Their story, in their words…
For our Mark Evison award, we organised, choreographed, and performed a dance show that was 1 hour long. The performance was based on colours, so we chose a different style of dance for each colour ranging from Charleston to hip hop to contemporary. We had to spend a lot of time deciding on songs, who would oversee each dance, choreographing, buying costumes, teaching each other group dances, and finishing touches like lighting. In terms of organising the event, we made a poster to advertise and allow friends and family to book tickets, which we sold for £5 to adults and £3 for under 18s. All our profits went to the Mark Evison Foundation, which we were incredibly pleased with. We also had to negotiate using our school’s theatre as the venue and as a rehearsal space.
Overall, the performance went very well! All of the lifts were executed safely, and, upon rewatching videos of the performance, they looked very impressive. The choreography between each dance was varied and interesting, so overall the show was very enjoyable. More people than we were expecting came to watch the show, which was lovely to see. However, it was very difficult to organise times that we were all free during the summer, so we were forced to learn some dances in the days leading up to the performance, which was sub-optimal… but with a few days of hard work we managed to learn every dance to a high standard, and we are very pleased with the final result of all our hard work.
In the days leading up to the show, we were all quite stressed and nervous because we had been working so hard on it, but during and after the performance we really enjoyed ourselves and loved having the opportunity to show our friends and family our passion for dance, and the product of all our time and effort. We are all very proud of ourselves for being able to organise a big event, as well as physically challenge ourselves by stepping back into the world of dance after a year of not doing any.
The Mark Evison award has helped build our confidence not only in dance, but also in being able to do whatever we put our minds to.
