Our range of Cultural Dances were back at St Philomena’s High School 2026 on their last day of the summer term.

We have been delivering our dance workshops for their Cultural Day for the last 4 years, and this year’s was very hot (in the middle of a heatwave) and just as fun!

With seven dance teachers in for the morning, we had a great range of dance styles for their students to try.

Cultural Dances

Ukrainian

Samba

Indian Classical

American Jazz

Latin Zumba

Egyptian

Afrobeats

Workshops

Each workshop lasted 50mins and we had between 30-60 students in each workshop – we we saw almost every student in the school!

Dressing Up

We feel it adds loads to the learning experience when our Zest dance teachers dress up in the national dress of their country. We bring added costumes for the students to wear and we show extra props and flags from the countries too.

Music

All the music we use is traditional from the chosen country and picked to be appealing and give energy to the students.

Technique

There are so many techniques in each dance style. So at the start of each workshop we do a general warm up to get our muscles moving.

Next we teach a few techniques from the cultural dances. So maybe Samba footsteps, American Jazz turns or mastering the Ukrainian heel toe pivot turn – we like to challenge the students 🙂

We then add the techniques and moves learnt into a short dance routine.

Performance

At the end of each workshop we have a short dance routine to perform. Either splitting the class in half we performed to each other, or even just to the teachers present. It creates a fun ending to our workshops and the participants get a sense of achievement and accomplishment from their hard work during the workshops.

What we’d love to do is have all of the classes back together at the end of the day to perform their dances in front of everyone. But as it’s their last day of term at St Philomena’s they are desperate to head off for their summer Holidays and no big performance is possible!

Contact us

If you’d like a day like this with lots of Zest teachers teaching a range of cultural dances, get in touch. You can even have a big performance at the end of the day and invite parents along to watch….