A Co Down woman has excelled as part of Team Northern Ireland at the Dance World Cup finals in Spain, where she used her platform to highlight awareness for sexual assault survivors.
Jasmine Gray, 18, together with her duet partner 17-year-old Megan Haire, also highlighted domestic violence statistics in Northern Ireland through contemporary dance pieces.
The 2022 Dance World Cup (DWC) finals—also referred to as the “Olympics of dance”—took place in San Sebastian, Spain.
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Its competitions are held in the genres of ballet, modern, contemporary, lyrical, jazz, tap, song and dance, street/hip-hop and national.
More than 125,000 competitors took part in the nine-day championships with the Northern Ireland team up against the very best international dancers from around the globe.
An event that saw nearly 6,000 dancers had several members from Beats Studios in Bangor competing.
Following hours of gruelling rehearsals with their dance teacher Matthew Watson and a highly competitive qualification process to be chosen to represent Team NI, five dancers made it onto the Northern Ireland team - Jasmine and Megan along with Katie Bradley, Sophie Bradley and Katie Rose Rodgers - all of whom won medals at the 2021 DWC in Telford, England.
Jasmine said: "I wanted to create a piece of theatre that would mean something to every single woman in the audience and leave an impact.
"Sexual assault is not talked about enough and it is something that happens to nearly every single woman in the world and it is never our fault. It needs to stop."
Her second performance, a duet with Megan, highlighted the 32,219 domestic abuse incidents recorded in Northern Ireland in 2021.
Jasmine has been dancing since the age of three. She attended Sullivan Upper Grammar School and also studied a BTEC in Performing Arts at South Eastern Regional College.
Dance is her passion, and Jasmine is skilled in every format – jazz, tap, modern, hip hop, street, ballet and more - alongside acro-gymnastics, trampolining and cheerleading.
She plans to continue her study at Wilkes Academy of Performing Arts in Swindon, where she will starting a BA Hons Degree in Musical Theatre this September.
Jasmine's proud mum Michelle added: "Jasmine has faced quite a gruelling audition process to get in. Because of the pandemic, she was up against girls of up to 25 who has held off until face-to-face teaching resumed and have more training under their belt so she's been really lucky."
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