We were very pleased to welcome Leanne from Northern Ballet to visit us on Friday 5th October for an Ugly Duckling workshop, Northern’s latest creation. From the second the opportunity went up on the notice boards at class we had an excited buzz forming, names were very quickly filling the places and both parents and the students were getting extremely excited. Even though we had 3 workshops booked in we filled every single place and it was so popular we had a waiting list. So it’s no surprise that on the day of the workshop the students were about to POP!
The workshops were based on learning about the characters from the story and studying the key character movements used within the choreography from the up-coming show.
They all embraced being ducklings, swans and frogs and they were all smiling from start to finish.
They learnt 3 short routines, 1st was the ducklings dance – how to stand, pointe, plié, swim, walk and run like a duckling. Then they had a free expressive movement section where they pieced all their steps together to the fantastic music chosen for the show’s repertoire. The 2nd dance was the frog dance, they learnt about the cheeky characters they have given the two frogs in the show and got to pair up and move around the room bouncing, boing-ing, joking and tumbling around. The 3rd was the swan dance, waking from a sleeping swan position to flying and then soaring around the room.
They actually looked like little ducklings waddling around following one another and then when they were all soaring they looked like a beautiful ballet of swans in full flight – both have to be my favourite little bits.
It was really rewarding to be able to watch my students being taught by another teacher in such a responsive, polite and confident manner, to see them all thoroughly enjoy every second of it and work so hard.
I know that I am not alone in being so unbelievably giddy to see the Northern Ballet’s dance company perform this new ballet in a couple of weeks.
Finally a massive thank you to Northern Ballet for providing this opportunity to my school and we look forward to many more!
You can book tickets for the show here
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