2024 Olympics: Ontario dance troupe to perform in Paris, help celebrate historic gender equality moment
A team of over 60 London, Ont., dancers are in Paris to tell a story through dance of a history-making moment achieved at the Olympics this year
An Ontario-based dance troupe has landed in Paris for the 2024 Olympics Games with the aim of showcasing a history-making moment for gender equality.
Paris 2024 is the first Olympic Games in history with full gender parity on all teams, thanks to the distribution of an equal number of quota places to female and male athletes, the International Olympic Committee shared in a press release.
Over 60 dancers and instructors from London, Ont.'s Dance Extreme were hand selected to perform at various venues around Paris as the 2024 Olympic games are taking place.
"The kids, teens and teachers are all extremely excited to be heading to Paris," said Dance Extreme director Rebecca Brettingham-Filice in an interview with Yahoo News Canada.
Brettingham-Filice says the troupe's five performances over nine days at various Paris venues — the first slated to begin Tuesday, July 30 — will be centred around the groundbreaking moment for gender equality achieved at the Paris Olympic Games.
I'm quite excited at the fact that there are 50 per cent women at the Olympics, and this is the first time this has happened everRebecca Brettingham-Filice, Dance Extreme director
Brettingham-Filice says the performances are set to be centred around the story of a female dancer and her journey of facing trials of making it in dance while overcoming industry hurdles to become successful. She succeeds in making a name for herself and pays it forward by going back to her roots and teaching the upcoming generation of young dancers.
This is not the first time a Dance Extreme troupe has performed on location at the Olympic Games, Brettingham-Filice says.
"Back in 2010, I was approached by a company in the U.S. who had seen my team competing," said Brettingham-Filice. "They approached us about dancing at the 2012 Summer Olympics in England, which we did."
The same organization approached the Dance Extreme director about having their dancers showcase their talents in Paris this year.
Brettingham-Filice says none of this would be possible without the immense support that their local community offered to support their vision of performing at the Olympics.
"The community has been absolutely amazing," she said. "They raised over $130,000 to help families with expenses for the trip. It's been more than we hoped for."
As a way of saying thank you to the community for their support, Brettingham-Filice said the dance troupe held a sneak peak performance to nearly 500 wellwishers at the Western Alumni Stadium ahead of their Paris departure.
