Ballet4Life Celebrating its Twentieth Anniversary

Founder Donna Schoenherr looks back at the first two decades

A class in the Rambert Dance Studios in the early years of Ballet4Life. Picture: Simone Ghera/@DancerInside

January 18, 2024

Twenty years ago this month, the first Ballet4Life class was held in what was then the studios of the Rambert Dance Company at 94 Chiswick High Road.

The Monday morning ballet class for adults was started by Donna Schoenherr, a former professional dancer from New York, who had come to Chiswick seven years earlier.

She recalls the very first class in 2004 fondly and says, “I remember dropping our son off at nursery and eagerly getting on my bike to get over to the studio. I was very excited and hopeful that all would go well. I had created a leaflet and handed those around and paid to have one up on the old community bulletin board at the Chiswick Post Office. I had also planned a few Zena-Rommett Floor Barre® exercises, but the floor was too cold, so I had to immediately scrap that concept and reinvent things on-the-spot.”

Since that time, the concept of Ballet4life has inspired many dance organisations to offer tuition for adult learners. This is likely to have resulted in thousands of people signing up for dance studios across the country.

Ballet4Life started off with the one morning adult ballet class and then slowly expanded to eventually to sixteen classes per week in- person, and two- six online classes.

During the first year of the Covid lockdown it ran dance, movement, wellness, and mindfulness classes each day for free to all. It now has also have more than seven professional teachers who give expert tuition and aim to create a welcoming and positive environment in which to learn and to train.

A Ballet4Life class back in 2008. Picture: Simone Ghera/@DancerInside

Since its inception, Ballet4life has offered an array of workshops, masterclasses, and performances, and created and delivered dance programmes at many local schools. It has also welcomed international guest artists and sponsored dancers who are Ukrainian refugees,

To add to this special moment in their history it will be also attending two major award ceremonies this February for which it has received nominations. One is for the coveted People’ Choice Award from One Dance UK and the other is for the West London Business - Best Health and Wellbeing Business Award. Donna speculated, “Do you think that I can pull off wearing the same outfit to both?”

She has also recently been for Chris Lewis’, CEO of Team Lewis, next book about Leadership which will be on the shelves in September.

Donna says that many who started with Ballet4Life in the very early days have remained loyal clients and friends, and they been part of and interwoven within, personal stories of new babies, marriages, illnesses, losses, new jobs, celebrations, and relocations, etc.

A class being held in 2012 at Arts Ed. Picture: Ballet4Life

Ballet4Life is also the umbrella organisation to the registered charity Move into Wellbeing® (MiW). MiW was founded ten years ago and attained registered charity status in 2017 and has also grown from one class per week to over twelve classes per week, livestreaming and online programmes, and a 24/7 access to a library of movement exercises. These specialised Dance & Movement classes are believed to be effective for neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s in addition to other movement challenges such as Arthritis, Stroke Recovery, Joint Replacements, Stiffness, Balance problems, Fall Recovery, ME, MS, Dyspraxia, Long Covid, Mental Health, and more.

MiW works with Integrated Neurological Services, Twickenham, Hounslow Seniors Trust charity, Four Sheltered Accommodation Schemes in the London Borough of Hounslow, and the Hounslow Falls and Bone Health Service amongst others. This charity also had placements for students of the Royal Academy of Dance and has had students volunteering for their Duke of Edinburgh Awards.

If you were a part of the Ballet4Life story and have any anecdote or a memory or photograph that you’d like to share with them, you are asked to send those along to Ballet4Life by email at ballet4lifeuk1@gmail.com.