10 years on & catching up with our Dance students
It has been 10 years this academic year since the first cohort of students to take Dance from Year 7 all the way through to GCSE left Fairfield and went out into the big wide world! We wanted to celebrate this by talking to some of our former students to see how they are getting on and how studying Dance and Drama has had a real impact on their lives. We hope to continue this through out the year – there have been some incredible achievements by this cohort (BBC Young Dancer, Young Associate at Sadler’s Wells) and we are so proud of them all and look forward to bringing you more in future newsletters.
We hope you enjoy the first instalment from these fabulous former GCSE Dance students and hope they will inspire you!
Tess Hodgkinson
Hey, wow 10 years has gone quickly!
I currently manage a supported living house for people who have learning difficulties so moved away from performing arts. However, I have always kept up with some form of art (up until covid as classes stopped and my job became stressful). I moved away from dance and into circus skills – pole, hoop and silks. Dance always helped with my creativeness and has stuck throughout my adult life.
Dance and drama helps you build confidence and allows you to have a chance to express your feelings through movement.
I always enjoyed doing something physical at school and found it fun. I struggled academically and it was a break from the intense desk lessons (I still have a recurring nightmare about sitting exams in school (but not about dance 😃). I really did enjoy the classes.
I continued to study drama at college and was attending private dance classes. Then I I studied at Bristol school of art where my final piece included dance and was about movement. Then I started circus skills along side working.
I think you need a variety of GCSE options and to move your body in the day! It will benefit your mental health massively and keep you fit!
Samantha Brooks
10 years 😱 ooh my goodness aha
I am currently a Health Care Assistant.
I feel that dance and drama has helped me in more ways then I was aware at during my school years. The confidence it brought me, the community and friendships that I made are for life.
Doing drama gave me a safe place to escape reality. Somewhere where I can explore the expression that comes with exploring behaviours of any character I would merge into.
But dance was always where my heart was! To get lost in the music, is a skill you’ll keep forever.
Although I didn’t continue my journey of dance and drama, we dance every day, when we feel sad, happy, bored or just for the fun of it! And having the ability to feel free enough to express myself in a healthy and fun way can help ground you and encourage others to partake too.
During lockdown, I didn’t realise how much keeping my body fit and active was important. Whilst the world stood still, I used old techniques, and routines to keep my mind and body alive. This isn’t just a bonus for your fitness but a real mood booster too.
I feel that all this has helped me with my Career choice as a Care Assistant, by giving me tools that I can offer to people that I support. It puts a smile on my face and in turn theirs, to help people that wouldn’t otherwise try something new, fun and liberating that they may not have experienced before. Our comfort zones are a blessing and a curse.
It’s not until we break out of social norms and follow our passions that we really experience joy.
Zach Hewlett-Walker
I currently own two companies working within the private security sector. Both companies focus on the use of creative approaches to already established industries with my BA in Creative Dance. This has helped me approach tasks in a different way utilising the creative space I was educated in.
GCSE Dance and BTEC performing arts gave me the skills to manage building a portfolio on my achievements to market myself as a driven individual who completes goals to the highest standard.
The benefits of such a creative subject allowed me to change the way things are done and bring a new spin to some already solid foundations. It has proven to work with the success of my businesses. I am my own boss and choose my own hours and live a relaxed and interesting life. I would recommend anybody to go down the creative route as it can open many doors and the limitations are few.
I have a lot of friends who started in performing arts and have since opened their own businesses or are climbing the employment ladder with their experience.
GCSE Dance and GCSE Drama have made me the person I am today.
Chanelle Bernard
As a previous performing arts student, I was very active doing dance as well as studying drama. Studying dance helped me to think outside of the box in regards to style and genre of dance – I was mainly into commercial/hip hop style dance but it made me explore contemporary dance.
I went into study A level dance at 6th form where I fell in love with Alvin Ailey’s style of dance and how the dancers used their physicality to express the oppression and history and how they just captivated everyone’s attention. I was leaning more towards studying drama after 6th form as dance helped give me the confidence and the key to explore physical theatre, but other dramatic techniques which eventually led into method type acting and theatre, both realistic and dramatic which would evoke an audience.
Without dance, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to perform and knowing how to draw in the audience when the stage lights came on. I wouldn’t have known the performance techniques and apply it to stage acting. I went to perform with the young company at the Bristol Old Vic and then did a years course there and went onto tour in Scotland.
But here’s the plot twist…in the end, I decided to study film production technology at uni because I found a new love for media and the cameras. I thought if I can be in front of a camera then surely I can be behind?
Overall, dance was used as escapism for me, it brought me friends and made me discover other cultures. But dancing at school did push me to be open and creative and try out other avenues of dance such as going to fitness dance classes and even yoga!
See here a photo of our students when they were with us a decade ago:
