Ed.M., ADHD-CCSP) recommends movement for these students: “Activity can help stimulate the networks of the brain that control attention, increasing the neurotransmitters dopamine and norepinephrine levels in the way ADHD medications do.”
The program is taught by Sarah Alaways. Sarah Alaways earned her MA in Dance Performance, studied at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London, and has been teaching dance of all sorts for twenty years in LA, Houston, Seattle, and abroad. Most notably, she taught for the Houston Ballet Education and Community Engagement programs and the Alley Theatre Youth Conservatory. She also taught all levels of dance at the Creative Dance Center, where she shadowed its founder, Anne Green Gilbert, and graduated from the Brain Compatible Dance Education institute for teachers.
It is a 6-week program, running from November 5 through December 17. Classes are on Thursdays from 4:00-5:30. Registration is available here. There is a sliding scale for payment; no one will be turned away for an inability to pay even the lowest price.
