May, 2026 - Zest Dance Workshops

We taught an Animal themed dance workshop and got in touch with our WILD SIDE!

We had three year 1 classes wanting an animal theme to go with the topic they are learning about in class. They requested a range of animals: Mammals, birds, amphibians, insects and fish. It was a challenge to fit them all into one dance – but we enjoyed embracing our creativity and creating a fun dance.

The Royal Opera House

We got inspiration from a recent trip to The Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. They were displaying some incredible animal masks/heads which were created for the ballet Alcina (see the pics below). We showed these photos to the children at the start of each workshop and they loved how realistic they are. We talked about what a challenge it must be to perform a ballet wearing one of them!

Dressing up

Our Zest dance teacher had to get involved and dress up for the workshops as a leopard (of course).

Music

The music we used for the dance was a piece we created a few years ago. It’s a mix of African style instrumental songs. Each song was around 30 seconds long, and we edited all the clips into one piece of music. So it was a perfect fit for all the different animals we used for the dance.

The animals we chose to include in our dance were these:

Parrot, Gorilla, Dolphin, Frog and a Caterpillar into a butterfly for the finale!

The children really enjoyed it and we had lovely feedback form the teachers.