Dame Darcey Bussell gets kids dancing

HEADER (FUTURA PT LIGHT 10PT / 90% K) Dame Darcey Bussell

8 read more at darlingmagazine.co.uk spring 20 I t’s true, I basically want everyone to experience dance. The nice thing is that it does not have to be done at a high standard to get all the attributes and improve your wellbeing. Dance around the kitchen table, at a Silver Swans ballet class, socially, it doesn’t matter. Since returning from living in Sydney in 2012, I have been fortunate to have worked with the amazing team on Strictly, which was an extraordinary seven years, and I have also been involved with some wonderful dance charities and I enjoy that a lot. Amongst them is the Royal Academy of Dance and I am honoured to be president. The RAD is the leading ballet syllabus in the world. This is something we should all be really proud of as young people receive about 20 million hours of ballet coaching from RAD teachers every year, worldwide. The RAD is something us in the South West are going to hear more about as they are just about to move into their brand-new headquarters in Wandsworth with seven beautiful studios. With the RAD celebrating its centenary this year, there is also going to be a exciting exhibition celebrating British dance at the V&A museum opening in May. One project that I spend a lot of my time on is Diverse Dance Mix (DDMIX) which

is a social enterprise that I founded. DDMIX’s aim is to have dance fitness as part of regular PE in as many schools as possible. We are up to 42, there are 24,000 schools in the UK so we have a lot of work to do!

Dance fitness is the most wonderfully concentrated package of wellbeing for students of the 21st century. With current low levels of participation in physical activity, we clearly need more ways to engage and inspire our children to move. I‘m not saying we should replace team sports and athletics but it’s time to add other elements.

Dame Darcey

I do, we are also living in an era where our young people are going to spend most of their working lives and a good part of their social lives in front of a screen. If they have this technology at their fingertips already, and it is so stimulating and they are losing the pleasure of being active, we must give them the tools to create balance in their lives. Dr Marco Narici, featuring on a BBC program hosted by Angela Rippon, stated:

‘When you go to the gym, it is repetitive and you work on single muscles or muscle groups. Whereas dance stimulates so many more systems: the brain, nerves, muscles, ligaments… dancing facilitates the cross talk of the muscle and the nerves, making a much more holistic comprehensive exercise’.

If you think about it for a minute, dance is a full body work out and aerobic, it provides an appreciation of rhythm and teaches musicality, it is another form of expression, it engages the imagination, it is social, is completely inclusive and best of all: is cheap and great fun.

In order for it to be completely inclusive, I knew that the answer for schools was not in specialized dance, like ballet or Latin. However, with my Presidential hat on, I do completely endorse specialized dance training when it comes to those young people who want to dedicate their time to dance. But dance fitness, with lots of different genres, delivered simply and enthusiastically, can

At DDMIX we have spent four years getting the delivery system right so that any teacher can become confident in teaching dance fitness very quickly. On the 25th of March we are holding one of our school’s festivals at the Arthur Cotterell theatre in Kingston, where we get as many schools as possible to come and experience Diverse Dance Mix.

So if you know a school in the South West that would benefit from the DDMIX programme, do please get in touch. Right, I’m off to pick up my daughters and walk the dogs and perhaps do a dance move or two on the common. Please excuse me if I disturb your walk! n

ddmixforschools.com royalacademyofdance.org

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