Posts Tagged ‘Dance Challenge’

IDFB Dance Challenge – and the winner is…

Well our brave group of dancers-in-training made it to the end of the IDFB Dance Challenge, and I’m pleased to say that there were no tears and very few tantrums!  Everyone put a lot of effort into learning their individual dance styles and they’ve all had fun trying to master the moves.  Attendance at classes has been very good, with Louisa James and Keith Gabriel both achieving ‘Teacher’s Pet’ status for managing to attend every single one of their classes.

Jodie Schofield had a great time in her final class – getting in touch with her inner hippy with a number from the musical Hair.  Paul Sargent can hardly stop his toes from tapping now, and he has even admitted to breaking into dance routines in his kitchen!  Fionnuala Bourke has been throwing some very funky moves in her Club Jazz classes and Satnam Rana attended some of her hip hop classes at The IDFB Shop in Pavilions.

Lastly, we unfortunately have a slight casualty to report – Kate Lawler had to pull out of the challenge due to an old knee injury flaring up again.  She’s been ordered to rest, although she’s such a busy person we’re not sure whether this is actually possible for her!  Anyway, we all wish her a speedy recovery and are very glad that she enjoyed the Capoeira classes she came to.

Several of our budding dance stars also performed at the grand finale of IDFB 2010 – Put Your Foot Down at Bullring on 15 May.  See Louisa’s brilliant nutcracker solo and Satnam’s hip hop performance (complete with stage invasion from hip hop star Salah!), plus Jodie and the Musical Dance beginners did a great rendition of a piece from Sister Act!

Finally, David Massingham (Co-Artistic Director of the Festival) was responsible for making the difficult decision of who made the most improvement over the last two months of classes.  I’m delighted to announce that the winner of the IDFB 2010 Dance Challenge is…Louisa James.

David Massingham with Louisa James, winner of the IDFB Dance Challenge

David commented: “Although Louisa still has some way to go before she joins BRB, I feel she made a huge amount of technical progress during this short period of classes!

“I’m delighted to hear that she will be continuing to attend ballet classes at DanceXchange.”

Thanks to all of our participants, the tutors and everyone else in the Festival team who helped to make this happen.

First lessons – the aftermath

Now they’ve been to their first class, our IDFB Dance Challenge stars share their thoughts on how they got on:

*Fionnuala Bourke – Club Jazz*

*Paul Sargent – Tap*

*Keith Gabriel – Contemporary*

*Jodie Schofield – Musical Dance*

*Louisa James – Ballet*

*Kate Lawler – Capoeira*

*Satnam Rana – Hip Hop*

And so… they came, they danced, but will they conquer the dance floor next week? You can follow what happens to all our Dance Challenge participants here and on Twitter.

Dancing with the stars

The Festival team will be rubbing shoulders with a few celebs between now and April thanks to the IDFB Dance Challenge. And some of us have already been class buddies to a couple of participants to ease their way into the lessons. Just take a look at the screen grabs below: two of our team members have given Birmingham Mail’s Fionnuala Bourke some moral support at her first ever Club Jazz class.

Tap dancing hopeful Paul Sargent (from Brewin Dolphin) also started his lesson this week and really got into the whole spirit of things. Jodie Schofield from Smooth radio took part in her first Musical Dance class too. Looks like she’s having a lot of fun already.
Jodie Schofield at Musical Dance