Hi, my name is Salem and I'm a devoted ballet dancer from New Zealand.
I am a freelance dancer and dance teacher.
This is my journey to have a career in the profession that I am so passionate about, and I have done it my way.
I love going to the Botanic Gardens in Wellington as often as I can.
The other weekend had all the tulips out in their full glory and it was such a beautiful day that I had to get some stretching done while enjoying all the beautiful colours.
These photos are more acro than ballet but stretching is good for all dance types. And I prefer to stretch outdoors on a lovely day.
The photos didn't turn out of me doing jetes, too blurry.
I was doing some more stretches on the grassy lawn and two little girls, sisters. joined me and I gave them a ballet lesson, a very simple introduction, which they loved.
Their mum was very impressed and enjoyed watching.
After the ballet lesson I did some very basic contemporary exercises with them and their little friend, a boy, joined in too.
He had just as much fun as the girls.
Then I added in a little acro to finish things off, lots of rolling around and some gentle stretching.
I'm sure the kids could have gone on for longer but there were more flowers to see.
A great way to spend a sunny springtime afternoon.
This is Salem's report on the British Theatre Dance Association Dance Festival 2014, which he attended as part of the Waikanae Dance School's performance team.
He did this report to the Kapiti Coast Youth Council as he received a $200 Youth Dollars grant from them to help cover his costs to take part in this festival.
Salem’s Trip to the BTDA Festival in Auckland
5th – 8th June 2014
At the Youth2U Dollars ceremony
A very big “thank you” to the Kapiti Youth Council for granting me $200 Youth2U Dollars. This helped me cover the rest of my costs for
me to participate as part of the Performance Team for Waikanae Dance School at the British Theatre Dance Association’s
dance festival for 2014.
As part of the performance team, I had helped in
some of the fundraising activities such as performing at the Waikanae
Easter Market, and even performed for the Paraparaumu/Raumati Community Board to get some funding for the
team’s trip up to Auckland. It was a lot
of fun.
After all our hard work, I was so excited to go on
my first plane flight ever, to Auckland.
I had never been to Auckland before either so it was a weekend full of
new experiences. We stayed at a holiday
motel/park was had loads of palm trees which I was very impressed with as we
don’t have any, or as many, down this part of the North Island.
I really enjoyed being part of the BTDA dancefestival, I met a lot of new people and made plenty of new
friends. It was great to be able to
compete against a lot of new people.
The Attitude film crew
I also had a film crew from Attitude Pictures with me.
They had been filming me before this trip, at home in Kapiti, having
lessons and me teaching as well. I got
very used to having them around. It was
weird saying good bye to them at the end.
These were the first competitions I had ever danced
as part of a duo, a trio, and an acrobatic troupe.
It was also the first time I had competed doing an
acrobatic dance solo as I had only started learning acro in term 4 of last
year. I had choreographed my acro solo
over the summer holidays and this was my debut performance.
I was up against very experienced and amazing girls,
they were all very nice to me too. I was
a bit nervous as to how I would do.
I received 2nd Place. I was very happy with that result.
So “Thank You” again to the Kapiti Youth Council and the Youth4U Dollars grant for helping to
make this great experience happen for me.
It has been really appreciated.
Salem received a Upper Hutt Competition Society Incentive Award for
Restricted Jazz.
Results for the weekend were:
Second Place - Restricted Jazz
Third Place - Musical Theatre
Very Highly Commended - Self Choreographed
Highly Commended - Contemporary
Lyrical
Jazz Impromptu
Salem competed at the Upper Hutt competitions for the fist time in June and had a lot of fun.
A new theatre to dance in and some new faces for him to compete against.
Warming up backstage for lyrical
It was a nice big stage at Expressions Theatre and the boys had two dressing rooms to themselves which was a bonus.
In the dressing room.
It was a modern and tap competition, so no ballet this time and it will be a little while yet before he competes in tap.
They had a self choreography section which required a time limit of two minutes, Salem had wanted to do his acro dance "Safety Dance" but that was well over that time. So he choreographed a new acro dance "Cotton Eye Joe" for a bit of fun and performed it for the first time at these comps.
Hopefully he will get to perform it again.
Cotton Eye Joe
Truffles was due for another performance so this time Salem entered "Robin Hood" in the Musical Theatre category so he sang while he danced. He was very nervous beforehand as he had never sung on stage but he had a real blast doing it and achieving a third placing was a bonus.
Robin Hood and Truffles
He was a bit dissappointed with the Jazz Impromptu section as they played a very contemporary piece in which basically everyone danced contemporary while Salem, being the Aspie (Aspergers) that he is, only did jazz steps which was very, very hard with the choice of music. Well done him for keeping to the style!!!!
Warming up for jazz
All in all it was a great weekend, just lot's of time spent travelling and getting home very late.
Public transport is pretty bad on the weekends especially when the trains are replaced by buses making for a very long journey indeed.
