Creating a life long love of Dance in a supportive inclusive environment.

Learn a skill, make a friend, have fun!

Dance with Dash is a bbodance registered dance school, based at The Townsend hall in Shipston on Stour, Warwickshire.  We are a family friendly dance school founded in 2006, offering classes in Classical ballet, Tap, Modern, Jazz and contemporary dance for both children and adults. Halford, Brailes, Long Compton, Tredington, Illmington, Moreton In Marsh, Little Compton, Chipping Camden, Great Rollright and Chipping Norton to name a few localities our students travel from within our beautiful Cotswold setting.

We are a bbodance syllabus school with examinations offered on a regular basis, along with many different  performance opportunities throughout the year. Whether its at a local fete informal end of term sharing or our bi annual summer dance show. If you are looking for quality dance classes that follow the national skills qualifications framework, yet within a fun, friendly and inclusive environment, then Dance with Dash is for you.

Pre-school Classes:

Dance with Dash Offers Jill Bridgers Melody Movement® syllabus from the age of 18 months.

These Melody Bear® Classes introduce children to dance from a young age using the natural actions of the body, such as running, walking, jumping, hopping, skipping and galloping. It’s structured to aid children’s  physical development, co ordination, spacial awareness, creativity and self expression, along with fundamental curriculum learning such as counting, colour and shape recognition all within a fun dance class.   These classes are relaxed and parents stay with their children helping and encouraging as needed. Melody Bear® 1st ballet is offered from 4 years as a transition into  more structured bbodance syllabus classes in Ballet, Tap, Modern and Jazz.  Jill Bridgers Melody Movement syllabus is a  really lovely first introduction to dance within a relaxed, fun and caring environment. Melody Movement® offer a sticker reward scheme with students collecting stickers each week to achieve, Bronze, Silver and Gold medals, every 12 weeks, giving each participant a sense of achievement. Stickers and medals are a really positive and exciting part of class and students really look forward to receiving their medals and rosettes as well as celebrating with their dance friends.

Syllabus Dance classes:

Sarah Dash is a registered teacher and member of bbodance, following their syllabus in Ballet, Tap, Modern,  and Jazz. This enables children to progress though the grades building strong dance technique and taking bbodance examinations with an external examiner attending, to record this progression. It takes roughly 12- 18 months to progress through a grade, with all students having an opportunity to take examinations at some point, or students can simply attend our classes for pure enjoyment, the choice is always theirs to decide. Examinations are part of the national skills Qualifications framework and grades work towards levels 1, 2 and 3, with level 4 being diploma level.  After examination candidates receive certificates and reports issued by bbodance, complete with ofqual hologram.  To date Dance with Dash has 100% pass rate with many achieving top results. Contemporary dance is also offered at a junior and senior level. These classes are non examination classes, rather a 45 minute class to learn contemporary technique along with choreographic skills to create fun dances with others in the class. These classes are really great for students to gain confidence in their own ability and to learn to work together as a team to create their own choreography to perform to parents at the end of term. 

Adult Classes:

Adult dance classes are relaxed with an emphasis on fun. There are no age limits and all are welcome. There is no formal assessment for these classes, rather the aim is to learn a new technique whilst keeping active, meeting new people and having a laugh with friends. We recently took part along with younger students of Dance with Dash in the Children in Need Tapathon, in collaboration with The Performers Project.  Helping to raise thousands of pounds for Children in Need,  whilst having a huge amount of fun.

This has become a much loved annual family event. 2019 saw us break the current world record for the most dancers dancing the same routine at the same time across multiple venues. 2020 was a slightly more low key event due to covid 19 and being in lock down. This however did not stop us and many followed along and took part from within our homes.

Dance with Dash in schools/nurseries/toddler groups and nursing homes:

Dance with Dash have experience working within Primary and secondary school’s, nurseries, toddler group, and nursing home/day centre settings, offering  fun and creative dance sessions or a more structured syllabus class as required.  We can often fit in with school topics offering  free taster sessions  within  your setting in our area or indeed be part of your fundraising event.

®Melody Bear and Melody Movement are the registered trademarks of Jill Ewing