Animal Antics with Dance at Farley Hill

Seven of our Year 10 GCSE Dance students accompanied Dance teacher, Beth Butler, to local primary school, Farley Hill in Arborfield, on Thursday 2^nd February, for a Dance workshop centred on the musical ‘The Lion King’. The popular musical is their Year 5 cross-curricular topic this term and Dance is an important element to explore as it is central to the success of the show. Pupils from Farley Hill have already experienced a West End performance and created some amazingly artistic animal masks in advance of their Dance workshop.

Beth commented, “The Year 10 students did a fantastic job today. They led small groups, teaching them set material in response to various animals from ‘The Lion King’ such as antelope, lion and bird. The Year 5 students were so inspired and responded so positively to their demonstrations. Year 10 also performed their own Lion King dance to help boost the younger pupils’ aspirations to in the choreography session. Year 5 were mesmerised! By the end of the session we had managed to create a whole piece which was a great achievement.”

Livi (Year 10) was enthusiastic about her experience, reflecting, “During our performance, we could feel the energy of the audience, so it made us want to dance even better, and have even more fun with it. They were so impressed with our dances, and they couldn’t wait to learn what we had to teach, so there was a really lovely atmosphere. I enjoyed teaching the small group the phrase that I choreographed with Amy, because we took inspiration from a hornbill bird and our outcome looked so good! It was amazing to get to know the year 5s, teach them the movement, and share our love of dance. After we had taught our phrases to the group, they had the opportunity to make the pieces their own and seeing each dancer’s personailty shine through might have been my favourite part. They had so many amazing ideas – it was incredible! I absolutely loved working collaboratively to make a piece that we had all contributed to and could be really proud of. We worked on communicating different animals, the mood of the jungle, and the party atmosphere of ‘The Lion King’, so dancing the piece was so much fun! I feel like we have become a lot closer as a GCSE class through this outreach work as well.”

Fellow dancer, Cali (Year 10) was pleased that the performance went so well, saying “The thing I enjoyed most about developing ‘The Lion King’ dance was the challenge of having to move like an animal, this is very different to all the practical work we do in GCSE Dance and I really enjoyed it! It was nerve wracking to perform in front of the year 5s but I’m glad I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and did it, as all of the Year 5s loved the dance! I love any opportunity to work with younger students, as it enables all of us to share our enthusiasm and knowledge with them. The most enjoyable thing about teaching the Year 5s a dance routine is seeing their smiles when they have learnt it and watching them grow and develop as the session went on!”

Jessy (Year 10) equally found the change from the usual GCSE course invigorating: “I really enjoyed how inclusive Beth was with our ideas, it definitely felt like our dance, instead of something we had been given. Also, it was really different from what we usually do and it was really nice to explore new cultures.  It was very fun to perform, the Year 5s were very engaged and interested in what we were doing and we felt a lot like a role model for them and someone they were looking up to. I’m just very excited to share my love of dance with the younger children, it was brilliant when we did it before (with Christ the King Primary in May 2022) so I was excited to watch how the Year 5s worked with the dance.  I enjoyed how when we were put into groups we were able to adapt and develop the original material to what they wanted to do. It was lovely to see the children get so excited and come up with ideas and moves of their own.”