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What I seem to hear again and again was the professional dancer just wants to step back and chill...
...And then we've got the non-dancer who believes "I'm no good in dancing. I cannot dance".
Very often that's the men and boys.
Or someone who's older, saying that "no, I'm too old to dance" or "it's not cool enough" or so...
And I love that kind of participant because I find it very challenging to just try to get them to join in...
...And just feel the joy of participation without an obligation or pressure to do so.
Journey Towards Hope had two perspectives.
One was to be there, watching and as soon as possible to be a participant.
And there was another angle where you could take art to the highest level.
One big experience was a Malaysian who was a fantastic dancer and very well excepted in society...
She had good friends and all around, and pretty popular in high school for who she was rather than who she tried to be.
Who came up to Western Australia to take up pre-university education...
...And she was just so impressed with the privilege to come out here.
Was extremely... almost in a depressive state... because of an inability to connect with a diverse culture...
...And for fear of offending people by asking them for what she perceived to be so different.
Her needs or fear of offending anyone by being herself.
And she became quite close to us, you know, she was living with us for some time.
And from her I just had another whole segment of this journey...
We call it he journey towards hope, but it has all these side roads that takes us round and brings us back to this main road...
...It brings us back to the level of hope there could be or should be in society.
So, she eventually appeared to be an extremely empowered young lady...
...And she said that it came back in a belief that she could still dance.
...And not be discriminated or criticized for it.
Looking back, I think the day we started Journey Towards Hope in 2001...
...There was no specific idea of where it was going, because hope cannot be contained...
And hope is dynamic and it keeps changing...
But when someone loses hope, they lose the desire and enjoyment of life.
Let's start looking at what is not there.
So through dance and through art it is my desire that we continue on this journey for hope.