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Dance Festival

On Tuesday 24th January St Marys’ attended a dance festival at Axe Valley Community College. This festival was based on the popular book Gerald can’t dance. After a warm up from the New ‘Born to Move’ dance class, the children thought of animals that live in the sea and then used these to inspire dances. The children had great fun learning a motif of an awkward giraffe ‘whose legs were awfully bandy’. In small groups, year 9 dance leaders from Axe Valley Community College taught a creative dance composed from ideas the children had produced after discussing the animals in the jungle dance. Each group were given an animal to make up a 16 steps routine to move into and out of a ‘jungle’.   Towards the end, the children learnt another routine which involved some street dance moves. ‘Gerald could dance he just needed the right music.’   The dance emphasised values and the students could see how Gerald would feel sad, and how the other animals then showed empathy.   Each group told everyone what they liked about each other’s dances and children came up with some really lovely ideas. Mr Green the head teacher at Axe Valley Community College came to see one of the performances and was really impressed with all the children.