this is the moment to raise the barre

Willemieke started her dance training late in classical ballet terms. Growing up in Africa, the opportunities to take ballet classes were limited. Though dancing is very much a part of the African culture, ballet not so much. After coming back to The Netherlands Willemieke started her education at the Royal Academy of Dance, but her passion for teaching developed itself in Toronto Canada where the very first classes were taught. Soon after the first foundations were built to create her own dance and yoga school.

With an endless curiosity for other cultures and practices, Willemieke obtained her Masters in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology. This curiosity also lead her to the path of yoga. Everything in yoga influenced her dance teaching and did so to such an extent that she decided to ‘break’ with the more traditional approaches of teaching ballet and recently completed her master’s degree in dance as well as studying yoga intensively under Baron Baptiste and Simon Park, deepening her practice and teaching methods around the principles of authenticity and free expression.

True connective movement cannot be set apart from the exact moment the movement is made, and all that is present within that moment. All that the dancer or yogi feels, experiences and ultimately expresses. Without the embodiment, and on a deeper level, the ensoulment of the movement, the movement becomes mechanic,  an empty shell. This basic principle applies to all movement types.
Within the barre practice my true loves of movement come together. It has the grace and expression of ballet, the rootedness and interior focus of yoga and the awareness and integration of pilates. To me it has all the ingredients for an ever changing and ever interesting practice, in which not only form is important, but also a deeper level of expression and self-development.