Alumni Post - Molly

Hello there Pegasus!

Let me count the ways…

When I started dancing at Pegasus in 1993 my 9 year-old self realized it loved to dance and it decided never to look back. I’m pretty proud of my 9 year-old self and I owe this wonderful place called Pegasus a lot for providing me with such an inspiring, warm and encouraging environment to move and grow in. I can easily say that I loved every minute of the time I spent being part of the Pegasus community and it definitely shaped the person I am today.

Now I am 27 years old and I work in arts education. I am a theatre artist and a teacher. I work at Soulpepper Theatre Company as their Education Coordinator where I support the running of all the theatre’s educational and outreach programming for youth. I love what I do because I see the value in providing opportunities for young people to freely explore and express themselves creatively. See how the Pegasus philosophy might have rubbed off? 


And just between you and me, I can’t seem to stop dancing… I take my tap shoes wherever I go! In 2008 I taught English in Japan and I incorporated tap dancing into all of my elementary school classes. It ended up being a pretty big hit and all of the students ended up tap dancing on the local news channel! It was great. This year I pulled out my tap shoes again and explored choreography with the youth in Soulpepper’s Summer programs.

So, thank you Pegasus, for encouraging and instilling a life-long love of dance in me and so many others. You’re a gem! Keep dancing all!

Molly

Free to be you and me

The dance world can be an intense place full of judgment and high physical and mental demands on youth. The pressures to have “the dancers body” or to be a “beautiful ballerina” are all over the place and can be quite hard for some young dancers to deal with… and rightly so.  

So what can be done to promote positive feelings and positive dancers?

Pegasus has long been on a mission to promote the healthy dancer. The healthy dancer respects and takes care of their body. We encourage our students to connect to their own body and to embrace the differences that make us all unique. Each of us can bring a different quality to our dancing because of these unique attributes and it is our goal at Pegasus to make sure students learn to cherish themselves for whom they are.

We should all feel free to be ourselves whether we are in the dance studio, in the dance school or out in the world!