It’s been a very busy final week of term, not least for our dance groups, who have taken part in Newport’s biggest Dance Festival. The Newport Schools’ Dance Festival was established over sixteen years ago and takes place annually, over four evenings. It was originally set up by Newport City Council’s P.E. Advisory Service, to showcase the fantastic dance and P.E. work, which takes place in Newport Schools, and also to give pupils the opportunity to perform on a professional stage.
Over the past sixteen years, the Dance Festival has continued to grow and last year, saw more than six hundred pupils, from over twenty-five of Newport’s Primary Schools, involved. Each year, teachers and pupils work extremely hard to come up with a range of stunning costumes and outstanding dance routines, resulting in four incredible evenings of entertainment for all.
St. Julian’s Primary School entered four dance groups in this year’s festival. Our Infant Creative Dance, Junior Creative Dance, Gymnastic Dance and Irish Dance Groups all took part and performed four absolutely outstanding routines! Mrs Cooke, Miss Nelson, Miss Butcher, Miss Browne and all the children have worked extremely hard to develop their routines and have spent many break-times, lunch-times and after-school sessions, practising.
Monday was launch of the Newport Schools’ Dance Festival, with each of the schools performing their routines to each other, in the day time at the Riverfront Arts Centre. The St. Julian’s Primary dance groups then performed on the Thursday evening. The evening was a sell-out and was also attended by Jessica Morden MP, Cllr. Deborah Davies NCC, Cllr. Bob Poole NCC and Mr Steve Davies from the Education Achievement Service (EAS).
As well as performing at in the Riverfront, the children also performed their routines in a school assembly and also at the Beaufort Centre. We are so proud of all the incredibly talented children who took part. It’s a huge achievement to perform on a professional stage, in front of almost five-hundred people and our children performed brilliantly!
You can read the South-Wales Argus article here.
A big ‘thank you’ to Mrs Cooke all of the teachers who were involved in this year’s Dance Festival. Photograph and DVD orders will be available soon!
You can watch our performances, below…
