”Dance is the hidden language of the soul.” Martha Graham
The Dancify youth exchange was focused on storytelling through dance and sharing cultures through dancing and through sharing our traditional dances. In this youth exchange, the idea is to share ideas through sharing diversity, through storytelling and art methods to contribute to more knowledge about cultural differences and combating discrimination. We had the goal to send a message with this youth exchange: “Dance your story!” With this youth exchange we welcomed everybody at Catfarm community to promote living in harmony and dance as a tool to bring out the best in yourself, as well as to increase awareness about diversity around. The main aim of this project was to raise awareness about shared value of diversity, so that to contribute to creating an inclusive society in participating countries. Youth from various countries came together during the activities of the project to connect over stories.
The experience of Sofia:
“The Dancify youth exchange was not only my first time joining a youth exchange, but also my first time living in a community. At the beginning I had some ideas of how the Catfarm was going to be, but didn’t have a clear picture of the on-site. I was expecting something similar to what I saw in other communities I had visited so far but when I arrived I was surprised that Catfarm had so much more commodities and structure than what I was expecting. There was data and wifi almost in every spot in the farm, two big indoor spaces with sofas to chill, two sofas outside, projector to watch movies, an enormous roof-terrace perfect to dance or to spend a rainy day outside, two well prepared kitchens, two indoor toilets , two indoor showers and two compost toilets that are so far the coolest I have ever seen: thematically decorated, cleaning utensils to keep the place pretty and a cork board to draw sketches, write notes, messages… A good place to poo!
The youth exchange was perfectly organized with a timetable we all would follow, creating stability and community feeling since we all would take part in the same workshops, tasks, have same-time free-time hours, organize ourselves with a board to clean or cook together; morning meetings to double check what everyone is doing on the day… Apart from these practices, we were also able to connect and have a better co-living in spiritual levels through meditation, tension meetings, sharing circles… These allowed us to express ourselves, resolve possible problems, solve questions or get support and love from the community.
About the workshops, I was amazed by the variety of them and how much we were able to connect with our inner selves. Since the first day we had introspective workshops through which we could see what’s going on inside of us, connecting with- and feeding our soul with positivity everyday.
Dancify was not so much about dancing, but about soul bonding, trusting, connecting more with nature, getting to know ourselves better and learning to express our feelings in different ways through paint, words, sounds, movement and dance.
In summary, Dancify was a learning, connecting and growth experience that I had the privilege to join”.
