Tag Archives: Abertillery Youth Dance Co

Winter dance faktry festival 2016

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winter dance faktry festival 2016

winter dance faktry festival 2016

Our twice yearly festival for dance will be held at The Met in Abertillery on November 12th 2016 at 7.30pm.  It’s an opportunity for children, young people and emerging professional dancers to perform and share their work to a packed audience which is supportive and full of enthusiastic friends and parents.

It’s a most special event which aims to promote dance in the community and provide dancers with a professionally produced showcase, giving the festival participants a taste for performance and choreography

 

My Life Ambition

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Jasmine with FFIN DANCE workshops

Jasmine with
FFIN DANCE workshops

Rehearsals are starting to get busy as the days get nearer for the Easter Dance Faktry Festival. I am attending four dance classes a week with the dance faktry which add up to 5 hours a week! But in the end it all pays off when you have nice clean piece. 
One piece in particular has a small humour element (AYDC – Abertillery Youth Dance Company). This dance has a mixture of technical dance and theatre dance.  Theatre dance is a style of contemporary we’ve haven’t experienced before so it’s a great opportunity for us. The prop we are using surprised me at first, we’re using shopping bags! We are using them in a mixture of ways. The music we are dancing to is a drum and bass rhythm.
Another one of the pieces performed in the show is to the music “Green Onions”, which was in the film “The Blues Brothers”. This piece is performed by the class Leapers and this time we’ve had a whole bunch of under fives join us.

Also, lots of our younger children are developing their skills and knowledge of dance and are coming up with great ideas for their creative work.

As the years go on, I hope to develop further as I experience more opportunities with FFIN DANCE.  One day, I will hopefully succeed in my lifetime ambition of actually becoming a professional dancer!

Jasmine aged 11 ♥

 

Awards Evening with SCARF Dance and AYDC

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Monday 10th December saw the presentation of awards to our young dancers who dance weekly with the FFIN DANCE dance faktry.  It was a lovely evening which started with a short class while the parents and friends had coffee and cakes (all home made and donated!)

SCARF Dance and Abertillery Youth Dance Co (AYDC) both performed pieces of work created for them by Sue Lewis of FFIN DANCE to the delighted parents and friends in the audience which was then followed by a presentation of ceritificates to the dancers for attendance, endeavour and commitment.

SCARF Dance and AYDC have been working in partnership with the dance faktry for five years and has gown and developed at a steady and consistent rate, with waiting lists for all classes and a new round of auditions for the youth company.

The community of Abertillery is exceptionally proud of the way in which the young people participate in our classes and clubs, and rightly so – they are an absolute joy to teach!

For further information please follow this link

 


Time To Reflect

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Usually in August, I can get a little time to reflect and think in terms of both where the company has been in the past year and where it is going to in the future year.  However August 2012 saw the company really take off in new directions following invitations to perform at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh and Tanz@Namedy in Germany.  As a result we were straight back into the studio to make my new work Missing Pages in September, and we haven’t stopped since!

I now have a little bit of breathing space to reflect before January.

I love the period of Advent before Christmas, but am ever mindful of the fact that Christmas time for some people is very painful having lost loved ones: I think particularly of the family of Keith Dykes, our Chairman of the Board, who passed away very suddenly this week.

The warmth of people at this time of year is a real incentive to assess the work that FFIN DANCE undertakes in the community and new projects are planned and waiting to go, funding permitting.  Next week we celebrate at the awards evening for SCARF Dance and Abertillery Youth Dance Company where our community dancers will be presented with certificates for endeavour, attendance and commitment.  I look forward to watching the youth dancers and children perform for their families and friends in an informal sharing, ending in a cuppa and cakes.  The community can be very proud of them.

A few weeks back, I looked back at a 5 year business plan that I wrote in 2007 and was amazed at what the company has achieved in that time.  Although I had the utmost faith that we would do what we set out to do, I never thought that we would surpass that by so much.

So a full circle has evolved: five years has passed since the Arts Council turned our grant application down and we have done it on our own! But never a person to burn my bridges, I am off for a meeting at the Arts Council of Wales tomorrow to see how things have changed in the funding strategy and to boast about the company tucked away in a small Welsh valleys town, who now have a world-wide following, over 517,666 hits on our website in 12 months and an audience that many larger companies would be very happy to have.  Wish me luck …

sue lewis

Packed House

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Laura Mumford Photography

Last Saturday was our 5th annual Winter Dance Faktry Festival held at our home base in The Met in Abertillery.

64 community dancers, 10 professional dancers, 2 photographers, 6 volunteers and 3 technicians brought together a showcase performance that ranged from professional dance pieces to works in progress that have been made during community projects over the past term.

We were joined by professional dance companies Ceyda Tanc Dance and Exim Dance, together with our youth groups from the community.

I am delighted to say that we played to a packed house, full not only of excited and supportive parents and friends but also the general public who wanted to come and share our work.  The comments and feedback that we have received have been overwhelming with many congratulations on our achievements.

The Festival has grown and developed over the years and each year sees us making new friends and links and truly is a great celebration of our work and commitment to providing opportunities for young dancers and choreographers to stage their work with professional guidance and support.

Easter Dance Faktry Festival 2013 will be our next venture, we look forward to seeing you all again

Please keep following our company progress via Twitter #ffin dance and join our Facebook pages

sue lewis

Partnerships

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As part of our continuing commitment to new dance in Wales, our education and outreach unit, the dance faktry, recently underwent a youth project with Taikabox.

Our senior youth dancers, Abertillery Youth Dance Company, worked with Tanja Raman of Taixabox, to make a piece of work to include in the show Beyond The Body.

The show was presented at The Met in Abertillery on November 20th 2012.  The young dancers opened the second half of the show with a piece of work created by Tanja, which was threaded into the show as a whole.

The 9 young dancers gained a lot from working with live musicians and were very excited to be performing in a professional dance show for the second time in just 4 days, as they had also performed a work created for them by FFIN DANCE director Sue Lewis just days before in the FFIN DANCE Winter Dance Faktry Festival

It is opportunities like this that stay with a young dancer for life, with your support, we can continue to develop new and emerging dance talent in our communities.

 

Please Support WDFF 2012

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Workshops with FFIN DANCE

We hope that you can support our Festival and show these young artists that they have a future in the arts.  You can support by attending the Festival on November 17th at The Met in Abertillery or by making a donation to our future work with young people

Links:
Supporting the Festival
The Met Box Office

Hard Work And Focus

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Photo Paul Trask

As a member of ‘The Move’, Blaenau Gwent Youth Dance Company, I am currently very busy preparing for the piece ‘Deeper’ that will be showcased Saturday in the annual Winter Dance Faktry Festival.

Myself and all other members of The Move have recently been undergoing consistent rehearsal periods in preparation for Saturday’s showcase, involving a fair amount of hard work, commitment, focus, effort and amendments.

This time of year is exceptionally busy but exciting for members of The Move, as each member is involved in other community youth dance classes and projects across the borough, including ‘New Ground’ community dance project, ‘Leapers’ community dance class and ‘ADYC’ Abertillery Youth Dance Company, Some of whom are also performing in the Winter Dance Faktry Festival.

This week rehearsal periods and preparation time has been increased, with the intention of creating an intensive rehearsal regime generating positive effect, a lot to rehearse with little time to do it. Although this could have the potential to be strenuous it is beneficial in every way and a vital way of improving our performance skills as young dancers, encouraging us to always strive for better, even if we believe that we are currently doing our best.  It would be great if you can come and support our work at the Festival.

Aimée Broad Aged 17

Winter Dance Faktry Festival

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Abertillery Youth Dance Company
Photo Paul Trask

Our next performance will be on Saturday 17th November 2012 at 7.30pm at The Met, Abertillery NP13 1AL

We will be showcasing our work in the community and will be presenting the work of 2 emerging professional companies:

Exim Dance (Plymouth)
Ceyda Tanc Dance (London)

Our company dancer Adam Murphy will be making a work for children in the Abertillery area, and our youth volunteer Olivia Davies will be making her choreographic debut making work with the children of Six Bells.

 

Ticket prices £8 and £6 (early bird prices £7 and £5 if purchased before the day of the show)

Box Office 01495 322510 (9am – 5pm week days)