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23 March 2010
The ISTD Senior Ballet Awards were held at The Hawth Theatre, Crawley on the weekend of March 6th & 7th. This is an annual competition involving many ISTD schools and JMDS had students competing in most grades.
The Saturday morning started with the Grade 6/Inter Foundation pupils. The format of the competition was that there were two classes in each grade and then the pupils awarded the highest marks would be put through to the final later in the day. A panel of four ISTD examiners assessed all the students as they danced. In this section we were represented by Erica-Jayne Alden, Jenna Miles, Zoe Partridge and Katie Turtle.
Next came the Grade 5 heats and in this grade Emma Jenkins, Ruby Kent, Lizzie Mellor, Georgia Shire and Sophie Warner all competed. In all the Grade 6 & 5 classes the girls performed really well but then had an anxious wait until after the lunch break for the adjudication.
In each grade approximately a quarter of the entrants were put forward to the final and in Grade 5 Emma Jenkins and Georgia Shire & in Grade 6 Jenna Miles and Katie Turtle were selected and they then danced again later in the afternoon.
Then came the Stella Mann Bursary competition. This was the most senior award where pupils compete for a £1000 bursary towards future classical ballet training and was open to students 15 years and over. We had just one entry in this section, Isabelle Clough. Izzy, at just 15 yrs, was one of the youngest competitors and danced beautifully in an extremely challenging class that included pointe work.
The final competition of the day was the Kathleen Browning Choreography competition where the girls had the chance to prepare their own composition for a group of dancers. In this section we had six entries: Erica-Jayne Alden, Izzy Clough, Emma Jenkins, Lizzie Mellor, Jenna Miles and Lottie Wight. The group sizes ranged from three up to ten dancers. The girls had had to plan their choreography, organise rehearsals for their groups over the past few weeks and costume their group with the help of wardrobe. It was worth all the hard work! The audience was treated to a fabulous display of dances ranging from truly classical to contemporary in style. The creativity of all the girls was amazing.
Then came the final adjudication. There was some exciting news....In Grade 5 Emma Jenkins was awarded a commendation and in the Stella Mann competition Izzy Clough was awarded the prize of an International Summer School and was announced as the joint winner of the overall bursary. A tremendous achievement!
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Sunday 7th March saw the grade 3, 4 and intermediate students take to the stage; nerves were high as many of them hadn’t competed in such a formal way before.
Representing J.M.D.S. was 11 year old Emily Lewis in the grade 4 classes and Julia Mellor, Lottie Wight and Isabelle Clough (15 years) in the intermediates. Dancers had come from all over the U.K. including Ireland, Guernsey, Norfolk and Lancashire and there was also a strong contingent from “Il Balletto Scuola di Danza”, Italy.
The standard in all the classes was, as always, very high and Emily, Julia, Lottie and Isabelle danced beautifully with Emily and Isabelle each being selected, each from a group of fifty dancers, to go through to the last ten in their respective finals.
All dancers should be congratulated on their achievements and specifically Isabelle who went on to receive a commendation award and was the winner of the “Port de Bras” cup.
At the end of a long and emotionally charged weekend, J.M.D.S. were the runners up for the dance schools aggregate cup, narrowly being beaten by “Il Balletto Scuola di Danza”. This reinforces our position as one of the leading dance schools in the country and thus congratulations must go to all our participating students and our enthusiastic and dedicated teaching staff. |
