May Update

Wow what a month!! It really has been a non-stop few weeks with Big Dance and the Torch Relay. I feel like I have been out and about much more getting South Devon dancing this month and have neglected my laptop a little, which I like to do sometimes J.  So I just wanted to give you a quick round up and then a bit of information about what you can expect over the next few months… I’m already getting stuck into planning the next lot of exciting activities, so watch this space!!!

Big Dance

We had three schools sign up for the schools pledge; Stoke Fleming Primary, St Johns Primary in Dartmouth and Kingsbridge Community College. The schools worked really hard to learn the dance and on May 18^th they each participated in the world record attempt! I'm waiting for conformation of numbers from the schools still, but I will update as soon as I know! It was great weather for dancing outside which is what all of the schools did and from the photos Kingsbridge shared with us it looks like everyone had a lot of fun on the day!

We should find out very soon if the record was broken…fingers crossed!!

Kingsbridge Community College 

Torch Relay in Stoke Fleming

Ah what an amazing day! After all of the planning and organizing I did get a bit worried that no one would turn up…as you sometimes do when you plan a big event. Well I couldn’t have been more wrong!! We had over 350 people in and out of the hall on the day, some joined in the dancing, and others enjoyed watching with a cup of tea. We had some wonderful performances from Dartmouth School of Dance, Stoke Fleming Primary school (Who performed the Big Dance routine with me), Sam Day from Spin Drift dance company led a flag dance workshop, Kingsbridge Community College bought a large group of children from their school and some of the local primary schools and performed a spectacular routine with some sculptures! And there was also a performance from an intergenerational group made up of Stoke Fleming locals that I directed…they did all of the choreography themselves. We had a lot of fun working together and hopefully we can do something similar again soon! A huge thank you needs to go out to Sue Tweed- Stoke Fleming Village Clerk who was a huge huge help in making this day happen and also to Jayne Wootton from Active Villages who helped to support the event financially.

 Dartmouth School Of Dance

 Stoke Fleming Primary School Samba Band

 Stoke Fleming Community Dance group performance

 The Torch coming through Stoke Fleming

 Stoke Fleming Primary School performing the Big Dance routine 

 Sam day from SpinDrift doing a flag dance workshop

Kingsbridge Schools performing with their sculptures!

So what next??

DGTI

Well first off, it’s the Devon Games To Inspire coming up in the 30^th June in Oakhampton and I have been asked to take a dance group to represent South Devon! We will start rehearsal’s very soon, the group already have lots of material to use and the theme of the dance is ‘friendship’. I’m going to be working with a street dance group in Kingsbridge Community College and hopefully a few dancers from Dartmouth (I’m still looking for Dartmouth Street dancers so get in touch if you want to join the team!).

Big dance is carrying on through until July so I will be continuing contact with the three schools and supporting them as much as I can between now and the end of term.

Moving Space- Is a new project that will begin in June in Dartmouth. This is a gentle movement based project for carers, people with long term illness and people with mental Ill health. More information will be coming very soon but if you are interested in it please do get in touch.

Move and Stretch to Music- Lead by the wonderful Sarah Farrow- Jones, this session will focus on movement for older adults. The hour long session will be held at Stoke Fleming Village Hall More details to follow very soon!

Youth Dance Project- I am working with the Youth4 group from the Townstal estate to get a project going which will cumulate in a performance at the Flavel in November. This will be a really exciting youth project in two parts, the first over the Summer and then the second running for 10 weeks from September till the performance in November. More information will be available very soon! This project will include Dance (street dance), Lighting, DJ-ing and set design. If this sounds like something you would like to get involved with then let me know!

And well if that wasn’t enough I’m also in the middle of talks about a exciting project with dance and sculpture that would involved ALL of the local primary and secondary schools…watch this space!

So that’s it for now but if you have any events, classes or anything at all please let me know and I will try to spend a bit more time on my laptop this month so I can update you more often J

Claire