Our Story

Dance for a Change was established in 2008 by Sannette van der Mescht, as a small ballet school for training young dancers. Its  particular interest was to offer under-resourced students the opportunity to learn this dance form. Within a year five of these students had completed their Grade 4 and 5 Cecchetti Ballet examinations and a young trainee from Gugulethu, Tania Mteto, won the prestigious Mabel Ryan award as the top Grade 5 examination candidate in the Cecchetti examinations. Tania has since become a successful dancer in the industry. She has performed in various productions, including We Will Rock You, Evita, Janice Honeyman's Aladdin and Disney's The Music Box. 

 

In 2010, Dance for a Change extended its Classical Ballet classes to Pinelands, incorporating stretch and strengthening, and contemporary dance in its programme. Since then the studio has gone from strength to strength. Students have continued to participate in prestigious Cecchetti Awards: 3 candidates went through to Mabel Ryan in 2019; Molly De Witt was runner up as top Intermediate candidate (2022), Bethany Reynders won the Advanced 1 Trophy as top candidate in 2023 and Molly De Witt achieved Advanced 1 Top 3. Classes are run in conjunction with Robin van Wyk (Previous Artistic Director of CTCB) and Nicolette Loxton (previous Senior Principal of CTCB).

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The studio has received numerous individual and group awards at the Cape Town Eisteddfod, annual Move National Dance Competition and the Cape Dance Festival , with wins in many of the sections they enter.  In 2023 and 2024 a number of students were selected to dance in Cape Town City Ballet's Christmas productions, and two junior students featured as Von Trapp children in Cape Town Opera/Pieter Toerien's 2023/24 production of Sound of Music.