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BBC Young Dancer Competition


drdance

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There were 12 dancers in the ballet second round and 20 in the contemporary. The five who go through to each category final will be told next week ( according to the man from the Beeb who introduced both sessions). The programmes only listed the names of the dancers with no other details. There were plenty of candidates from vocational schools though.

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Booking is now open for the category finals, at the Riverfront, Newport in South Wales. Dates are:

Thursday 19 March - CONTEMPORARY FINAL

Friday 20 March - HIP HOP FINAL

Saturday 21 March - SOUTH ASIAN FINAL

Sunday 22 March - BALLET FINAL

Then there's the overall final at Sadler's Wells on 9th May (currently sold out).

 

More on the BBC website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p023t1xz

 

Yaffa

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Just to let anyone know who may be interested. The grand final on 9 May now has tickets available - very reasonable prices too I think. I thought I was too late, but I guess they have released some more tickets. I am now the happy owner of tickets!!

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I think it might depend on where you live as to whether or not you think it's niche or not. I'm in an ethnically very diverse area, and South Asian dance doesn't seem particularly niche to me, certainly no more than hip hop, which might be one of the more common dance forms performed by youngsters. In fact,  DD's first dance experience as a small child at nursery was being taken to a South Asian dance workshop! Even the Royal Opera House next month are showing the South Asian dance-trained choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh's version of Bayadere.

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Maybe it just helps show the diversity of dance in the UK and perhaps they have chosen genres where they might expect less overlap of dancers taking part.  I'm sure many of the contemporary if not all have also done ballet and I bet you would be targeting a similar pool of dancers if other categories were tap, modern or jazz as they tend to be studied alongside.  Having hip hop and south Asian in the mix opens the competition up to a much wider range of people.  Hip hop is a big dance scene but I think if you were to google south Asian dance companies in the uk you would find that there are loads of them and plenty of classes and workshops on offer.  As Lildancer said the CAT scheme in Birmingham has a South Asian dance strand and ISTD also offers a syllabus in the style also.

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I agree with 2dancersmum that having a South Asian dance category will probably bring in another group of dancers who would not be represented in the other categories (although there must be some who do other dance genres as well). It's a great idea.

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Ah well Kathak is a well known Indian dance form from Northern India and is a classical form.

 

I studied a couple of classical Indian Dance styles while living in London and when I had given up ballet(for the second time)

This was at Jackson's Lane in North London and the Kathak form was with Alpana Sengupta. It is supposed to be the origin of Flamenco. Lots of foot stamping.....but with bare feet.

 

I also did some Odisi .....doesn't look right spelling!......from Southern India a much slower and more use of the face etc.....fascinating

 

It's just I don't recognise "South Asian Dance" .....as a style I mean.

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My only experience of this type of dance is watching some performances when I was traveling in India and I was very impressed. I can imagine it takes a lot of training and dedication to perfect. I think it's good that a dance form that is a bit less well known is getting included alongside the genres that typically get more exposure. 

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Here is some Kathak and even though some years ago lovely to see Alpana still dancing. She was amazing back in the late 80's when I was working with her. I believe she has now written a book about it.

 

 

The Odissi style from the South was more based on temple dancing where all the hand movements and facial movements have great religious significance in reference to their stories etc.

 

The other main style is Bharatanatyam more similar to Odissi. These styles were originally linked to the Hindu religion.

 

Kathak from the North has its origins in Islam more.

 

All these styles are great to do and great to watch and if this South Asian Dance is based on these styles it will be a very interesting evening indeed!!

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Thank you very much for sharing these, Lin.  It is really interesting to see.  Also if anyone has seen Jeyasingh's (glorious) work, it is fascinating to see the cross-pollination of stylistic and technical elements.

 

Slightly off dance, but DH has worked with a youth orchestra of South Asian instrumentalists for a number of years now and we know that the levels of skill and hard work in the young people, the worries about competition and being assessed out, the parental involvement and concern, are all things we would be very familiar with!

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