Very soon after having founded the TANZMOTO DANCE COMPANY, Mohan C. Thomas – choreographer and artistic director – started to cooperate with schools and offer different kinds of dance classes. These activities inspired him to establish the MOVING SCHOOL, a dance and movement school, to introduce people to different kinds of movement. Children, teenagers and adults with and without dance experience and people with and without handicaps have already participated with great enthusiasm in more than 35 projects so far and became passionate dancers within a very short period of time, no longer afraid to perform on stage.
Some of the most successful MOVING SCHOOL projects were dance projects aimed at teenagers together with the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, the Bochumer Symphoniker and the Sinfonieorchester Münster as well as the production “Tierkreis”. The latter was a joint project conducted in 2009 with the Philharmonie Essen and the primary school “Maria Kunigunda”, located in a social problem district in Essen: All 300 pupils were involved.
The work together with Royston Maldoom on the project “Per Elefant zum Mars” in 2005 marked the beginning of an ongoing cooperation with the choreographer, which added even more fuel to the MOVING SCHOOL’s professional services. A community dance project implemented in Marl laid the foundation for the “AkzepTanz Company”, a dance company for children and adults under the patronage of Maldoom.
Overall, 2,000 pupils from Essen alone have already participated in MOVING SCHOOL workshops and projects to date. Due to the high demand, the TANZMOTO DANCE COMPANY founded the “Junior Dance Company Essen”. Young talents in contemporary dance are given the opportunity to develop their skills even further through regular rehearsals and performances.
Furthermore, the MOVING SCHOOL has already been active abroad: With an invitation to attend the International Youth Summit “Go4BioDiv”, that took place on the occasion of the UN conference of the international convention for the protection of biological diversity, TANZMOTO members held two workshops for young people from all over the world – one at the summit in Bonn and the other in Nagoya, Japan, culminating with the teenagers creating a dance presentation on the issue of wildlife conservation.
Through these activities, the TANZMOTO DANCE COMPANY contributes to cultural integration on its own and in cooperation with cultural institutes, artists as well as other local, regional and international associations and organisations.
