I Believe in Angels...

Sometimes I think that any moment I’m going to wake up and realise it’s all a dream. I hope I don’t, but there’s a part of my brain that thinks it must be.

I’ve lived in Bournemouth for 3 and a half months now, and already my experiences at Pavilion Dance South West have outweighed some of my wildest dreams. In fact, I write this blog off the back of an inspiring session with our Youth Company, 2BU, whom I manage. It has been amazing to watch this group of young people grow over the last term; as artists, as students and as human beings. They left our beautiful theatre full of excitement for next term, which is set to be jam packed full of different dance forms and other art genres for them to stick their teeth into.

Earlier on in the week, I sat down with our Participation Dance Lead, Ki, mapping out the next year. I was amazed at how, between the three of us on the Artistic Team, we manage to fill the building up quite quickly. The Spring programme for me means a youth dance festival, collaborations between schools and professional artists, HE/FE Dance and New Media, long awaited CPD and Parkour galore… and I can’t wait!

When I first started to think about what my career would be, I never thought I’d be getting up at 4:30am of a Saturday morning for a conference, but I found myself quite excited leaving home in the dark this weekend for the National Dance Teachers Association Conference in London. After an early morning LABAN Contemporary Dance class (which Miss Hip Hop over here surprisingly survived!) I found myself in a comfortable world that was passionately fighting the EBacc, desperate for industry links for schools and looking to make that clichéd 2012 word “legacy” actually mean something. It’s certainly my mission to make sure it does.

And in between sampling all the dance classes my glorious place of work has to offer and beginning to train for the marathon my Artist Director has challenged me to next October, I returned home into the laughter of my dedicated friends for some well needed TLC and giggles. And as usual, they provided just that…