Community Spotlight / Ayana’s Adaptive Dance With Friends Creates A Free, Safe Space For Kids With Special Needs

Ayana’s Adaptive Dance With Friends Creates A Free, Safe Space For Kids With Special Needs

Community Spotlight Aug 23, 2020

by Ayana B. Patel

A junior in high school, Ayana B. Patel loves to dance. “It has always been my safe space to relieve stress and express my emotions,” Ayana explains. Combining this passion with her love to help special needs children, she created Ayana’s Adaptive Dance With Friends, a free zoom online class where she lets her students express their emotions and indulge in their love for dance.

My Business: Ayana’s Adaptive Dance With Friends

Follow Us: Instagram

Email: [email protected]

Launched In: March 2020

Our Target Market: Children with special needs.

We We Offer: Dance classes for children with special needs offered online via Zoom.

Ayana shares her story here:

I am a Junior in high school right now. I have been dancing since I was two years old. It has always been my safe space to relieve stress and express my emotions. I wanted to provide a class for children with special needs where they can express themselves too. I strive to include everyone and so I started my own dance class where these children could dance their hearts out.

Community Spotlight: Ayana's Adaptive Dance With Friends Creates A Safe Space For Kids With Special Needs — **Community Spotlight: Ayana’s Adaptive Dance With Friends Creates A Safe Space For Kids With Special Needs: Founder Ayana Patel.** Photo Credit: Courtesy of Ayana B. Patel.

Since I was 12, I have been assisting at an adaptive dance class for children with special needs at my dance studio. This class is not offered at many other studios so I wanted to work with other studios to create an adaptive dance class there as well. That is how my class started. Because of COVID-19, I was not able to meet with studios to discuss opening an adaptive class so I created one on Zoom.

The class is still growing but right now I have about 10 students. I teach a class once a week on Saturday’s for 45 minutes. I plan to teach another class when there are more students who join.I teach ballet, jazz, and hip hop all in one class. I also let the dancers show off their awesome moves in free dance at the end of each class. After dancing in my class, I host a social skills meet-up. In this session, I create topics for everyone to discuss. For example, in one class the topic was favourite animal. Everyone would then talk about their favourite animal.

Afterwards, each kid gets to ask one question to another friend in the class. The purpose of this meet-up is to help each kid in the class start and continue conversations more fluently.

If you would like to connect/enroll with Ayana, feel free to DM her on Instagram.

Main Image Photo Credit: Anya B. Patel

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Ayana’s Adaptive Dance With Friends Creates A Free, Safe Space For Kids With Special Needs

by Ayana B. Patel

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