Dance News

ARTS Remembrance Through Dance

This term in dance, we have welcomed a wealth of new students into extracurricular dance.

Scholars have been making use of all the classes that are available including ballet, tap, modern, technique, jazz and hip-hop. In the past few weeks, three new students have been made honorary dance scholars. Congratulations to:

Angelina Watson (Year 10)

Lucia Ridley (Year 11) Katie Hillyer (Year 11)

The Year 10 pupils are well underway with their GCSE course, looking at set material and learning terminology. They have completed two dance works, ‘Infra’ by Wayne McGregor and the Royal Ballet and ‘Artificial Things’ by Lucy Bennett and Stop Gap Dance Company. Year 11 pupils have filmed their set phrase “Breath’ and are nearly ready to film their duet/trio performance piece. This will be worth 30% of their actual GCSE. These videos will be sent off to the examiner to be moderated. They have chosen a theme and have worked hard on portraying intention throughout their dance.

The Year 12 students have covered two of their main Rambert practitioners, Bruce and Alston, and are soon to be moving on to the work of Robert North. They have been taking extracurricular classes to prepare for their solo pieces too. The Year 13 pupil has filmed both of her A level solo pieces, which covers 25% of her final grade. She will now continue working on her group choreography, which will leave her with 50% of her exam already complete.

The Upper Sixth dancers are planning a trip to see the musical ‘Chicago’ next term. This is one of the works by Bob Fosse, a practitioner in their chosen area of study, American Jazz. We are hoping to plan more trips for the dancers, especially after missing out within the past year.

Following on from the previous article about dance in The Stag, we are delighted to announce that our group dance entitled ‘A New Normal’ came 4th place in the national competition out of approximately fifty other schools. This is a great achievement for the school, with our other two groups coming in the top fifteen! Herbie Sleep, who won the overall National Solo Competition last year, has also been invited back to showcase his winning solo next year at the finals in the summer. We look forward to entering this competition again in the coming weeks.