Junior Associates Audition, ABTC Comps and Dance Journal

Practicing for Ameno.

Last weekend was very, very busy.
So much for a rest on Labour Weekend.
Friday evening it was class as usual and Salem had a very enjoyable class.
He is gaining more acrobatic skills.

He had to miss his Acrobatic class on Saturday as he attended the audition at the New Zealand School of Dance for the Junior Associates program.
We had to leave very early and got there in good time thanks to Grandma, so he could warm up in time for the classical class at 8.45am.

Salem will write more about that later in this post as he is now writing a dance journal as part of his work for doing BTDA Intermediate Ballet.

Being Siegfried.

After the audition we went out to the Hutt for the Associated Ballet & Theatre Club Inc's (ABTC) Competitions at the Little Theatre in Lower Hutt.

I had booked us into the Angus Inn as it was not worth going back and forward to Paraparaumu over the weekend.  This was so much easier.
Luckily they let us check in early as we had a few hours before Salem had his first dance.

It was so nice relaxing in a nice hotel room and not having to hang out in the dressing room for hours.
We enjoyed our stay there!!!!

Looking very Polish.

Salem did very well over the two days of comps especially as he was performing all new dances which he had choreographed himself.  Everyone commented on his Krakowiak costume which he loved wearing.

He has won another trophy for coming first for the Classical Impromptu.

His results are:

1st Place -  Classical Impromptu 12 years and over
3rd Place -  Barefoot Impromptu 12 years and over
3rd Place -  Character 13 years
VHC -  Classical 13 years
VHC -  Barefoot 13 years
VHC - Lyrical 12 years and over.

Salem will write more about the comps in another post soon.
Here is his first Journal entry:

Salem's Dance Journal

**************************

New Zealand School of Dance

On Saturday the 26th of October, I had to go to the New Zealand School of Dance in Wellington, so I could audition to try to get into the Junior Associates.

I had to be there very early in the morning.  There was a lot of other dancers too.  There were four other boys as well but the rest were girls.

We had to get our numbers, I was number 37.  Then we went into one of the studios to have a warm up.

Eating my cheese and crackers.

Then we all went into Studio 1 for a ballet class.  All of us boys had to go down the back so we couldn't see what was happening very well.  The class went for one and a half hours then we had a break.  I had cheese and crackers.

After that we had a contemporary class which wasn't as long.  The best bit was doing an impromptu.  That was fun but the music choice was horrible.

UPDATE:  Salem was accepted on the New Zealand School of Dance Associate Programme.
He is now a NZSD Junior Associate Contemporary Major.