Dance United

Dance United is a non-profit organisation with projects in Ethiopia, Central London, Wessex and Yorkshire. Youths marginalised in society participate in intensive contemporary dance training, which in turn offers them educational qualifications and useful life skills. Each Dance United location has a professional dance company made up of past academy members or local university dancers. The performance company has worked with choreographers such as Dam Van Huynh, Sara Dowling, Lizzie Kew Ross, Darren Ellis and John Ross. Performances have been held in well-known venues throughout England including Sadler's Wells, Two-Temple Place, The Place, Royal Festival Hall, Theatre Royal Winchester, Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Lawrence Batley Theatre. Over the years, Dance United has worked with a diverse range of beneficiaries, including Ethiopian street children, adult women prisoners and people from across the political divides in Berlin and Belfast.

In 1995, TV producer, Andrew Coggins, had planned to make a filmed drama about the plight of Ethiopian street children. It was never to be made, for during the research for the film he was challenged by a senior aid agency executive not to speak for the young people but to give them the tools to speak for themselves.

In unfamiliar territory, Andrew instinctively turned to the two worlds he knew, film and the performing arts. He created a partnership with an Addis Ababa NGO, the Ethiopian Gemini Trust and together they established Gem TV, a film-making company run by former street and working children which continues to this day. For the live art form they chose dance. A range of distinguished teachers came to work with Adugna including Tara-Jane Herbert, Susannah Broughton, Mags Byrne, Tamara McClorg and Royston Maldoom.

Over six years, eighteen young Ethiopians were intensively trained to become professional dancers, teachers and choreographers. Together, they went on to form the Adugna Dance Theatre Company.

After watching this project unfold and in an attempt to expand the work, Andrew Coggins, Royston Maldoom and Mags Byrne founded Dance United, as a registered UK charity in 2000.

Sir Simon Rattle of the Berliner Philharmoniker, insisted that his work with the orchestra include outreach work within the community. Dance United was brought in to develop three major dance performance partnerships from 2003-2005. The final performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, formed the basis for an internationally successful documentary: Rhythm Is It!

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