Latest News Archives - Zest Dance Workshops

We love reading and know how important it is for children to enjoy it too. Of course we love dancing – so our book themed workshops are a perfect mix!

We were booked during Feb half term 2025 to come up to Manchester to visit the RHS Gardens in Bridgewater. They were running lots of activities for children all week and their theme was the book ‘Guess how much I love you’ by Sam McBratney.

Take a look at the funny video below to see what our Big Nutbrown Hare got up too…..

https://studio.youtube.com/video/K2heAXhYjc0/edit

We taught 5 x 30min workshops which were aimed at children from 3-7years old. We had a great turn out with almost all sessions selling out with 30 children in each session. With over that many parents in watching too, it was a busy day.

We bought bunny ears for all the children to wear to get them into the mood for a good hop!

Dance workshop content for our book themed workshops

• Intro from our dance teacher
• Warm up using rabbit themed songs (the Rock N Roll rabbit was a great find)
• Hopping competition – who can hop the highest and furthest!
• Reading the story of ‘Guess how much I love you’
• Teaching a dance based on all the ways the Big and Little Nutbrown Hares tell each other they love them
• A chance for the children to make up creative movements based on their ideas of love (see below)
• A good stretch to finish after all that jumping

Children’s ideas

At the end of the dance we asked the children for ideas to add on to the dance, of ways that they could love (in the style of the book)

Here are some of our favourite ones that they came up with.

I love you as much as…

• Strawberries
• Gloves
• My baby brother
• A volcano
• All the fish in the ocean
• 4 Elephants on top of each other
• Around all the planets and back to earth
• All the bunnies in the world

We had so much fun embracing their ideas and creating movements to go with their inspiration. Young minds are amazing!

World Book Day

We do loads of dance workshops to support World Book Day in schools. This workshop is perfect for KS1 classes in schools and early years settings.

Contact us

Get in touch if you’d like a workshop and we can send you lots of info and our prices.

We had such fun teaching this Bollywood women’s workshop.

In a gorgeous sunny barn near Bath, we taught a group of 6 women from a ‘Ladies Group’ a Bollywood dance workshop for the afternoon.

We provided belly scarves and Bindis for them to dress up in, to get them in the mood.

After an energetic warm up, we taught Mudras (hand positions) and some classical Indian dance teachnique with facial expression and head movements.

Next we taught this dance routine to get them grooving along to some Bollywood hits.

They did a great job and totally enjoyed the session and we had brilliant feedback on how much they all loved it!

Read more about our Bollywood dance workshops here, and get in touch if you’d like to book one for your adult or youth group.

Egypt Day is very popular across many schools across the UK, adding it to their yearly activities, and we have taught at many!

National Curriculum Friendly

Linking to the topics of history and world dance styles, Egyptian dance covers a lot of bases in a fun way. It adds another layer of learning that children really respond to.

Egypt Day Lesson Plan

• Intro about Ancient Egypt and facts about it’s history
• Showing some Egyptian props and costume
• Dressing up in hip scarves and gold ‘medals’ which we provide (where possible)
• Warm up to traditional Egyptian music
• Learning a dance routine using iconic Egyptian dance moves
• The children may have time to extend the dance in groups – depending on how long their workshop is
• Mini performance to the rest of the class of the dance they have learnt
• Cool down to finish

Music

The music we use is a mixture of traditional and more modern Egyptian music and songs.

More Info

Some great facts about Egypt for kids can be found here.

See our Egyptian page for more info on what we offer and please get in touch if you’d like to make a booking!

We have been getting a few bookings recently for an India themed day for care homes. See the pics below – What better thing is there than seeing people smiling and having fun?

We taught Bollywood sessions at Meadway Court Care Home and Bamford Close Care home, both in Stockport, for their India themed days.

Our fabulous teacher Adeela started with a talk to the residents about Indian culture, festivals, music and dance. They also enjoyed looking at some Indian props and costumes she brought in.

Next she got everyone dressed up in colourful belly scarves to get them in the mood for a dance.

She did a gentle warm up, taught some Mudras (Indian hand positions) before teaching some low impact Bollywood dance moves. She adapted everything for those less physically able, or who needed to remain sitting. We believe dance should be inclusive for all and we are trained with working with people with Dementia too.

As you can see from all the happy faces everyone had a great time!

We even got a 5 star review from Meadway Court, which made our day (see last pic)

If you’d like an Indian themed day for your care home or older adults group, please get in touch.

Dance tutorials for Senior Movers

Or why not check out our free dance tutorials which you can beam straight to your group?

We have seated and standing warm ups which are great to do every day. We have even had messages from people that started doing our videos in Lockdown and have continued to this day. This makes us really happy to be making an positive impact on people’s lives – and health.

Or if you’d like a live or online session, please let us know and we’d be glad to come and dance with you all 🙂

We have recently added Ukrainian dance to our range of dance styles, as we felt it was an important one to celebrate a country that is going through unimaginable turmoil at the moment.

Also with lots of people coming to the UK from Ukraine, it’s nice to be able to offer a taste of Ukrainian culture through dance.

It’s such a fun and energetic dance style, so it will really get your legs moving! Great for all ages and abilities, we teach lots of traditional moves step by step, before putting them together into a dance routine.

Multicultural dance workshops

We taught a series of cultural workshop at a school in Kent. They chose Brazil, China and Ukraine as the countries they wanted to try for dance.

We used colourful scarves during the dance which the year 4 class loved using. See the pics below of our workshop with them.

Get in touch if you’d like to try Ukrainian dance for yourselves.

Celebrate the end of the year with a festive dance workshop for your school to enjoy.

You might be working on a festive assembly or performance and need a dance within it – we can help!

Or maybe your class has worked really hard and deserve a treat. Let us give them a super fun workshop (it can be in any style of dance if you don’t fancy a Christmasy theme)

Themes

We can do you a create dance around any theme. Here are some wintry ones which may be of interest:

• Christmas
• Christmas music
• Arctic animals
• Winter
• Presents
• The Snowman

Get in touch and let us know your ideas. Our cheeky dancing Elf’s would love to add some sparkle to your school as the days get colder…

We have taught a weekly day of dance for Smallwood Primary School in Tooting, London, for a few years. Seeing all the classes in the school on rotation, we teach dance styles to fit in with the topics they are learning about in class.

During lockdown in 2020 all our classes for them went online, which was a challenge at first. But the children were so adaptable and took to their online dance classes well from their own homes. We got introduced to a lot of pets!

When things eased and the children were allowed back to school (and the parents all breathe a sigh of relief) we continued to teach online for one more term.

International Day Dance Performance

The school wanted a dance put together for their International Day, with all the children in the school involved in one big, exciting performance.

We chose three continents to focus our dance on, India, South America and Africa.

The classes all learnt the same dance routine, which was made slightly simpler for the younger classes.

On the performance day, our Zest dance teacher came to the school to put the whole dance together, out on the playing field. It was so amazing to be back teaching in real life and quite emotional seeing all the children again.

We filmed each class performing their dance and then had it edited it together into an amazing dance film.

The finished dance looked fantastic and it’s such a good memory of what you can still achieve in difficult circumstances.

Music:
Aankh Marey – by Neha Kakkar
Samba De Janerio – by Bellini
Waka Waka – by Capetown

Diversity

To celebrate the diversity of your school, we can bring many different dances from all over the world. This can make your students feel included and proud of where they have come from.

For more info on how we can bring some International dances to your school for International Day or Week, take a look at our cultural workshops here.