Garden Island Dance Academy

Is a program of EWO Multimedia non-profit. Its creation has been driven by the needs of young people. Jennifer & Mel Bell-Grey have been on Kauai for over 25 years. GIDA & EWO MO lifts generation after generation of young people, empowering them with the life skills that only the arts can offer. We have a commitment to those who face barriers to opportunity, using the infinite power of the arts to unleash the extraordinary potential of young people.

Artistic Director - Teacher

Jennifer Schwartz Bell-Grey and Mel Bell-Grey premièred their first collaboration at the Princeville Hotel Ballroom in 1999.

They are a husband and wife team who met in London in 1997.

Jennifer teaches, directs and choreographs dance for over twenty years on Kauai. She is a Royal Ballet School graduate and holds a teaching degree from the Royal Academy of Dancing..

For over two decades she has taught students of all ages and abilities from three years old to elders in their 90s, beginners through to professionals. She has trained teachers and has a amassed of over 2000 videos to provide instruction for dance on Vimeo and published 5 “How To Dance” instructional DVDs for Children, Adults, and teachers in the Anatomy of Ballet Volume 1,2,3 video series, ballet dancing for children, beginner pointe, ballet barre workout that can be found on www.onlinedancecenter.com
As a performer she was awarded People’s Choice award for best dancer in 2006. She has performed as a guest soloist twice with Ballet Hawaii in the Nutcracker at the Kaua’i Community College Performing Arts Center in 1998 & 1999. Soon after Jennifer began choreographing works on her students and dedicating herself to full time teaching. Her first choreographic works premiered at the Princeville Hotel Ballroom in 1999 and included music of Samual Barber, Aaron Copland, The Temptations, Marvin Gaye and a fusion of music and array of dance that was unique and rich in variety. The show was based on environmental awareness and caring for the earth before the term “Green” and “Enviornmentally friendly” became main mainstream. Jennifer has spoken on Hawai’i public radio about fusing of dance with a new way of showcasing traditional ballet.
School children across Kaua’i came to the Theater on special school excursions in to see the eighty to one-hundred performers of all ages and abilities performing together in a celebration of “World Inner Motion”.
Jennifer co-wrote the Adventures of Nani and Koa and self published the educational children’s book featuring Kaua’i’s island birds, ballet terms and movements, alongside geographic locations on Kaua’i in an adventure book carried by Island Heritage Press.
Jennifer speaks Thai and loves languages.
Her parents moved to Kauai in 1972. Her father was from Brooklyn NY and her mother was born in Mindanao in the Philippines. She was born in Califoria and grew up on Kauai until age three years, attending Pre-school in Hong Kong (in the local Cantonese school in Kowloon Town) and Junior school in Bangkok Thailand at the Thai school “Mater Dei”. She moved to London, England at age eight and attended her first boarding school for classical ballet training at Royal Tombridge Wells under the tutelage of Anna Lendrum, a classically trained professional dancer and teacher.
Miss Lendrum was a direct pupil of Nicolas Legat of the Imperial Ballet School in Russia, and the teacher of Nijinsky and Anna Pavlova. Jennifer was the last pupil of Anna Lendrum and remained in touch with her mentor until her death in 2008 at the age 102. Jennifer’s ballet training started in Hong Kong with Betty Kot, a Royal Academy of dancing teacher in 1982. In 2004 Jennifer invited her former teacher to give workshops in class ballet to Kaua’i students.
Several international dance teachers on Jennifer’s invitation have visited and given workshops in Mather Graham modern dance and classical dance. Jennifer’s professional training continued at the Royal Ballet School. The patron of the school was Queen Elizabeth II, at White Lodge in Richmond Park, Surrey. She was awarded a full scholarship two years into her training and she continued through graduation for a total of eight years of study. She graduated with a degree in Classical Dance and a Teaching Degree in Classical Ballet, and European folk dance, Jazz, Contemporary, and modern Dance.
Jennifer organized the first TEDx on Kauai in 2022.
Through her professional training she has students who now run their own dance schools and dance companies. She has specialized classes for students who have a desire to dance professionally and have had students successfully audition for summer programs with the Bolshoi, Royal Ballet School, ABT, SAB, Ballet Hawaii, Joffery Ballet, LA Ballet as well as professional college programs.
She has taught over 10 thousand children and adults on Kauai, from preschool, school age, through teens, adults, and our Kapuna (elders 80 and better). Jennifer dedicates her time and her passion to making dance accessible to people of all ages on the Garden Island as well as the world through her online classes and program. 

Co-Founder

Mel Bell-Grey

Mel Bell-Grey is a born Londoner from England. Poetry, music, and performing came naturally to Mel. He started to write poetry from the age of seven, and was chosen to sing in St Paul’s Cathedral. A gifted athlete he was selected for the Olympics long distance running youth programs. He is the 6th child in a family of ten children. Nine boys and one girl! He started dance at eighteen and took lessons at the WAC Performing Arts & Media College in North London and soon became a touring member of the acclaimed African Dance Company Azido, traveling and performing throughout the UK.
From dance, Mel pursued a musical career, creating multiple albums of original music, and securing artist residencies in London’s Rock Garden, in Covent Garden, and Acoustic Cafe in Soho. His song “Cure for the human heart” introduced him to a charity organized to bring music and hope to the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina after the war. On this tour Mel play music in the Black Forest of Germany, Austria, Switzerland as well as for the orphans and people in Belgrade and small towns in Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia.
The impact of this trip brought a new prospective. He had taught music, drama and fitness and invented musical instruments for people with muscular dystrophy. He became a professor at Halliwick College for young adults with special needs and was a favorite instructor, as well as youth leader for Harringay. When he was head of the Youth Center he cooked food for over 150 students and staff and organized games and outings. Mel’s music can by found on Apple, Spotify, and Mel Bell-Grey YouTube Channel.
Jennifer returned home to Kauai, where she was given an opportunity to start teaching ballet classes at the Princeville Spa.  It took Mel 6 months before he visited Kauai, and commuted between Kauai and England for another 5 years. During that time he performed a one man tour performing in in St Lucia, St Kitts and in England.
In 2008 Mel studied and graduated filmmaking from the San Francisco School of Digital film.
In the following years the Mokan & Nokan concepts were born and in 2010 the first Theater/Film/Dance show premiered at the War Memorial Convention hall in a show called “Once Upon A Dream”.
In 2017 the show grew to became a regular program on Spectrum Cable TV throughout the state of Hawaii. The only TV family show from Kauai to feature actors, as well as documentaries of Kauai people.
In the Kauai theater, over 9 thousand Kauai school children between 2005-2017 have been to the theater to watch top notch shows produced by the Bell-Grey’s in the War Memorial Convention Hall, KCC Performing Arts Center, Kilauea and Waimea Theater.
In the Kauai theater, over 9 thousand Kauai school children between 2005-2017 have been to the theater to watch top notch shows produced by the Bell-Grey’s in the War Memorial Convention Hall, KCC Performing Arts Center, Kilauea and Waimea Theater.
They have a daughter, Cleopatra born 2011, and Dayo born 2014.
The Bell-Grey’s have been in the Nawiliwili location building the theater, film & music, dance & fitness studio since 2012. Our next show is “Visions of Dance” February 3rd at the War Memorial Convention Hall Theater 2024
Out of this space many projects have been created –
  • EWO Multimedia Outreach
  • Eyes Wide Open Productions
  • Kauai Art Festival
  • Online Dance Center
  • Garden Island Dance
  • TEDxLihue
  • World Inner Motion
  • Hawaiian Hula Tutorial
  • Mokan & Nokan
  • Beautiful Hawaii Co