Yesterday I ran a Sleeping Beauty workshop for children between
the ages of 4 and 6 with The Ballet Pod, in a children’s bookshop in Shrewsbury.
First of all we stood in the window of the bookshop in costume. I was dancing
Princess Aurora, Michael Prince Florimund and Clare The Evil Fairy Carabosse. We stood
very still occasionally changing our positions for half an hour! Then we went
into a special woodland room that the bookshop has, with magical wall paper and
fake grass on the floor to give our workshop. First, we read them the story of
The Sleeping Beauty, then we taught the children two fairies dances, mime from
the prologue, an improvisation with a rose to the music of the Rose Adagio and
a finale. Then they performed it all for their parents! It was interesting to
see how excited they all became when their families came in to watch and
actually, they remained very concentrated. Often, I notice that children can
forget what they have learned when they are being watched by an audience but
this was not the case for these children! Perhaps the magic of the story had
them entranced! In an hour they learned a great deal and performed very well!
The audience of loving parents was warm and I also enjoyed dancing for them, even
though pointe work on the grass was slightly challenging!
The other challenge was that one child came late about half
way through. Obviously, initially she did not really feel a part of the group
so she did not want to join in. We tried to welcome her and invite her in but
she was very shy. Eventually after eating a ginger bread with the other
children, she joined in for the performance and did admirably! It was lovely to
see that the audience seemed to help her to join the group rather than
intimidate her.
I have included some photographs from the event. All parents
signed consent forms for their child to be photographed for our publicity purposes.
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