Wow the holiday’s have flown by! Hope you are relaxed and refreshed after what was a busy end to term.
Sunday 5th July we had a rather warm exam session. Fortunately a much smaller session than February and we managed to get all our exams in before lunch time.
There were 14 entries this session and I am pleased to say 100% pass rate yet again. 4 Merits and 10 Distinction. Congratulations all on your fantastic results!
We ended term on the 18th July with a celebratory sharing as a whole dance school. I particularly enjoy the sharing days. The whole dance school is involved in a relaxed performance, where students get to not only perform, but watch all the other groups and see what we get up to in class.
Some very cute Melody Bear’ s braved a performance in front of everyone!
Then were mesmerised by some very lovely seniors. Its always very special to come together as a whole dance family.
With just over a week before classes start, don’t forget to check out our new classes on offer this September.
Looking forward to seeing you all back in class, hearing of your summer adventures, new school adventures and welcoming many new faces.
Come along and join us for some easter holiday dance and craft fun. Fun dance exercises and games along with choreographing 2 dances together and crafting props to use within these dances.
What a busy and exciting start to the new year we have had! The 6th January marked our 20th Birthday. Its crazy how quickly those years have flown by, and I have seen so many smiling faces over the years. We celebrated with a fabulous party, dancing the night away at the end of January. We really do love dancing!
This term we have also given out many Medals in Melody Bear, including lots of Bronze 1st medals. The youngest members really have gained in confidence this term and its wonderful to see them joining in class, often without their parents.
We returned following Christmas with our exam date looming and there has been a huge amount of work going on in class to ensure that students are confident and ready to perform their grades for bbodance exams on the 15th February. As always there are plenty of nerves. Its a big thing to perform for an external examiner. There is also a lot of anticipation and excitement, and a huge amount of giggles when they have completed them. Fingers crossed for our results arriving in a months time.
We really do scrub up well for exams, really looking and feeling the part. With some extra fabulous hair by Sarah even!
Its not all serious. There are lots of giggles and camaraderie on exam day.
Students of all ages took exams, and far too many photographs to share, but here are a few.
Exams marked the end of term, and a vital time for us all to rest and recuperate. Also time for another of fabulous day long dance and craft workshops. This time we created a dance with an Alice in wonderland theme, and falling down the rabbit whole. The creative idea was to choreograph a dance as a group holding either 1 or 2 hands the entire time. This was a fun and challenging idea which students thoroughly threw themselves into.
We then crafted Queen of hearts masks to wear for this dance.
After lunch it was then time to create our 2nd dance. As the 17th February was Luna New Year, it was the perfect time to craft Chinese themed dragons and create a dance with these to celebrate the Luna new year.
It was a slightly more tricky craft and students worked together to complete their dragons. It was wonderful to see older students stepping up to help the younger ones out.
We ended the day performing the two dances to our grown ups. Another fun and tiring half term workshop.
As the new term now begins there is a lot of excitement over new grades, new steps, new uniforms and new faces joining us. Its a short term and it wont be long before we are approaching Easter workshops and an exciting Melody Bears picnic as part of our 20th anniversary celebrations.
I think we are all very much looking forward to lighter warmer and maybe even some dryer days as we enter the spring term. There has been a little re jig of our timetable so do double check your class time and it is a wonderful time to start dancing with us as new grades are introduced.
First we had another fabulous Tapathon event on Sunday 23rd November. If you don’t already know, its an event organised by the performers project to raise money for Children in Need ,with dance schools across the nation registering to take part. The aim is to attempt to break the world record for the most people Tap dancing the same routine at the same time, across multiple locations. This years routine was to Tina Turners Nutbush City Limits and we spent a good couple of months learning the routine, which was both challenging and fun.
There were 43 Tap Dancers aged from 4 years up to adult from Dance with Dash, and a further 27 dancers from Chipping Norton School of dance joined us on the day to make it quite a spectacular dance family fun event. We did ourselves proud with our cake eating this year and raised a further £434.72 on our refreshments stand for Children in Need.
Collectively across the nation there were 7,438 Tap dancers taking part! Sadly this was just 158 dancers short of breaking the world record. Maybe next year? As an event as a whole raised through our registrations we were in excess of £37,000 for Children in Need, which is just incredible! Very worth the time and effort taking part. Next years Tapathon 2026 will be Sunday November 15th. Come along and join us and lets see if we can break that record!
Following the Tapathon it was the count down to Christmas and parents were invited in to see what we have all been up to, followed by a fun festive week to end term .There were some great Christmas outfits, party games, random exercises to Christmas tunes and a lot of giggles.
Now January is upon us and its back to class to work towards our next exam session on Sunday 15th February and most exciting the 6th January is our 20th birthday! Wow the years have flown by and its very exciting to celebrate at the end of the month with a big party for students and their families past and present.
We have had a great start to the new school year, welcoming many new faces to our dance family. Our new pointe class has been an exciting addition, giving those on pointe more time to progress and also a group of girls working hard on demi pointe with the aim of working towards their 1st shoes at Christmas
We also introduced a brand new beginners Tap class for little ones on a Saturday morning at 10am, and they have delighted in learning to make a noise with their feet. We are even now getting some actual Tap steps with hopefully some well mastered Step ball Changes by the end of 2025!
As always within our little ones classes, there are seniors to help out and the little ones really look up to them. Having started as little ones on their very own dance journeys, in what feels like yesterday, they have grown to become accomplished dancers. Helping out in class also brings many benefits for them. They have a greater understanding of how to break down steps to achieve a better technique, and appreciating an increased knowledge of the time it takes for our bodies to learn new things, and creating muscle memory. They also have an increased confidence through having the opportunity to lead and assist, giving a greater confidence in their own abilities and accomplishments.
Its been a very busy time for Melody Bear celebrating everything Autumn, swishing and blowing in the leaves, rain dances, galloping on our ponies and ending term with mixing spells. Our Saturday morning class is now full, but we are hoping to add an afternoon class very soon, so please do register your interest or join the waiting list.
There was a lot of spooky goings on the last week of term, including some scary musical bumps, mixing potions, and balancing bats, rats and spiders on our heads to end a very long and busy term.
During half term we held one of our fun dance and craft workshops, where 10 children came together to choreograph 2 spooky themed dances, along with crafting 2 props to use within these dances.
We began by creating a day of the dead inspired dance, breaking up into smaller groups to choreograph, using the ideas of different levels when travelling and freezing in a spikey shape. Some really beautiful masks were made to use for this dance.
We then crafted a witches brooms to use in a Hocus Pocus inspired dance. A more upbeat, musical theatre inspired dance where again we then broke into sub groups to choreograph dances using the brooms and partner work. We learned its not always easy to use large props, but worked together to make a really fun.
Again lots of fun together.
We are all looking forward now to getting back to dance and working on our syllabus work, with the aim of a bbodance exam session in the new year.
Dare I also mention the Christmas word? Lots of excitement brewing, and we are very much looking forward to Christmas fun week from the 15th December onwards. Not forgetting watching week for parents from the 8th December. We have a particularly lovely Contemporary dance to perform for you that week!
