This Monday (5/13), Fiotec’s executive director, Cristiane Sendim, visited the headquarters of Ballet Manguinhos and got to know the facilities which serve around 350 students from the nearby communities. The president of the initiative, Carine Lopes, showed her the classrooms and common spaces of the building which has been housing Ballet Manguinhos since 2019, in Higienópolis, city of Rio de Janeiro.
In addition to the youths and teenagers already enrolled in the ballet classes, other 700 are waiting for a spot. But the project is not limited to classic dance. They offer classes targeted for the population of the nearby communities, as the one which gathers over 120 women to debate gender violence, and another which offers entrepreneurial education for women.
In spite of the donated resources and incntive laws ensuring the continuity of the classes and courses, Carine says that the Ballet has been facing difficulties with the maintenance of the infrastructure of the headquarters, and that was the main topic of conversation between the two managers. “I come back to Fiotec with the commitment of internally assessing the legal possibilities so that we can define a medium-term support for the operation of Ballet Manguinhos. This initiative must have a well-structured house,” emphasizes Cristiane Sendim.
To Carine, the Ballet and Fiotec are not neighbor institutions, but residents of a same region, a same territory. “It is really important to have an institution such as Fiotec believing in us and giving credibility to our work. We have been acting in these communities for 12 years, and having institutions by our side shows us that we are on the right path, being able to address important agendas for those who live here,” highlights Carine, reinforcing that such partnerships are essential to transform reality through art and culture.
Ballet Manguinhos
With 12 years of operation in the favela complex of Manguinhos, the region with the lowest HDIs in Rio de Janeiro, the project runs ballet, acrobatics, contemporary dance, modern dance and boxing for student from 6 to 65 years old.
The Ballet is already considered the greatest cultural institution in the northern zone of Rio, and it intends to become a reference center in teaching and research in dance and culture within the next five years. The idea is to further spread the project’s operation field to sports and educational modalities, always promoting gender equity.
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