In June, we welcomed Corrie ‘Corrieography’ King to Elevate Arts to deliver a freestyle & choreography based workshop to our students. This was the second specialist workshop we have organised and it went just as well as the first one! Our aim is to bring in top dance specialists who have passion, knowledge and experience in their field and whom are amazing teachers too, to help bring the West London dance community together. This will help give the next generation of young dancers opportunities to train, grow and be inspired, right on their doorstep, with no need to spend time and money on travel!
Our students were really excited to have our first male teacher delivering a workshop and many of them had already seen Corrie perform with his crew Gambino, at Ignition festival earlier in the year, so were more than ready to learn from him. The fact that most of our students are crazy, and Corrie is crazy, meant everybody felt 100% comfortable with each other, helping our students relax, be themselves and give it their all.
The workshop consisted of various grooves, musicality exercises, isolation exercises and movement drills in partners and as a larger group, helping our students with conceptual ideas to further develop their freestyles. Corrie then taught a short combo using some of the ideas explored in the first half of the workshop. It was interesting to watch everybody exploring movement in a different way to what they were used to, and although they were all given the same tasks, the variety of material produced was very unique to each individual.
Everybody was really sweaty by the end, but had huge smiles on their faces which said it all! Chaquille and Olly Engele of Gambino also came down, and along with Corrie, gave a demonstration of their skills at the end of the workshop, leaving our students inspired to the max!
Take a look at the footage from Corrie’s workshop here: