Gymnastics athletes from Denmark visit Asia next year to share the concept of living an active and healthy life. Ahead of the tour the list of things to be planned is long.
When the National Danish Performance Team in October 2014 begins its world tour there will be few things left to chance in the itinerary. That is how it has to be when 33 people travel together for nearly 10 months, told Assistant Manager Thomas Dahl.
These days he is travelling Singapore and Malaysia to meet partners and set up venues for the team’s performances and appointments with schools and universities.
“We move the world” is the slogan of the National Danish Performance team, consisting of 28 Danish gymnastics athletes and five team leaders. And they are literally travelling around in effort to move the world, explained Thomas Dahl.
“What’s unique about us is that we create a room for sport from the opportunities and partnerships we have in the city we come to. In that way we try to spread our understanding of what sport, healthy living and movement is. And that is a very popular issue almost everywhere at the moment,” he added.
Next years world tour starts in South Korea and continues to Taiwan afterwards. It is already planned that The National Danish Performance Team is going to contribute on a special occasion in Taiwan.
“We found that we share some ambitions with our partners in Taiwan, which means that we are going to be there around the World Diabetes Day in November 2014,” Thomas Dahl said.
Except spreading the concept of healthy living and the idea of moving every day, the Danish Performance team has another important message to spread about enjoying sport in groups.
“In Denmark we have a unique culture in the local societies with local gymnastics and sports association where a large number of volunteers work many hours in effort to make the spirit of the gymnastics culture live on” Thomas Dahl said and added:
“And that is what we want to share and spread out on our world tour. We make workshops and create events with different sport activities in schools and universities to teach them how our understanding of moving and being together in a sport team is in Denmark.”
That is also the reason why Thomas Dahl is working hard to make his co-partners understand, that the National Danish Performance Team does not want to be considered as a professional sports team who stays at a 5-starred hotel with own private chef.
“We have a huge interest in getting to know the culture of where we are. We visit refugee camps and stay with private families, which gives us just as big an experience as we hope to give the people we meet all over the world.” he said.
The National Danish Performance Team travel around the world for 10 months every second year, where they end up performing their big show to the National Gymnastics Rally in Denmark. The “break” year is spent on planning the trip and recruiting the athletes, who must go through a difficult selection procedure, before they can join the team.
“They are of course tested physically, because they need to be able to do our big performance show more than 100 times during the tour. But we also look at each person to consider if they have what it takes to participate in and arrange sports workshops for people all over the world,” said Thomas Dahl.
On the 2014 World Tour will The National Danish Performance Team visit six countries in Southeast Asia. After South Korea and Taiwan they continue to Japan, before they head to Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia.
Thomas Dahl is not going to join the trip himself; he already travelled with the team a couple of times some years back. Now he is planning the trip, and that is a job he finds quite interesting.
“Especially here in Asia I have experienced another way of getting in touch with people. We don’t just meet and make an agreement or appointment. We often go out a few times and wait to see if we can work it out as partners,” he explained.
See the highlights from this year’s performance by The National Danish Performance Team at the National Gymnastics Rally in Denmark, by following this link.
http://www.ndpt.dk/tour_shows.aspx
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