Two of our students, Ava Miller from Year 8 and Alba del Amo Stephens, from Year 10, has tasted golden success in the World Dance Championships. Here are their stories.
Ava:
The Dance World Cup is the biggest dance competition on the planet. My dance school qualified to represent Team England and, at the end of June, myself and my team travelled to Braga in Portugal to compete against over fifty other countries. We had such a brilliant time dancing with children from all around the world.
Our tap routine won gold and we were crowned World Champions on Day 2. We had two Show Dances in the same category and there were over twenty dancers up against us. We won a bronze with our first dance and our second dance won us gold with 97.7 out of 100. We were then invited to perform our dance again in the Gala. These are the highest scoring dances competing to become overall winners of our section. We couldn’t believe it when we won the Gala Trophy! My final dance was a comtemporary dance which also won silver.
It was an amazing opportunity for our team and I was honoured to represent my country with my dance school. Thank you everyone for the amazing support we receieved.
Alba:
This year our dance school got through to do the Dance World Cup in Braga, Portugal – such a beautiful city. This was my first time and there were over 65 countries and 7500 children competing, so I was very excited.
I was in four dances: Shimbleshanks, which came first in the tap section; 76 Trombones which came sixth; Bombai which came third in the Show Dance and Cruella, which came first out of twenty-seven other dances. That meant it got through to the Gala which was held in a beautiful theatre. It felt like such an honour just to perform there. After we had danced, we went back on stage for the results. We found out that we had come first out of every Showdance in the world – incredible!
Overall, it was a brilliant experience – all the rehearsals and competitions towards it were worth it.
Ava’s haul of medals