Dance for Performance
If your goal is to get up on a stage and have people clap, we'd love to get you there, and we'll make sure you have the opportunity to do it. We'll also make sure you really deserve that applause.
Obviously, to dance for an audience you need to be able to - well - dance. First we'll do that, and we'll cover the functional aspects of dance (steps, partnership, musicality and floorcraft) as well as the technical and stylistic aspects (posture, weight transfer, knee, hip, body, arm and head movement).
Dancing for performance is quite different from dancing in a social context. You can certainly be a superb performer without being a superb technical dancer (although you can't get away with being rubbish). An audience of non-dancers will probably not care or notice whether (for example) you're stepping heel first or toe first. They probably won't know or care whether some part of your body is angled correctly. They will definitely care if you're boring to watch. It's the audience engagement that we focus on most when we're rehearsing a show routine.
If you'd like to perform, we'll get you dancing first, but we'll bear in mind your goal of performance, and we'll place a much greater emphasis on styling and presentation than we would for someone who wanted to use their dancing exclusively in a social context. Once you've achieved a basic level of competence, we'll get you to perform short dances at our in-house social nights. From there, we'll include you in any performance opportunities that suit you.
We are looking forward to our first Gala Ball, which we expect to hold in 2013. Gala Balls will be special performance nights, black-tie dinner dances with a floor show of fully choreographed show routines. We will have dedicated lesson packs for students who want to perform, and we'd love you to be a part of it! So if performance is on your agenda, let us know and we'll make sure you achieve the small fame of being a part of our inaugural Gala Ball.