At the beginning of September last year, Matravers Dance Department submitted a video that explained why they deserved to be a part of the amazing ‘Rambert Elements’ opportunity.
Rambert Elements is a project hosted by the prestigious Rambert Dance Company, which invited 36 six schools and colleges from across the country to work with three of its resident choreographers.
It was a great honour that Matravers School was picked to work with the company’s artistic director Mark Baldwin OBE. The school was then provided with a weekend workshop at Rambert studios for dance teachers working on the project, and given a toolkit of ideas to take back to school to get working on a piece.
Matravers piece, entitled ‘Captivated by Sound’ used students from year 7 to year 13. The school’s older students worked as choreographers, creating movement that they then taught to the rest of the dancers to create a stunning 11 minute piece.
On Thursday 17th March, 20 Matravers Dance students performed at the TR2 centre in Plymouth, dancing against five other schools involved in the project.
Angela Honeywell from Matravers said, “The quality of the performance from our dancers was breath-taking and each student performed beautifully, showing real maturity and professionalism throughout the day.
“This really is a huge achievement for the school and probably one of the biggest dance events a secondary school could have had the opportunity to take part in.
“Creative practice is a core value in our teaching throughout the curriculum and we saw this as a way of extending not only our students knowledge of choreography but also offering our students the opportunity to dance in a professional theatre to an audience of industry professionals.”
Link to info on the project: www.rambert.org.uk/join-in/schools-colleges/elements
