Happy New Year! 

We hope you had a lovely festive break. 2022 went super fast and now as usual it feels like January is lasting a decade!

We welcomed back our street dance academy students and their families last Saturday at our Street Dance Academy and boy did the term start with a bang! It was lovely to see everyone and get back into moving our bodies. We have lots planned for 2023 that everyone can be a part of, read on for a sneek peek into what we will be getting up to…

Local Ealing schools:

We are working with a number of local primary schools this year delivering after school clubs and dance provision within Physical education. Not only are we welcoming back our regular schools, we are excited to be working with some new ones too!

Each year for the past 10 years we have worked with Berrymede Junior School, annually auditioning their pupils for the school dance crew, getting a set together and competing throughout the academic year. This year we are working with 2 other schools introducing crews, a new record of 3 crews for us (4 if you count our Saturday crew!)

School crews give pupils the experience of the process of creating a dance piece, a sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves, performing on stage and introduces them to the actual dance scene. Many of the pupils who participate in these opportunities wouldn’t otherwise be able to experience this. This inspires many children to continue dancing long after they leave school.

If your child’s school doesn’t have dance on their curriculum or after school and you would like to see this being offered, get in touch with us.

Saturday Street Dance Academy:

We relocated a few months ago and went from having mirrors to no mirrors. This year we will be doing various mini fundraisers to raise money to purchase some portable double sided mirrors for our new space. We will also be fundraising for a trophy cabinet to display the many trophies won by our dance crews over the years. If you like a good old cake sale stay tuned because we have one coming. The homemade cakes at our previous cake sales have been delicious and a fraction of the price of somewhere like Starbucks!

Our aim this year is to teach and inspire even more children and young people, build up our junior dance assistants knowledge and experience and provide more opportunities for our students to perform, socialise and have fun.

Performances and competitions – Street Dance Academy:

This year we hope to perform at Acton Carnival, Acton Marketplace, Young Ealing Awards and New Gen festival and we are open to invitations from others. We will be attending a number of competitions throughout the year with our dance crew, Square 1, including a 3 day weekender at Alton Towers which our young people loved last year. We have only just started our set (a bit delayed compared to usual) so are currently working hard to put this together in time.

Events:

Our first event of the year in February, will be our Valentine’s themed class, then for Easter we are planning an egg hunt.

In the summer we plan to run a fun day for our families, facilitate our Urban Dance Camp again and hold our annual park jam. We are also privileged to be invited to work on the planning, preparation, and delivery of the dance strand of New Gen festival, a festival run by young people for young people, taking place in Walpole park in July. This festival will only be in its second year this year. Young people can apply to perform, they can attend to watch, take part in music, dance and spoken word workshops, seminars, and activities. It is set to be even bigger and better than last year!

In the autumn we have our Halloween party and we might even throw in a little Christmas themed event for our street dance academy to celebrate the end of the year!

We hope to see you at our classes and/or events this year! We will post on our socials as they approach, make sure you’re following @elevateartsuk