Attitude, Giovanni Zocco calls out to about two dozen young people. “Attitude — that’s the most important thing!”
The dancer from Sicily, trained by the ballet genius John Neumeier, is standing bolt upright in the practice room of the Honigfabrik community centre in the northern German city of Hamburg. He’s here to teach dance to a group of schoolkids from Nelson Mandela High School.
Wearing sweatpants and T-shirts, the boys and girls between ages 13 and 15 are standing in a row at a dance barre that Zocco has made for them. They are practicing what all professional dancers know already: To keep their backs straight (“Very proud!” their teacher insists), to get the correct positions for the supporting leg and free leg, to bend their knees, to put their feet on pointe and demi pointe, to turn their heads gracefully to the side.
This works better for some than others. But most are giving it their full concentration and, after all, it’s only their fourth class.
Their school is in the socially disadvantaged Kirchdorf-Wilhelmsburg district, where 89 per cent of the pupils have a migrant background.
The kids in the dance class have one major goal: They want to perform the musical “Billy Elliot,” based on the hit film by Stephen Daldry from 2000 — including self-designed sets and live music from a band.
At first they will just perform for their friends and families, but Hannelore Lay has already arranged a possible appearance in a real theatre. The director of the Hamburg foundation Kinderjahre (Children’s Years) has provided US$5,705 of funding for the project, which was the brainchild of Elisabeth Hintze, the school’s cultural officer.
The play, which requires demanding dialogue from the young actors, centres on working-class Billy, who, like his male classmates, is supposed to learn boxing. But he discovers his love for ballet despite it being seen as “girly,” and in the end, against all the odds, he becomes a professional dancer.
“The story reflects the situation of many young people who are supposed to fulfil cliches,” says Hintze.
By acting in the play, her students can learn “to pursue and implement their own self-defined goals in life with ambition and consistency.” The questioning of gender roles is an essential aspect, as is the idea of fostering understanding between children, some of them from very different cultural backgrounds.
“Everyone has the right to be who they are, but in the end they must respect the rules of society,” says Hintze, who often joins the students during rehearsals and hopes that the musical will convey that message.
This has not always worked at the school in the past. A few years ago, an unaccompanied 17-year-old refugee from Afghanistan killed another pupil with a knife at the school, something that made headlines across Germany.
The young people who have now put on their dancing shoes are obviously feeling enriched by the project. “I could never have imagined a year ago that I would be doing ballet here. I thought only girls did that,” says 14-year-old Valmir, one of three actors playing Billy in the musical.
“But I wanted to try it,” Valmir continues, “The best thing for me now is that I feel freer.” His Albanian parents would have no problem with that – only his sister sometimes makes a bit of fun of him.
The 15-year-old Selin, whose father was born in Turkey, plays the teacher who supports Billy in pursuing his dream.
Selin thinks she doesn’t really need the impetus provided by the play, as her parents — in contrast to her more conservative grandparents — have given her the freedom to make her own career choices. However, the play gives her the opportunity to really concentrate on a task for a long time. And she also likes the fact that it gives classmates who hadn’t even talked to each other before the chance to interact outside the rehearsals.
Project funder Lay is also pleased about this. “Enabling emotional integration through culture — that seems particularly important to me in a civil society that is being newly arranged,” she says.
Her charitable foundation, which she founded with her husband Wolfgang Lay in 2004, wants to help disadvantaged young people find their feet. Kinderjahre, which has an annual budget of 250,000 euros and 50 volunteers, helps these young people gain work experience through company visits and internships.
