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Zest Christmas Dance Showreel

Enjoy our Christmas dance showreel for a fun example of our Christmas dance workshops in a grand performance!

We were booked at a primary school in South London for 4 weeks to run Christmas dance workshops for all of their classes. They had a performance coming up with a festive ‘Top of The Pop’s theme!

We taught years 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 for their weekly dance lessons. We chose fun Christmas themed songs for each class.

They all worked so hard and we think they did an amazing end performance.

We hope you enjoy watching our Christmas dance showreel!

Take a look at our Christmas dance workshops page for more info on what we can bring to your school.

Contact Us

Get in touch if you’d like a Christmas dance workshop – and we can sprinkle some festive magic at your school….



Video

Check out our 7 dance teachers in action below!

https://youtube.com/shorts/v2s3CGJq6lA?si=5m-mgu2rlXSi5qrO

International Day Dance Workshops

We were booked for a secondary School in Carshalton in Surrey to provide some International Day dance workshops for their students.

They wanted cultural dance styles offering a broad range from across the globe. So we offered a varied mix for everyone to try.

It was the last day of term so excitement was in the air as our seven dance teachers arrived for our morning of workshops.

It was for St Philomena’s High School, and we taught a mix of all year groups in the school.

Each workshop lasted 50min and the girls rotated around us so that they could try several workshops during the morning.

Dressing up

All of their students had come wearing cultural dress from their background or heritage, which was wonderful to see. It got everyone talking about their family backgrounds and was lovely to see how much effort they had made and how proud it made them feel.

Dance styles we taught

Bhangra – India

Belly Dance – Turkey

Flamenco – Spain

Haka – New Zealand

Fan dance – China

Samba – Brazil

Mexican hat dance

Dance Teachers

It was great having so many of our talented dance teachers there on the same day, inspring and challenging the girls.

The school wanted 7 teachers as they had the whole school taking part, so they needed loads of workshops. But usually we provide one teacher at schools who teach a range of cultural dances in workshops throughout the day.

Contact Us

Get in touch if you’d like an International Day workshop (you don’t have to book all 7 teachers!



 

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!

Egypt Day
Costumes and props for Egypt Day

 

 

 



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 🙂

Meadway Care Home Dance India themed day for care homes



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.

Ukrainian dance

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…


Teachers-Pic-smaller-1280x1079.jpg

This year in the Summer of 2022 the country marked the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee with loads of fun events.

We were invited to Livingstone Primary School in Barnet to take part in their Queen’s Jubilee Celebration, with a fantastic themed day.

They wanted lots of dance workshops based on countries in the Queen’s commonwealth, so they chose the following.

Dance Styles:

India – Bollywood dance

Australasia – A dance based on The Haka

England – English Country Dance

Caribbean – Soca dancing

South Africa – South African dance

We provided five dance teachers to run lots of workshops throughout the day, with all the classes in the school. They had some workshops that lasted longer, for the groups that would be performing the dances at the end of the day.

Queen’s Jubilee Celebration Performance

For the performance, the parents were invited to come and watch. They gathered in the sports area outside in the lovely sunshine and were excited to watch the school’s special Queen’s Jubilee Celebration.

All the classes were fantastic performing, as they had only had 50mins to put their dances together which isn’t long at all, and the crowd were cheering them along!

Zest Teacher’s Solos

Our Zest teachers also did a performance of their dance styles, which we feel is great for the children to see professional dancers perform to a high level. It was really heart-warming to watch their impressed faces as they watched our teachers perform. I hope they felt inspired to keep dancing themselves.

There was even a VIP guest who joined in with the dance… Her Royal Highness herself made an appearance (but they looked a lot like the year 4 male teacher…) It was hilarious!

It was a fantastic day, and such a joy to be involved with Livingstone School’s Queen’s Jubilee Celebrations.



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.



Celebrate the 2022 Platinum Jubilee with one of our Queen’s Jubilee workshops!
There are lots of events and activities across the UK leading up to the Jubilee in June 2022. So why not book a workshop for your school and celebrate this important moment in history.

What is a Platinum Jubilee?

This year The Queen becomes the first monarch to celebrate seventy years of service. This is known as a Platinum Jubilee.
She became the Monarch when she was 25years old in 1952.
Throughout the year, The Queen and members of the Royal Family will be travelling around the UK. They will be visiting different communities to mark this important occasion.

Dance Workshops

There are different dance workshops we can do linking to the Jubilee theme:
It’s up to you which workshop theme you’d like to go for. Or we can do a mix of themes for different classes if you want.
These dance workshops can be tailored for KS1, or KS2 classes to make them an appropriate level for the different ages and abilities.

The workshops will follow this format:

  • Brief introduction into the Queen’s Jubilee and it’s history
  • Dance warm up
  • Teaching a dance routine
  • The children may have time to work on and add on a bit of their choreography
  • Cool down and stretch

Please get in touch if you’d like to find out more, or book one of our Queen’s Jubilee workshops in.

For more info on what’s happening around the UK, check out the official Jubilee website here.