Third Form Dance Workshop with Rhiannon Parker
At the start of the summer term, Rhiannon, a qualified dancer came to Solihull to take her first ever dance workshop, as she had only this year graduated from University with her dance degree.
In our first session Rhiannon talked about herself and her dancing, then showed us some videos of her dancing in different styles. She started with a warm up to music and taught us the first of many dance steps. First we did an exercise where we had to do a front kick, then a sidekick and then a back kick; it was quite difficult, but everyone got the hang of it. Then we did jumping and Rhiannon taught us a jump that she called a ‘sparkle’. We had to jump on one leg and stretch our arms out to the ceiling.
Rhiannon then talked to us about learning routines and how it helps if you see the routine a couple of time through first, so she did the dance twice for us. It was now our turn to learn the routine and we were all worried that we wouldn’t get it. Rhiannon took us through the first moves very slowly and eventually, everyone did it! By the end, we had managed to put it to music and it looked fantastic! At the end of the dance, we were split into groups and we added our own 16 beats to finish off the dance in a personal way.
We all really enjoyed the workshop and so did Rhiannon! It was interesting to find out about all the different types of dance she had learnt. I thoroughly enjoyed the workshop and would love to do it again next year.
Emily Hughes