Move It!

I attended this year’s Move It! At Olympia on Sunday 13^th March, as Bawren was teaching a masterclass in the afternoon. I arrived at 11.30am and the exhibition was in full swing, the space had been transformed into a hub of stalls, stages and individual dance spaces.  I headed over to the Maoam freestyle stage which was hosted by Hakeem of impact dance. It was great to see people of all ages signing up to dance in their different styles, some in groups and others as soloists.

Move It! Attracts people of all dance styles and abilities, there are classes in many different styles for the absolute beginner up to pro. What’s great is that you can observe dance classes from the side and when looking around the stalls you don’t feel obliged to sign up to or buy anything, you can just browse.

I spent a while watching the main stage which had performances from the numerous dance schools such as Stella Mann and Bird College, and there was also a fashion show advertising the latest dance wear from specialists such as Bloch. A special guest performance from Akai, the ten year old winner of this years Got to Dance proved very popular with the crowd.

Bawren’s workshop was at 3.30pm in the Harlequin masterclass studio, which was a room just off from the main activity of the exhibition; where they had put down a large dance floor. Bawren took a lively warm up accompanied by his travelling drum, then taught a fast paced contemporary sequence. Anna then taught a dynamic section of rep from Double Take which got the participants focused and working hard. They repeated the sections with Anna and then had to do them on their own in separate groups. For the last section of the workshop, the two groups had to perform the rep facing each other, so that they could feed off each other’s energy, and it made for quite an interesting sequence. The participants thoroughly enjoyed the workshop; feeling tired and like that had given it their all at the end.

In other news, everyone is very excited about the two dates this weekend at the Bernie Grant Arts Centre; see below some of our publicity for the shows. See you there!