Fausta (middle in pink) with her family
On June 26, 12-year-old Fausta Twizerimana boarded a plane bound for New York City, where she spent three weeks at the Dance Theater of Harlem after receiving an invitation to the summer intensive workshop over several hundred other hopefuls.
Fausta lives off Haskell near Fair Park, attends school at Uplift Luna Preparatory and dances with Dallas Black Dance Theatre.
This was Fausta’s second plane trip. Her first was eight years ago when she left the refugee camp in Tanzania with her parents, Jean and Francine, and five siblings, all of whom were born in the camp.
The family settled into apartments off Ferguson in Far East Dallas where many refugees live. They immediately began attending Grace United Methodist Church at Junius and Haskell in East Dallas, where they were “adopted” by the church community that has more than 50 refugees in its 300 member congregation.
One woman in particular, Dolena Westergard, an attorney who is active in the Refugee Outreach program at Grace, took the family under her wing. Jean and Francine didn’t speak English, but they managed to communicate with Westergard primarily through signing.
Westergard helped the family get assimilated into their new lives, and she was the one who recognized that Fausta loves to dance.
“Even the first Sunday Fausta was at our church, she was little enough for me to hold and she was moving moving moving — always movement,” Westergard says, “and she was always singing and very outgoing.”
Westergard enrolled Fausta in Dallas Black Dance Theatre, and Fausta took to it immediately.
“In Africa dance is a unifier,” Westergard explains. “It’s a connector, a community thing. Rhythm and movement is a part of daily living. But [Fausta]Â has more than just a normal sense of movement. It’s her driving force.”
Despite her talent in ballet, jazz, African dance and tap, the family was surprised when she won the trip to New York City to dance with Dance Theater of Harlem.
Fausta auditioned for the spot simply as a chance to practice auditioning, but then three weeks later she received a letter saying she was invited to participate in the workshop.
Westergard told the community at Grace, and friends of the church raised enough money to send Fausta to New York City. Over the course of three weeks, she had the opportunity meet dance professionals, attend shows, and learn new dance movements.
She almost had too much fun to miss her family back in Dallas — almost.
