Our experience at Ealing’s first New Gen Festival
Our blogs are back!
You may have noticed we’ve been a bit quiet over the past few months. Things have been hectic, and our focus has solely been on keeping classes running, but we have returned!
Our last blog touched on what we had got up to so far in the summer. Since then, we have had the amazing opportunity to dance for local artists Tazzyi and Niisey at Ealing’s New Gen Festival at Walpole Park, danced in a music video, ran our most successful dance camp and Halloween dance party and have just attended our 1st competition of the season.
You will be able to read all about these soon in future blogs, but for now check out our experience at Ealing’s brand-new youth arts festival.
New Gen Festival
A festival run by young people for young people. The space was huge and so was the stage! There were feel good vibes provided by some great music, spoken word and workshops. It was lovely to see all the young talent within Ealing and to be able to support that and be a part of the FIRST ever festival.
How we got involved
We had seen New Gen advertised on Instagram but gathered it was probably too late to get involved by then. However, days before the event Lucy went for a casual chat with Colin Brent form Bollo Brook youth (for a matter unrelated to New Gen), met some of the young people in their music studio and before she knew it had agreed to our young dancers doing some backing dancing on stage for Tazzyi and Niisey! We got sent the track, adapted some choreography to work with it and literally rehearsed and liased via videos. The first time they done it all together with the artists was on the day, no rehearsal, no meet ups!
It went really well on the day and was an amazing experience for our young people who had never done anything like this before. It gave them insight into how it feels to dance for an artist and helped inspire them.
Shooting a music video
At the event Tazzyi and Niisey were also shooting their music video for another track on a greenscreen. Our dancers were involved in this too, another new experience for them all filming on greenscreen. The final outcome looks slick! Check it out here and don’t forget to subscribe to Tazzyi’s channel and support a local, talented, hardworking, humble upcoming young artist:
We can’t thank Tazzyi and Niisey enough! They are lovely, have their heads screwed on and are fantastic role models for the younger youths. We are looking forward to being involved with New Gen again in 2023 and collaborating further with Tazzyi, Niisey and other young upcoming artists.