Welcome to your monthly Bayside Dance newsletter! Read on to find out all about what’s been happening at dance and what’s coming up next. Our monthly newsletters are a great way to share information so we encourage you to take a few minutes to read it through.
Notices
Concert Tickets on sale soon! Tickets to our end-of-year concerts will be on sale soon. Preschool Concert on sale Mon 9 Oct 9am Junior Concert on sale Mon 16 Oct 9am Big Kids Concert on sale Mon 16 Oct 10am
Concert Costumes Concert Costumes will be going home in the next few weeks! When you get them home, please hang them up and pop away so they stay safe until concert day. Costumes do not need to be worn on rehearsal day. Some of our classes this year are getting hire costumes, so these will not go home.
Join the cast of High School Musical JR! Registrations are open for our December holiday musical theatre workshop! Dancers aged 10-18 can have two weeks of singing, dancing and acting as we learn an entire musical in just ten days. Also open to performers from outside Bayside Dance so bring your friends!
ENROLMENT IN 2024 Enrolling for classes in 2024 will look different to years previous. Why? Because we’re going to do it for you! We’re moving from a “re-enrolment” system to a “rollover” system so later in Term 4, we won’t be asking you to enrol, we’ll do all the hard work and will just give you your timetable. As always, there will be time after the concerts for dancers to try new classes and let us know any changes that you’d like to make. See the August newsletter for more information.
From Miss Kaitlin
No two bodies are exactly alike. We all come to dance training bringing a host of differences in our bodies. These might be genetic, such as our morphology (body type) and bone structure, or they could be movement patterns from prior training or cross training, or even previous injuries.
Different bodies require different strategies to achieve our dance goals. That’s why you don’t see us posting thousands of pictures of students in unsafe stretches or positions like over splits. While these extreme positions might be ok for SOME bodies, they might not be ok for others – and that’s ok! (And just because you CAN bend your leg behind your head doesn’t necessarily mean you SHOULD either!).
It is sadly becoming almost commonplace for teachers without a solid understanding of anatomy and who don’t even know their students prior history to ask for dancers to push themselves far beyond the limits of normal human mobility. It baffles me that young dancers are being pressured to move in such a way from a young age, and I have heard many horror stories of barely teenage dancers being treated for stress fractures in their spines because of continuously pushing into extreme ranges of motion before their young bodies are capable. Often focus on these “tricks” takes up time that should be spent on foundational skills like solid footwork, musicality and performance skills.
What is even more baffling is that as a professional dancer, you’re actually pretty unlikely to use these “tricks”. My good friend, Mark Hill (who starred in Mary Poppins, West Side Story and more), famously says the most he’s ever asked to do in a show is a high kick or a double turn. Miss Kate tells the story of how she could never do the splits yet danced for over 10 years professionally, while I myself pushed into extreme range as a teenager and am looking at a partial hip replacement at 36!
Testing dancers’ flexibility and for hyper-mobility forms part of our pre-pointe and pointe assessments to help students become aware of their individual strengths and challenges, assisting them on the road to becoming the best dancer they can be! Just like these Barbies, we’re all different and that’s what makes us unique and amazing human beings and dancers.
Miss Kaitlin
What’s Been Happening?
Crazy Hair Week We had so much fun celebrating the last week of Term 3 with Crazy Hair Week! From our youngest to our oldest dancers, it was so wonderful seeing everyone join in the fun.
Jazz Exams At the end of last term, our Level 9 and 10 Jazz dancers completed their SFD Examinations. We are so proud of our senior dancers who took on this challenge! Well done ladies!
Coming Up
Saturday 14 October – Lota State School Fete (Performance Teams) Saturday 28 October – Wynnum Halloween Parade (Performance Teams)
Saturday 4 November (PM) – Preschool Concert Sunday 5 November – Rehearsal Day (Juniors and Big Kids dancers) Sunday 12 November – Concert Day (Juniors and Big Kids)
Saturday 2 December – Last Day of Term 4 Saturday 2 December – Wynnum Fringe Festival (Performance Teams and Musical Theatre dancers) Saturday 2 December – Manly Harbour Christmas Lights Festival (Performance Teams)