One day while cleaning out our closets and trying to organize our room we came upon old dance bags over stuffed with tap and jazz shoes that didn’t fit us anymore. Behind that bag was another large bag packed with beautiful costumes and barely-worn leotards. We looked at each other and then of course, turned to our mother and said, practically in unison ” Mom, what should we do with all of these things?”.
And suddenly, Donate2Dance was born. We realize that we are two very lucky, young girls who have been tap dancing with Shuffles Tap in NYC since we were each 5 years old. We also acknowledge that not every dancer can just walk into Capezio every few months and buy new shoes. The mission for our charity, Donate2Dance, is to collect gently worn dance shoes, dance wear and costumes because we believe that every child deserves the chance to dance.
We partnered with our tap school, Shuffles Tap and together we engaged the dance community at Shuffles and MMAC also on the upper west side. Our donation bins were quickly packed with toe shoes, leotards, tutus, tap shoes, elaborate costumes, jazz shoes and more. To date, we have four donation bins around NYC and recently brought one to Ballet Academy East. We have collected over 1,000 pairs of shoes and hundreds of costumes.
We use our Bat Mitzvah money and proceeds from bake sales to pay for shipping boxes of donations around the country. The best moment for us is when we receive a letter from a dance school saying how the shoes and costumes made an impact in their students’ lives!
Programs that we send to and work with: Rosie O’Donnell’s – Rosie’s Theater Kids , Idina Menzel’s -A Broader Way, Debbie Allen’s Dance Academy, Dancing Dreams NYC for children with special needs, Orlando Ballet, Arts for Autism, Pink Tutu Outreach in Cleveland, Texas Ballet, The Bronx House and the list goes on and on and on! Recently, we also shipped to dance schools that lost everything in Hurricane Michael.
Corporations like Bloch has generously donated 200 pairs of new dance tights, Capezio has donated shoes and costumes and LeSportSac donated 75 beautiful dance bags. We are waiting to hear from Danskin – we hope they can donate leotards!
Our goal is to keep collecting and shipping to dance programs in need! We love it!
Recently, we were profiled on NY1 as “New Yorkers of The Week” and on ThriveGlobal.com and Playbill…!
Ava and Sophia Paley – we are sisters from NYC who believe every child deserves the chance to dance!
www.Donate2Dance.org
@Donate2Dance
