New Ideas and Choreography

Sydney Harbour Bridge New Years 2015

Happy New Year every one!!!!!!!

I had a fantastic New Years, I was over in Sydney at the Boys Ballet Summer School.

It was held at the Shore School which had a great view of the Harbour Bridge.

We all stayed up to watch the fireworks and the next day we went to Wet'n'Wild.

Photo courtesy of the Boys Ballet Summer School

I had such a great time, wish it was for longer.  I am now saving and fundraising to go back next summer.

When I came back home, I only had a couple of days off dancing and have got back into the studio to practice.  I started back with lessons with Jacqui yesterday.

Today I finished my new contemporary choreography. 

I'm very pleased with it.  Now it needs lots of practice to make it look good.

I was so inspired from being at the Boys Ballet Summer School and had fantastic tutors - Jason Duff for jazz, Bill Pengelly for contemporary, and Christian Tatchev from the Queensland Ballet.

Bill gave me a load of new ideas and inspired me to create this new dance using lots of new moves that he taught us. Thanks Bill. And thanks to Jason and Christian too.

I also get to use a Kate Bush song which is a bonus.  I just love this song,

For those of you who recieve this by email, you can click on http://youtu.be/oxQmfzmdSkI to watch the video.

Me and Mum will be doing more updates to catch up on everything.

Bye for now - Salem xx

A Quick Catch-up No.3 - The last one....Choreography and today's lessons.

On our way home tonight after classes.

Yay, Salem's tap shoes arrived this afternoon but of course after he had already left for today's lessons.  So I made sure that I got them to him before his tap class.  He was thrilled and they were a perfect fit.  Sorry I forgot to take a photo of him wearing them.

Today he had his Intermediate lesson, and then instead of going to the performance troupe's practice, he stayed at the studio and worked on his twelve competition dances.  Only one of the dances isn't his own choreography.  He has been a busy boy creating more of his own dances.

So far this term he has choreographed a contemporary dance - "In the Shadows", a demi-character - "Robin Hood" and a neo-classical - "Cold".  He has been doing Siegfried's variation from Swan Lake Act III for a while but felt it was too rigid so has done his own choreography for it which is really great.  It is part of his BTDA dance journal work to look at a ballet, he chose Swan Lake, study it, it's history, the story and look at the choreography and suggest changes.  Well, he wrote down the whole choreography of the variation which was taught to him by Shannon Dawson at one of the Boy's Ballet Classes with the Royal New Zealand Ballet.  Created his own version and wrote the whole choreography for that.  It was very impressive.

This is his new contemporary dance "In the Shadows", it is very different to his old contemporary dance "Du Hast" when he was with KDC.  He has worked on it a lot since this was filmed.

He didn't go to troupe practice as the others were working on their older dances as they are off to comps in two weeks time.
Yes, it's comp time again.  Salem will be doing six of of his solos and five impromptus.
And it will be his first time at comps out of the Wellington region.
We are off to the Palmerston North Dance Association's Restricted and Open Impromptu Competition which will be held at the Regent Theatre in Broadway Avenue, Palmerston North on Friday 28th - Sunday 30th March 2014.
He is dancing on all three days so we will be staying up there in a hotel and making it a bit of a holiday. Salem has never been to Palmerston North.
Looking forward to it!!!!!!!