We are THRILLED that we got to stage our Preliminary session of The British Arts Awards competition on Sunday 23rd January 2022. In 2020, we had our Prelims and the Semi finals but one week after the Semis we were put into lockdown. Sadly our Finalist dancers didn't get to compete in the Finals in May 2022 and no competition ran at all in 2021 so we were crossing everything that this year could take place!
We faced some challenges as a school but WE DID IT! All students performed their professionally and showed wonderful camaraderie to each other throughout the day. Mandaleigh staff were incredibly proud of ALL students and we are delighted that over half of our entries have gained a place at the semi finals which will take place in March. In other classes, we are still working away as ever on our technique to work towards exams later this year and to continue building our stamina back up! We are also looking forward to our show this June entitles "Our Time To Shine" which will be held at the New Theatre Royal, Portsmouth. This show was due to take place in 2020, was rescheduled for 2021 and is now scheduled for this year so third time lucky! I'm hoping to report back with more positive results following the Arts Awards semi-finals in March,
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Wowzers, what a time it has been recently!
Apologies that we haven't updated this section of our website in a while (5 years to be exact!!!) but we have been so busy. The pandemic hitting in March 2020 meant huge changes and challenges for The Mandaleigh Studios. At first, we naively thought that after a months closure that we would all resume life as normal. That was definitely NOT the case! We turned to Zoom to be able to continue our timetabled classes at home which ran until July 2020. All Mandaleigh students showed incredible commitment to their dance online and we saw fantastic improvements in our students even with the difficulties we were all facing. We reopened the studios in September 2020 which was an amazing time to welcome everyone back and to be able to dance together again, even with Covid restrictions in place. However, by November, we were forced to close our doors again and revert back to online tuition. We did manage to open just before Christmas and we enjoyed some of our normal festivities ahead of the holidays! In the New Year until Easter, we were online dancing again which was tough for us all but we struggled through! After Easter we were back dancing together again at the studios in our 2m square boxes! It was better than being online and we were thrilled to be back in one another's company again! As we now get ready to start our new term in September, we hope that we can get back to some normality! We hope to book some exam sessions, complete in the Arts Awards and go back to planning our wonderful school social life too! Watch this space for more regular updates... I WILL BE MORE ORGANISED!! Miss Ali Whoops! The last update we made was almost a whole year ago!
Our first year at our new studios in West Street has been very busy! We've had another round of Arts Awards, we've had exams, and we've even run a summer school too! Here's a break down of what we've been up to: The Arts Awards We had another wonderfully successful year at the London finals of the Arts Awards. All of our dancers made us proud, as did all of the parents and, of course, our teachers!
Imperial ballet exam results Yet another occasion of our students making us proud! For our first set of exams at our lovely West Street studios, our talented young ladies and gentlemen were awarded:
School trip We took a school trip to see Mary Poppins at The Mayflower in Southampton during the May half term. We all had a fantastic time and our students thoroughly enjoyed the whole theatre experience. Youth Ballet Academy Our very own Byron Snook successfully auditioned for and danced with the Hampshire Youth Ballet Academy in Feb half term. He did a wonderful job as an ambassador for our school! The Mandaleigh Summer Show We like to put on a yearly showcase in the summer to show all of the parents, grandparents and all our other supporters all the hard work we do! This year, our show was on 17th July at The Dickinson Theatre in Park Community School. Summer School This year, we ran a summer school. Our theme was 'Alice in Wonderland'. The children spent a couple of days in the summer holidays working really hard and topped it off with a wonderful performance! And we've still got so much to come! We'll be taking part in The Victorian Festival of Christmas for the third year running! We've all loved being part of this great Portsmouth tradition, so we can't wait to get down there are perform on Sunday 27th November. We'll also be running a Nutcracker Christmas Workshop with Richard and Alasdair. We'll be lucky enough to have guest dancers from the English National Ballet joining us for the occasion on Monday 19th December. After that, the Arts Awards preliminary heat will take place on Sunday 29th January 2017 (which we're of course already rehearsing for!). That's it for now, but we'll make sure we give you more regular updates in the future! Since our last update in March, a lot has been happening at our dance school!
Successful performance results and auditions In May this year, we performed in the London finals of the British Arts Awards with the following results:
We're now looking forward to competing once again in 2016. Our Premliminary heat is booked for Sunday 24th January at Park Community School in the new theatre, The Dickinson Centre. Many of our pupils have danced there before, performing in last years Arts Semi Finals. On May 31st we had a day of ballet exams. The children gained excellent results; all Merits and Distinctions. The Highest mark of the day was awarded to Byron Snook. Cecile Holgate successfully auditioned to become an Arts Educational Scholar at Tring Park in Hertfordshire and attends extra ballet classes on Sundays. Kallum Snook has successfully auditioned for Ballet Central and gained a Distinction in the Intermediate Imperial Ballet examination. Our new location In July we presented a compilation show for parents and friends of the school. At the end of the show we were able to tell everyone about moving our school to a new premises in in West Street, Fareham. August has been taken up with painting, refurbishing, laying dance flooring and putting up ballet barres and photographs! We opened our doors on August 29th for present and new pupils to visit and view our new studios. Our first classes commenced on Tuesday 1st September. Upcoming performances Looking forward to the end of this Autumn term, we shall be presenting our Christmas Traditional Nativity. Santa usually visits with a small gift for each of the children taking part! Our children and students will also be performing at the Victorian Festival of Christmas on 29th November in Portsmouth's Historic Dockyard. Well, that just about covers what we've been up to in the last six months! As ever, if you'd like more information about classes we offer of what we're up to, just contact us. We're very proud to enter the prestigious Arts Awards competition every year. 29 performances from our talented school have got through to the semi finals stage which is coming up very soon, so we're all in rehearsal mode, perfecting those good toes and winning smiles! If any of our performances get through to the finals (which we're sure they will!) then we'll be heading to London in the hope of collecting some medals, certificates and perhaps even a trophy!
We'll be sure to keep you updated! |
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