Shene Dance

Dance has taken off in a big way at Shene School since Ms Fairbairn, our Head of Music and a trained dancer, introduced the GCSE in 2008. We are fortunate enough to be working in close collaboration with a local professional dance company, Combination Dance. Last night, an audience of parents and peers watched the 2010 Choreographic exhibition of work from Years 10 and 11, and a raw but exciting piece from Year 9s which was pulled together in just one workshop with Combination Dance. The dancers included a girl doing Grade 8 ballet, Year 11s who intend to continue with Dance at college and students who simply love the subject. The genres ranged from classical ballet to contemporary, via street, and all showed that a considerable amount of work had gone into the production. All the spectators were very proud. I attach below the report of a recent public event with our dancers written by Ms Fairbairn.

Richmond Theatre approached Anne-Marie Smalldon, Artistic Director of Richmond-based Combination Dance Company, with the brief to deliver an after-school Jam Free dance club working towards a performance piece merging Street dance and Salsa. Since their performance at Shene School, funding has been secured to ensure the continuation of the dance club and the participants are now looking forward to getting involved with Big Dance this summer working with the West London hub, English National Ballet.


Jam Free Performance


The Richmond Jam Free dancers came from three Richmond secondary schools. The girls all had an interest in dance, but had not previously had the opportunity to take part in regular dance training. Together with dance artist Anne-Marie Smalldon they created a dance piece, Red Alert, a unique fusion of Street dance and Salsa, with a military theme.







The girls were immediately able to relate to the Street dance choreography and once they had adjusted to dancing in partners, holding hands and working on intricate arm sequences together, they were keen to experiment with their new-found Salsa skills. Anne-Marie felt the Salsa training enabled them to develop their composition skills. "I found it refreshing, as someone who usually works with professional dancers, to work with a group of young people who were able to come up with some really innovative ideas" said Anne-Marie.




The dance club rehearsals took place weekly in the studio at Richmond Theatre, for two hours at a time, contributing significantly towards the girls' five hours of physical activity per week. Many of the participants were attracted to the project by the opportunity to perform and to work with professional dancers.


"I wanted to do it for the experience and to work with professionals, as I'm doing my dance GCSE."
"Dance is fun, keeps you fit and you get to perform."
"The best thing was watching the other performances and meeting new people. The Street piece was my favourite though."


The Richmond Jam Free performance event featured not only the touring youth dance companies and Blueprint Bursary piece, but also a performance by Combination Dance Company, dance club members performing a Contemporary work-in-progress piece based on ideas from Combination Dance Company's latest work and and freestyle solos by two emerging choreorgaphers working alongside Anne-Marie, together known as Alliance Dance Unit (ADU).


Anne-Marie said that it was 'possibly one of the best dance events in terms of variety and standard' she had seen in Richmond in recent years and emphasised that is was the location, a local everyday space within a secondary school that made it unique, presenting high quality dance work usually only seen in professional venues. She added that the school caretaker, who had been supportive throughout the project in terms of allocating space for the rehearsals, had been amazed at the high standard of work that had been brought into the schools' studio theatre. Cheers were heard from the audience at the end of the evening and the success of the dance club itself has led to Richmond Council securing funding for it's continuation to enable Anne-Marie and her company to continue to work with the same group of young people until the end of the year.












These photos were taken at the dress rehearsal: