We hope you’ve had a great summer, a well earned rest and settled in with your new school routines.
Some of you may be aware that the Demeric School of Dance was founded in Farnham by Mrs Priscilla de Meric in 1961, who ran the happy and busy dance school up to her retirement in 2002 when both present Principals; Emma Wise, a former pupil of the school, and Aurelia Whitfield took over the running of the school and the majority of the teaching. We would like to organize an event to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Demeric School of Dance and also the 10th year of us taking over the running of the school. We hope to organize this event in spring 2012 so please forward any ideas and watch this space!
Another year has flown by and the Demeric school of Dance has again had many great achievements. We start by congratulating our children who were awarded the Demeric Awards for 2010 and they were: Katie Evans, the winner of the Progress Cup and Sian Besley for the Performance Award. Well done!! We again have had some children auditioning for the Cecchetti Associates in London, where by the children must be awarded a B grade above 70 marks or A at Grade 2 Ballet level and above, selected through audition out of hundreds of children. Once a month they attend a Ballet Class taught by Guest Teachers, Choreographers and Examiners and a further subject which varies everything from Spanish, Irish, Musical Theatre to Contemporary which are held at the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance in Twickenham. We congratulate Elena Lodge and Olivia Rhodes for gaining Junior Associate places for the first time. Hannah Lodge, Katie Ward, Natalie Rees for repeatedly being chosen for Senior Associates. Alice Frostick gained a Senior Cecchetti Scholar Place, whereby she will have a year’s scholarship to train in London at the Cecchetti Centre held at London Studio Centre. Phoebe Ward was also awarded the Cecchetti Centre Scholarship which allows her to take funded classes also at the Cecchetti Centre. We hope to be auditioning more girls this June as it is such a great experience for them. Please let us know if your child is interested in the Spring term so we can give you the relevant forms to fill in. We will be entering children for the London Mabel Ryan Awards which will be held at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London on Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th November. The competition is aimed for the encouragement of dance quality and to demonstrate the high standard of children training in the ISTD Cecchetti Method. Please let us know if you may think your child may be interested, forms will be available at the beginning of term. We aim to coach some of the work in class but in some cases other coaching days may be needed.
Our annual Choreography Competition was held on Sunday 28th November 2010. We were so pleased with the diversity and the amount of group dances with having the time to rehearse and bring everything together. We were so proud with the amount of children who took part and how much the standard has improved. Well done to all the children that took part! Our winners this year were Soloist: Alice Frostick and Group: Charlotte O’connor, Chloe Hepworth and Poppy Lambert –Parsons. Our next Choreography Competition will be held on Saturday 10th December 2010 so please put the date in your diaries!!!
We would also like to Congratulate the following children for their achievements outside of the school; Elena Lodge who auditioned and is dancing for the Christmas Pantomime of Cinderella at Camberley Theatre, Alice Frostick and Imogen Carruthers who auditioned and danced in the recent “Coppelia” at The Woking Theatre with the English Youth Ballet. Annie Handscomb has also been very busy in various musicals: ‘Korczak’ YMT: UK, Rose Theatre in Kingston. ‘The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’ and ‘Arabian Nights’ with the Yvonne Arnaud Youth Theatre. Annie was also successfully auditioned for ‘Sound Moves’ at The Place in London; this was collaboration between young dancers and young musicians leading to performances at The Place and at the Royal College of Music in London. Arthur Handscomb has been in his first musical, he played the Knave in ‘Alice The Musical’ Yvonne Arnaud Youth Theatre. We do hope and encourage that children do audition for parts in outside productions which will give them such a great experience. Please let us know of any other forth coming events and achievements.
We hope that with this letter some of you who are new to the school are aware of the different classes that we run and we do try to meet the needs of all who dance at Demeric. Tuesday mornings we have started a Adult Jazz Fit at 9.45- 10.45am which is a fun class of stretches, general fitness with simple dance routines. Wednesday mornings is Adult Tap classes 10 – 11am for some who have some Tap knowledge and 11 -11.30am for Tap Beginners. We also have an Adult Ballet Class on Wednesday evenings at 7.45 – 8.45pm. All our Adult classes have been increasingly popular for meeting other parents and general fitness and maybe join us for a free trial!! The ISTD (Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing, our examining body) have just introduced completely new syllabi for Tap based on American Rhythm Tap. The choreography and music is very current using tap steps researched in America. On Tuesdays, Thursdays and coaching on Saturdays are our Modern Jazz and Tap days held at the Maltings and Weybourne Infant School. Classes run through the Grades from Primary through to Major Levels. The Tap Grades are at presently still being re-vamped by the ISTD with a definite American, rhythm style which we are slowly integrating into our classes. So far the children seem to enjoy the new style of Tap which uses all styles of music from Reggae through to Rap. The ISTD has also just released a new Pre-primary and Grade 4 Tap syllabus which we will soon integrating into our classes and launching a new Beginners Tap and Modern Class for 4yrs old 4 – 4.45pm on Tuesdays in January .We feel introduces the children to the basics of Tap and a fun jazzy style of Dancing. Please let us know if you would like us to reserve a place for your child. We also have a Stretch Class at 7.00pm on Thursdays which is suitable for students Gr. 5 and above, which is a jazz class which combines stretching and free work assisting them with their Graded modern Classes or for students who rather not take exams. Our Street Dance classes on Fridays are proving very popular with the girls it would be lovely to see some boys in those classes too. We run 3 Classes: 4.45- 5.30pm for 6 – 8yrs, 5.30 – 6.15pm for 9 –11yrs & 6.15 – 7pm from 12yrs.
Our website is up and running www.demericschoolofdance.co.uk..We hope you will find it useful for information on classes, uniform, events and any changes. We are also finding it very difficult to speak to parents after classes. If it is uniform queries, please fill out an order form which you can download from our website or collect one from any of your teachers. We would also prefer if you do have a dancing issue that you call us or email us emma@demericschoolofdance.co.uk or ray@demericschoolofdance.co.uk as it can be difficult, time consuming and not fair on the children waiting to start their Dance class with a line of parents wanting to talk to us. In the venues we teach in please make sure you use the correct changing rooms as we are constantly being reminded that we cannot allow children to change on stairwells and corridors especially due to the rules and regulations of the Children’s Act and that we do abide by them. We understand it can be difficult as some of you have siblings with you but we cannot afford to lose the places that we teach in.
Regarding uniform, we are finding increasing numbers of different dance clothing and fancy dress costumes being worn. If you are unsure of the correct uniform for any particular class please ask your teacher. We do sell all of the uniform so again please ask your teacher for an order form or use our website. Please, please, please can we have hair away from faces for our younger children in our Modern, Tap & Jazz classes and hair in buns in all other classes. As autumn is here and the weather getting colder please can we use the correct dancewear. We now have new fleeces, t-shirts (with our new logo which we hope you all like) and as always woolly crossovers. We will be hosting another Mufti week starting on Monday 17th June until Friday 21st October, where the children can dress up in any dance wear, tutus, lycra Fame outfit (as bright as possible!!) at the cost of£1.00. As some of you may be aware we are trying to fundraise for some portable mirrors in the Dance Studio at the Maltings, so far we have raised £448.00!!! Thank you for your support! If your child dances in more than 1 class they are able to wear Mufti clothes in all of their classes. And finally we have 2 new members of staff Miss Rachel Diprose and Miss Marie Oakley which some of you may have met briefly last term. Rachel Diprose trained for three years at Central School of Ballet studying jazz, ballet, contemporary, Spanish, singing and drama and toured the UK in a company called Ballet Central in her third year. After graduating with a BA Honours degree in Professional dance and Performance studies, she performed in West Side Story touring the UK, France, Italy and Malaysia. Marie Oakley is a highly experienced dance teacher with a primary love for Classical Ballet and National Character; she has been teaching for 7 years at one of Sydney, Australia’s leading Classical ballet schools and is excited to be furthering her career in the UK. She is passionate about her teaching wants to inspire a love of dance in students, encourage them to master their own technique, develop their artistry and reach their full potential.
A big “Thank you” to all our teachers, helpers and pianists, they’re wonderful playing and assisting in our classes. We wish all our children the Best of Luck for their forth coming exams, auditions and competitions and please keep working hard!!!
Mrs. Whitfield and Mrs. Wise.