Charleston Dance Workshops

It was Zest’s 8th year back at Shoreside School in Mersyside, and time for some Charleston Dance workshops.

We love teaching dance workshops from different decades, and this year the theme was the 1920’s dance – The Charleston.

As we’ve been back to this school for so many years, all the kids remember us now. The teachers make us feel so welcome, it’s like our second home! It’s such a sunny, happy school, and with it being right near the beach we love to go there after home time and sit on the sand dunes.

Music

It’s important to find a good piece of music for a dance performance as it has to engage the children. For young children it’s useful if it has repetition, so that the dancers can recognise the different verses or chorus in the songs. We found a really fun piece of music called ‘Do Ba Do, 1920’s style’, it was really catchy and all the children were singing along all week.

Ainsdale Show

We were working with Rec, Yr 1 and Yr 2 for their annual Ainsdale show performance. They rehearse all week with us, and then they perform it a few weeks after to a large crowd at the Ainsdale Festival.

What we soon realised was how the main Charleston step was going to be pretty difficult for that age group. It had to be broken down and simplified quite a bit, and practised a lot!

We did loads of Charleston dance workshops with all the classes, teaching different sections to the dance. Then there was a big finale where all the children were dancing together.

The end dance was great and seeing the girls dressed up in their flapper dresses and the boys as mini gangsters was hilarious. We are already looking forward to our week back there next summer term….