Keys welcomes back Mary Bawden Chat part two with keys of what we can do to protect the children.

Keys to your BEST life with Maggie Kavanaugh

Dance Educator and author Mary Bawden received a BA in modern dance from UCRiverside, a MA, and a secondary teaching credential. In 1993 she developed a dance ministry at her church which continued for over 20 years.

In 2016, she released a book on dance titled “Dance is Prayer in Motion”.

Several years ago, Mary noticed a cultural shift in children’s dance from age-appropriate, healthy movement to harmful, hypersexualized movement in adult costumes, choreography, and music. This realization birthed a mission to bring international awareness and education to stop the exploitation

through hypersexualization of children in dance.

That coincided with a vision to promote the art of dance and its benefits to children by creating educational materials advocating for their safety and protection.

Mary founded Dance Awareness: No Child Exploited in 2016 (DA:NCE)to educate an uninformed public and to provide research to show the connection between children’s dance and the pornography

industry.

DA:NCE has a website that features videos, articles, and research that aid in the understanding of this issue and the need for action. Since 2020, danceawareness.com has released a new group of

resources that include national experts from 2019

CESE(Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation) Summit. They emphasize how hypersexualized children’s dance grooms children corporately for unhealthy outcomes. Mary’s passion is to help adults understand the differences between harmful and healthy children’s dance with informed choice, education, and practical actions to change the culture.