About Us

Our Mission

To promote lifelong physical, mental and emotional well-being, as well as enhance academic experience, social awareness and relationship building skills, in young people, through the transformative power of ballroom and partner dancing. 

Our Vision

Dancing Classrooms™ will grow to become part of the physical education/arts curriculum offered in Canadian schools and form the basis of a renewed emphasis on character building education.

Ilsa Abraham – Principal & Co-Founder

Ilsa Abraham is a principal and co-founder of Join The Dance (Canada) (JTD), created in March 2006. JTD is a private, not-for-profit organization whose mission is to shape character development in Canadian youth through innovative Arts in Education programs. 

Ilsa has over 30 years’ experience in business, recruitment, education and training, employment counseling, and in specialized job development for job seekers with disabilities. Ilsa has highly specialized knowledge in equal opportunity and diversity, with particular emphasis on helping persons with disabilities achieve their maximum potential in Canadian society and globally.

Her involvement in working with students and young adults over the years has allowed her to gain invaluable sensitivity and awareness of the self-esteem and confidence issues and concerns, as well as lack of equal access that can impact adversely upon their chances of success.  This understanding has enhanced her capacity to work positively with these critical age groups; and, to increase her commitment to helping educators, service providers, and community leaders to provide greater equal opportunity through more innovative programs and services, in school as well as in the community.

She is an avid dancer with a particular love for ballroom and Latin dance.  She has had some formal training in Ballet and Afro-Caribbean Dance; and has been taking Latin Dance with Betty Colon’s salsa school for close to three years. She is also an instructor’s aide to Betty at the school.

In her professional capacity as a Disability & Diversity Employment Consultant, Ilsa spent the past nine years supporting the Community Head Injury Resource Services (CHIRS) in its efforts to develop and implement highly specialized employment supports and services to individuals with acquired brain injury. Her unique skills and abilities beyond traditional job development and placement lent to unprecedented success for CHIRS and its clients, and to CHIRS becoming an approved Service Delivery Provider for the Ontario Disability Supports Employment Program to individuals with acquired brain injury.  Ilsa also served as CHIRS active representative with the Toronto Board of Trade/Scarborough and North York Chambers of Commerce; and, on the Scarborough Chamber’s Business Excellence Awards committee.

Over the past 15 years she has served on many advisory committees addressing equal opportunities for the disadvantaged, including the Ontario Training & Adjustment Board (OTAB) and the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation & Work. She has become well known in the Greater Toronto Area to both private and public employers – including leading Fortune 500 companies and the major banks – and to government funding agencies, educating & training institutions, and community service providers that offer programs for her target groups.

Ilsa is a highly committed community advocate with an unswerving passion to help others who are striving to achieve their goals.  Join The Dance (Canada) is founded on this passion. 

Bob Rutherford – Co-Founder

Bob co-founded Join The Dance (Canada) in 2006 with Ilsa Abraham.

He has a degree in physical education from McMaster University. Bob went on to attend the College of Education in Toronto, following which he began his teaching career in Blackpool, England.

Bob subsequently returned to Canada and taught for many years in Scarborough. He went on to teach with the Durham District School Board and ended his career as a Vice-Principal in Whitby, Ontario. Having spent over 30 years in education, he has taught at most grade levels and has a particular interest in developing character building programs for young people. With this in mind, he worked with the Community School Association in Whitby to help make local schools available after hours for organized youth activities.

During the time he lived in the Durham region, he was involved with many sports teams in the community and was the Whitby coordinator for the Multiple Sclerosis Society Carnation Day fundraising event for several years.

Bob is now retired and works part time as a consultant. In his spare time he has taken ballroom and Latin dancing lessons. Based on his educational experiences, he strongly believes in the enormous potential of ballroom dancing as an excellent method for teaching young people social skills and building their self-esteem.

Alain Mootoo – Volunteer Treasurer & Co-Founder

Alain Mootoo is the Chief Financial Officer of Operation Springboard. Operation Springboard is an Ontario charity working to help people fulfill their potential and participate fully in their communities. Operation Springboard assist persons involved in the justice system, individuals with developmental disabilities, those needing employment and the homeless. Prior to Operation Springboard, he held various senior financial positions in prominent not-for-profit and for-profit organizations such as the Ontario March of Dimes, Goodwill and Corus Entertainment Inc.

He has served on various community-based committees with the Centre For Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto (MCCT). Alain is currently a member of the Finance Committee and Campaign Cabinet Committee of the Sherbourne Health Centre.  

Alain has been an active participant in his community launching the Reclaiming Our Voices comedy and music festival in 2002 and 2003 in support of programs at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).  He worked with various community-based organizations to create Toronto’s first float in celebration of persons with disabilities in the 2005 Pride Day Parade.

He holds a chartered accountancy designation with the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) of the United Kingdom.

Pierre Dulaine – Founder of Dancing Classrooms (USA)

Pierre Dulaine was born in Jaffa, Palestine in 1944. His Irish father was serving with the British Army stationed in Palestine; his mother is part Palestinian and part French. In 1948 his parents had to flee the troubles leaving their home behind for the creation of the state of Israel. After 8 months of wondering around first in Cyprus, then in England and Ireland, Pierre’s family settled in Amman, Jordan. Growing up in Amman, Pierre learned to speak French at school, Arabic on the street and English at home. In 1956, because of the problems in Egypt and the Suez Canal, Pierre’s parents had to flee yet again, leaving everything behind.  With a stop in Beirut the family resettled in Birmingham, England, where one year later at age 14, Pierre began his dancing career.

By the time Pierre was 18 he took his Associate Degree as a professional dancer.  And at 21, he took his three majors exams in Ballroom, Latin and Olde Tyme all in one day, a feat that had not been accomplished before.  Not only did Pierre pass the exams, but he passed with Highly Commended and became a full member of the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing.

With this early success under his belt, Pierre soon went on to twice win the "Duel of the Giants" at the Royal Albert Hall in London and captured the "All England Professional Latin American Championship”.   In 1971 Pierre worked as a solo dancer at the famous Talk of the Town in London's West End, as well as at a late, late Night Club called L’Hirondelle where he made friends with many interesting ‘artistes’. Pierre next went to Nairobi, Kenya and worked in Cabaret with the world renowned Bluebell Troupe from Paris at the Nairobi Casino for a year. Finally, Pierre signed on as a cruise director on a ship sailing out of New York City to the Caribbean Islands.  In 1972, “I got off of the cruise ship thinking I would be in New York City for a two-week holiday but I got a job at an Arthur Murray dance studio and I have been in New York ever since.”

New York:
In 1973, with a background in ballet, Yvonne Marceau came into Arthur Murray’s for a teacher's job and in January 1976 Pierre and Yvonne became dance partners. They went to England to study for three months with John DelRoy and emerged as a dance team that won numerous awards and accolades, including the 1977, ’78, ’79 and '82 British Exhibition Championships, Dance Magazine’s award for excellence, the National Dance Council of America award, the Dance Educators of America Award, and the Americans for the Arts “Arts in Education” 2005 award.   

In 1984, Pierre and Yvonne stopped dancing as a team and started the American Ballroom Theater Company. They made their company debut at the Dance Theatre Workshop in October 1984 and in March 1986 did a two-week engagement at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.  After that start, their company traveled all over the US, Europe and the Far East. In July 1989 Pierre and Yvonne joined
the workshop for Tommy Tune's Broadway show Grand Hotel and danced on Broadway for 2 ½ years, finishing with a five month run in London’s West End. 

Pierre has been called a “Dancer and Teacher extraordinaire" by the New York Times and (with Yvonne) has received the Astaire Award for "Best Dancing on Broadway" in Grand Hotel.  He has been a faculty member of both the School of American Ballet and the Juilliard School in 1992.  

Dancing Classrooms:
In 1994 Pierre volunteered to teach a dance class at the Professional Performing Arts School on West 48th Street in Manhattan.  From this beginning, Pierre developed Dancing Classrooms™, a 10 week – 20 session social development program for 5th grade children that utilizes ballroom dancing as a vehicle to change the lives of not only the children who participate in the program but also the lives of the teachers and parents who support these children.   

In 2005 Mad Hot Ballroom, an award-winning documentary capturing the Dancing Classrooms™ journey from classroom experience to the culminating Colors of the Rainbow Team Match was released. 

Take the Lead (with Antonio Banderas) was released in 2006 and depicted Pierre Dulaine’s efforts to utilize ballroom dancing to help NYC youth regain a sense of self-respect, pride, and elegance.  Both of these movies greatly accelerated national, and international, interest in Dancing Classrooms™.

In 2006, ABrT began developing Dancing Classrooms™ sites throughout the US and Canada.  During the 2007-2008 school year Dancing Classrooms™ is projected to serve more than 31,000 children in New York city, Newark, Omaha, Fort Worth/Dallas, Toronto, Philadelphia, Suffolk county, New York and Fort Myers, Florida.