Come and join the Youth Recreation Club

Youth Recreation Club - Starts Monday Sept. 12th at CultureLink

Girls Hip Hop Dance Workshops with @caddysuperville

Deuce n Dip - Girls Hip Hop Dance on March 29th at Runnymede Collegiate Institute (all girls welcome)

Youth Recreation Club - All Girls Zumba on Tuesday March 8th

Wintegration- OLI Dance Concert

Hip Hop Dance!

"... a huge Thank You to Kids Up Front for the tickets!" ~Flyura (front left)

On Saturday, March 1st, Kids Up Front gave us, who are in CultureLink’s Wintegration Youth Program, a great opportunity to watch Dr. Rennie Harris's hip hop show called "Rennie Harris Puremovement". All over again, from all of us, a huge Thank You to Kids Up Front for the tickets! We really appreciate this!

"I really enjoyed it, and thanks for the tickets for us to watch!" ~Nic Shaw (2nd from left)

Dance and music is part of our life because if you can't say something in words, you can show that through the emotions of dance and music.

Dancers and musicians are two kinds of artists who always have been one of the most interesting and mysterious people to me, because from simple things they can make something unique and incredible!

"I really liked the last part, cool!!! Thanks for the tickets!" ~ Ryan Wang (left)

I had a great time watching this show, it's actually changed something inside me and also gave me inspiration! I love dance, and I had just started dancing with a hip hop crew. It is a really nice way to show yourself that there are a lot of things that you don't know about your body, and also it's a good way to express your emotions.

Written by: Flyura

Edited by: Young

"On the way..."

"I really love sharing my culture with Canadians and
other people living in Toronto" ~Eske

Visions of Unity in Diversity is a digital storytelling project by CultureLink, funded by Inspirit Foundation.The program promotes respect for diverse religions, cultures and spirituality through exchange between youths, fieldtrips to places of worship, attending cultural festivals, sharing by various religious leaders and interaction with one another.

This is Eske's story:


Project special thanks to UforChange.

Dance Session

   Today’s session was about dancing, but we started the session with a couple of ice-breaker games to get to know one another better.     One of the games was that we had to think of a word which starts with the first letter of our names to describe ourselves. Everyone took turns to say the description, plus the person’s name, and we had to point at the person at the same time. It was so simple that everybody got it quite easily. So we made it harder, by adding a greeting in various different languages. That went pretty well, too.Through the game, I not only remembered everyone’s names, but also I learned how to say “hi” in German, Portuguese, Russian and Karen. I felt like I knew more different languages than before. And others also learned that “Ni Hao” means “hello” in Mandarin!

  After we got to know one another better, We started doing stretched movements for warming up. And we split up into two groups with 3-4 people each. Everyone needed to think three different levels of poses, such as high pose, medium pose and low pose. Our task was to make our own dance with those poses. That was hard to act 9mixed poses smoothly and constantly in my 3-person group. And the other 4-person group is even harder as there were 12poses. After a few times of practicing, our two groups showed our dances to each other. I kind of forgot a little but I could follow what my partners were doing, while three of us were doing it together. I thought we did very well.     

   I thought dancing wasn’t that fun until this session changed my opinion. I came up with a few new definition for dance. Dancing makes you know yourself better while stretching your body. Dancing brings you creative thoughts while making up movements. Dancing helps you develop your teamwork skills, and builds friendship with your partners. Anyway. I like this session!!!

Written by: Jessica Wang

Edited by: Lynda Young

Posted by: Jessica Wang

Salsa Picnic Social

We went to the Grenadier Pond of High Park for Salsa Picnic Social on June 27, 2013. We met at the intersection of High Park and Bloor.

When we got there, we were given two choices, either to go down the massive slopes to get to the pond, or stay close to where we were and sit on one of the park benches. We chose to go to the pond because we have never been there before.

There wasn’t a direct path to get to the pond. The route was winding and the slopes were steep! On the way, we met a couple who were sitting on a bench and feeding birds, squirrels, and chipmunks. We stopped for a while to watch them,  and took photos of the furry creatures.

We arrived at the pond after a while. We found an appropriate area to set up our picnic stuff close to the pond. I felt kind of tired to walk that far to the pond because we carried lots of snacks! After we unpacked everything, we started eating those yummy food. There were chips and salsa dip and fruits and other snacks! We ate til we were almost too full!

The place where we set up

The big pool at High Park

Then, Lynda started teaching us Salsa! Not the salsa for dipping chips in! It's a type of Latin dance. We turned on the big, portable speaker. We then followed along and tried doing each of the dance moves. We learnt basic steps, side steps, turns, and more! We also learnt that the best way to put our hands was by putting them on our sides with arms bent. We were not allowed to make them into fists. Instead, we we told to pretend we were holding eggs with our thumbs and middle fingers. It took some getting used too!

Having snacks

We danced through several songs. Then,  it started getting too cold to continue dancing more,

because this place was around the water. We had to cut short the session.

This was a great chance to experience this type of dance. The dance was awesome! Thanks for Lynda teaching us. She was a good teacher!

Written by: Jessica Wang
Edited by: Lynda Young
Posted by: Jessica Wang

Eskista - Ethiopian Traditional Dance Workshop

Today, we went to CultureLink again for Wintegration, the Newcomer Youth Centre (NYC)'s after-school program. When we arrived, Lynda told us we would be learning how to dance. Well the dance is from Ethiopia. Alright, sorry, but I have never heard of this country before then! Lol.

Learning about Ethiopia and the traditional dance, Eskista

Eskender Admassu is the name of the guy who was the volunteer teaching us the dance today. The dance style is called Eskista, which is a tradition Ethiopian dance.

So the main part in this dance is shaking your shoulders. This means you should hold your whole body still, and only shake your shoulders.

Wintegration learns Eskista

Anyway, I’m not a good dancer. After 2 hours of trying, (forgive me, but our dancing was really bad, lol) we watched Eskender dance for us. Alright, his dance moves looked really professional, not like us.

"You should hold your whole body still, and only shake your shoulders" ~JieMin Li

After he showed us his moves, and also a performance video on YouTube, today's Wintegration Program came to an end.

Wintegration participants after our dance workout

Not only did we have a nice workout, we also learn more about Ethiopia. It was lots of fun and interesting. Thanks Eskender!

P.S.: my shoulders were really painful and sore on second day! lol

Written by: JieMin Li

Edited by: Lynda Young