What is Gäddede dance festival?
Gäddede dance festival (Gdf) is a dance festival where everyone is welcome, it doesn’t matter the color of your skin, what religion you believe in, how old you are, where you come from, gender or sexual orientation, everyone is welcome.
Gdf is a collaborative festival which stands for human and elders rights.
It is held in a small town called Gäddede in the northern part of Sweden. The festival started with the amazing Calle Johansson who came home to Gäddede to take care of his mother, Ida Johansson, who suffered a stroke a few years back and didn’t have rehabilitation. He found out about what was going on at the retirement home she was staying at, Levinsgården, and he decided to fight against it. Elder people there, including his mother suffer physical, mental and emotional abuse at the hands of the doctors and staff, despite continuous reports to authorities. Calle has worked hard for her and elders rights and this festival is the way he found to call people’s attention to this problem.
This festival represents the people’s kind heart and that we can do everything we want, if we fight for it together. This festival is beyond the limits and nothing is impossible, that will always be our motto.
How does it work?
This is a cooperative festival and everything is free. People here work together to keep the house going, nobody is gaining anything from this, we just want a happy and loving community. We think that if everyone participates with what they can and helps out as much as possible magical things can happen. We need as much help as we can get.
If you want to be a teacher and teach a class that would be great, if you want to be a student that is great too. There is something for everyone here, from the best dancer in the world to someone who never even tried before.
The festival is free for everyone because we want everyone to be a part of it, and then donate whatever you personally think feels right. There is free food, accommodation in the dance center and all the classes are for free. The house is still under renovation and it is far from perfect but it’s getting better. That’s why it would be great if you wanted to donate some of your time to come to Gäddede and help us restore and clean the house before the festival
Why “beyond the limits”?
We use the expression beyond the limits because we think that everything is possible. We want to show the world that if we work together we can do anything we want. For example:
We have had several famous dance teachers working here together and teaching classes for a good cause, we have had classes on top of a mountain, on a frozen lake, we even had one teacher, the amazing Chester Whitmore, teaching six classes at once! We know that if we can make this happen in Gäddede can we absolutely fight for the human and elders rights together and make a difference.
The only thing that actually stops us from doing something is what we think we can do. If you have the mind set on “everything is possible” then everything is possible!
What is the “Mission impossible team”?
The Mission impossible team is Calle Johansson and his friends, here’s a few of them: Elliott Donnelly, Francisco Nogueira, Chester Whitmore and Lorenz Ilg.
Some of these guys has known each other since way back, and they have been on missions and adventures all over the world together. They came up with the name “mission impossible team” back in the 90’s as they did a lot of things that some people considered impossible, the team has grown during the years and it is now a pretty big team. The team started to use the name more lately since everything with Calles mother Ida has happened. Now is the team fighting for elders rights and for people to treat everyone equally.
The team is much more than a bunch of people organizing a festival together. This team wants to make a difference! They want to change the way people treat each other and fight for human and elders rights. No one in this team is gaining anything from this, everyone is doing it in the name of love and respect. We think that everything is possible as long as you have a kind heart and will to fight for what you believe in.
Civil courage
Civil courage is something we want to encourage because it is so important and we want everyone to have.
A civilly courageous person is someone who isn’t affraid to go against everyone else to do the right thing and who doesn’t look away when someone is doing a bad thing. This person stands up for what is right and does everything in his/her power to make sure things get better even though this person might have to pay a high cost to make sure the situation changes.
Bad things happen because bad people exist, that’s why we need civilly courageous people to tell the bad people that they’re doing something wrong and make bad things stop happening. People can’t just sit around and do nothing and even look away. The world is full of injustice so we really need those who dare to fight back. These people are amazing because they have the guts to stand out when everyone else just follows the flow and is not afraid to show what he/she really thinks.
People who have civil courage are true heroes. We need this kind of people in the world who fight for other people and we should admire them and their bravery.
Bad things only happens if we allow it.
The Dance Center
The Dance Center has been built to help Ida and others in need by providing activities that:
Dance can provide all of that, but the Dance Center also welcomes all activities related to health, education, and that promotes human rights, civil courage and compassion.
We only have 7 rules:
Join the Mission Impossible Team to go beyond the limits! Together we can go further, and we can do better.