Easter dancing under lockdown
Being confined to our own homes has not stopped our dancers and teachers from dancing through the 'break'!
Our regular classes were already suspended due to the health crisis, however, we have been running a wide range of online lessons and establishing a comprehensive library of online resources for our dancers over the past few weeks. We had a short break to get organised rescheduling our Easter programme and then hosting it online! We welcomed dancers of all ages to join in virtual lessons and it was brilliant! Some sessions were free and others were only a few pounds to take part; profits are going toward our CSBS fundraising... we raised £150 which will go into our CSBS Dance Fund!
Students also took part in a range of Easter challenges and art activities which were shared on our website and Facebook page. Some of our staff and Majors / Elite dancers created a brilliant 'Toilet Roll Challenge' video too which you can view here:
Easter Hop and Easter Boogie
We welcomed 6 little preschool dancers to our Easter Hop and they enjoyed a Circus themed dance session with CSBS teacher Amanda which included a fun art activity too! Our most popular event every break is the Boogie for children aged 5-9. Unfortunately we did not have asmany join as usual, but the 6 young dancers who took part with Amanda enjoyed 2 dance workshops in jazz and ballet, and a guided art activity. We all had lots of fun!
Dance Stars Junior - Easter Edition
Dance Stars Junior is our holiday programme for Mids level, aged 9-13. Teacher Sammy lead the 13 students through jazz and ballet technique lessons before a fun dance routine based on the musical "Mary Poppins". Everyone had great fun again and learned a lot of new steps.
Project Dance - Easter Intensive
Thirty senior dancers studying Grade 4 upward joined us for our Project Dance Intensive. To make this a special and worthwhile experience, we invited a wonderful faculty of guest tutors from across the UK:
- Dr Emily Twitchett - Warm up and conditioning
- Kelly McCole - Classical Ballet
- Katie Deacon - Pointe technique
- Sammy Clark - Jazz technique
- Bernardo Ribeiro - Contemporary
It was a wonderful day of dance and the students learned a lot from the expertise of the tutors who were able to offer advice and correction using the Zoom platform.
"Introducing Masterclasses"
We added in a new event this break. In this series of workshops, we were delighted to 'introduce' former CSBS students who are now prfoessional dancers to lead workshops in their chosen style. It was an inspiring set of workshops for our students with around 35 participating in each masterclass and Andrew even teaching us from France! Many thanks to:
- Amber Ibrahim - Showdance
- Andrew Halliday - Tap fusion
- Emma McTeague - Musical Theatre Jazz
It was so successful that we hope to include more of these masterclasses in our timetables over the next few weeks and showcase our former students.
Strictly Family Dance sessions
Teacher Amanda has been leading 'Strictly' inspired family sessions on Saturdays using Facebook Live and they have had people from across the world dancing! So far she has taught cha-cha, charleston and jive... you can still view the Strictly videos on our CSBS Facebook page with more sessions weekly so keeeeep dancing!
Many thanks to everyone who took part in any of our Easter events. We hope you enjoyed the experience! (Unfortunately we don't have any photo galleries to share this break.) A regular timetable of classes will be introduced from Monday 20 April so everyone can continue their regular dance studies. Keep up to date on our CSBS website or add the Central Scotland Ballet School skill to your ALEXA flash briefing so you can simply 'ask Alexa' what's on each day!