Tag Archives: Easter Dance Faktry Festival

Easter dance faktry festival 2020 – postponed

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Easter dance faktry festival 2019 Image Paul Trask

Easter dance faktry festival
2019
Image Paul Trask

This year our Easter dance faktry festival will be held on Saturday April 18th at 7pm.
In addition to a performance by our professional dancers, we will be sharing the work of our community dance and musical theatre classes with you.
Our resident performing arts academy Lybec Arts will also be performing as will local community group Toppers School of Dance & Drama.
Tickets are out now in our weekly classes and also by calling in person at our Café @ The Beaufort between 10-2pm

Here’s a look at some images from the edff 2019 by Paul Trask

_PRT0827-2-4 _PRT0937-2-44 _PRT0716-Edit-23 _PRT0706-19 _PRT0547-30 _PRT0519-19 _PRT0503-11 _PRT0479-1 _PRT0171-2-3 _PRT0089-41

Another notch on the success post

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FFIN DANCE Image Paul Trask

FFIN DANCE
Image Paul Trask

So, how do you measure success?  A variety of ways I rather imagine, but in the case of our Easter Intensives and Easter Dance Faktry Festival, we like to think that it’s quality performances and happy people.

We recently spent time in the studio with 3 amazing people: Sarah Lee Pryke (professional dancer), Louis Norman (dance graduate) and Jasmine Morgan (youth dancer and trainee) as part of the Easter Intensives where our company dancers taught some of my new work True to our guests.  The end result was performed in the festival in front of a packed and appreciative house at our home theatre, The Met in Abertillery.  In addition to our professional guests, we had over 60 children and young people performing and sharing their new work which they have been rehearsing since Christmas.  I’ve said it before, and will doubtless say it many more times, it’s such a huge privilege to share in work created by these young people and to treat them to a platform where the work is staged and managed by our professional technical team.

So next up is another week in the studio with myself and the FFIN company dancers finalising our work for our new t e n Tour 2016.  If you would like to do professional company class with us, drop us a text 07854 910926 or e mail info@ffindance.co.uk

sue lewis

Easter Intensives 2016

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Image Paul Trask

Image Paul Trask

We’d like to invite you to apply for our professional development Easter Intensives 2016

The intensive will run on April 4th/5th and 6th 2016 at our home base, The Met in Abertillery,
Wales UK

The course is aimed at professional dancers, or those in professional dance training at undergraduate level, and will concentrate on dance technique and performance skills.

You will be taking professional class each morning, and learning a piece of the company’s current repertoire. This extract will be performed to a public audience in the theatre on the Wednesday evening.

How to apply
Please send your current CV and video link to:
info@ffindance.co.uk
by Friday February 26th 2016

The course fee is £50

Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you would like more information 07854 910926

Full time for Wales

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Fascination Image Paul Trask

Fascination
Image Paul Trask

Well our last 2 weeks of Welsh studio time have ended, and now we see the dancers moving to London to spend time with Gary Lambert for the next three weeks.  Gary and the dancers will be making his new work for our Power Of 3 Tour, whilst I will stay in Wales working with the dance faktry ready for our Easter Faktry Festival 2015

The six weeks that we have spent making d-cay and Fascination have been a real pleasure; I know now why I gave up working full time as a lecturer, with a steady wage and paid holidays to start a professional dance company from scratch.

You may have seen the excellent article that Rachel Mainwaring wrote me about in last weeks Western Mail describing my work in the community and how FFIN DANCE started out. Je ne regrette rien: it’s amazing having the freedom to create work, worth every sleepless night and panic about how to pay the mortgage, I’d recommend it to anyone.  I will be live on air on Radio Wales tomorrow evening at 6.30pm if you’d like to listen in, I’ll be talking about creativity.  It’s such a vital and important part of our being to create, so many people I have worked with over the years have said that creating in some way has been an escape, a day dream, a delicious new recipe and even a glowing work of art – but it’s there in us all, we just sometimes need someone to show us the way.

So as we come closer to our tour, we hope that you’ll join us for one or some of our performances.  Please keep posted for some more blogs from our London based lot during the coming weeks.

sue lewis

 

Busy bees

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_PRT7600And so to a tiny lul in the FFIN DANCE calendar.
The Easter dance faktry festival and intensives (April 24th/25th) were amongst our most successful in terms of participation, audience figures and quality since we started these activities back in 2008.  Lots of happy dancers young and older and happy parents and friends, it was a great event.

Then on to London.  On Tuesday I travelled up to Trinity Laban to join Megan and Catrin who have been working with Gary Lambert on a new duet for our Still Standing Tour.  The work ‘Being’ was being shown as a private sharing in a low-key, informal setting which was truly beautiful.  Gary invited the onlookers to enter the space and move around to watch the dancers from all angles and to get up close and personal.  Some great feedback and also an invite to show the work at a gallery in the future.  We will be showing the duet in our home theatre, The Met on May 15th and other venues on the tour.

IMG_3706 IMG_3715 IMG_3700

 

 

 

 

This year saw our first group of students entered for A Level Dance through our ffin dance faktry.  They had their practical moderation on Thursday and all did really well, we are hoping for some excellent results, just the written exam now in June, so fingers crossed for them.

still standing poster

 

A few days catching up in the office now awaits after a day off to recharge my batteries, I very much hope to see you at one of the tour venues.

Please follow our blogs as we journey and do keep in touch

sue lewis

 

The madness kicking in ..

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The Move Image Paul Trask

The Move
Image Paul Trask

Once again the Ffin Dance Faktry Festival is fast approaching and we have all been working tirelessly preparing for not only the 2014 Easter Dance Faktry Festival but also the A-Level Dance qualification with the FFIN DANCE Outreach and Education programme.

This year the festival has seemed to sneak up on us and there is only a matter of days until the madness of festival week kicks in. Members of all the County Dance groups have been rehearsing for the show, especially both the Blaenau Gwent County Youth Dance Companies who will be performing their new work at the festival this year. At Move (senior county company) we have had a chance to prepare our new work “Perseid” at a number of events that FFIN DANCE has been invited to show their work at this season  This has been a great opportunity for the other youth dancers and myself to really show what youth dancers are capable of achieving.

This year’s show is destined to be the most successful yet and I am very excited to be able to perform once again in one of the local theatres in the county. This year’s faktry festival is especially exciting for me as the senior dancer of The Move as we will be working alongside FFIN DANCE company dancers Catrin and Megan at the Easter Dance Faktry Intensives which is a high-energy series of technical master classes. This once again, has been one of the busiest times of the calendar for The Move and for the Faktry. Let’s hope we survive the week !!

Louis Norman, Senior Dancer The Move

Cuppa anyone?

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BellaIsabella has been going to the ffin dance faktry since September. It’s already provided me with a proud parent moment at the Winter Dance Faktry Festival and I’m preparing for another when I watch her at the Easter one!

At the moment, she goes once a week on a Monday – but for Isabella, it seems to start on a Tuesday morning asking me “Dancing tonight?” and then extending her arms and lifting one leg for a warm up. This goes on every day until Monday when she finally gets to see Sue, the volunteers and other children (and have her infamous “cuppa” before she starts) She absolutely loves going and she likes to show me everything that Sue teaches her!

I have to be honest, I absolutely love watching her twirl and leap and encourage all her fluttery (and not so fluttery!) movements. I am so glad that I have found this gem of a class in Abertillery for my daughter. It has been a joy to watch her confidence grow and make more friends. Long may her desire to dance continue and her tea consumption to increase!

Katy Price, Abertillery

Pleased as punch

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Earl of WessexThe company opened the Still Standing season on Tuesday at Coleg Y Cymoedd, Nantgarw in Cardiff, and the show met and exceeded all of my expectations with a marvellous performance and excellent audience.

Opening nights are notoriously edgy and can very often veer off into unchartered waters, but this one was a cracker!
The venue is one which we visited last season, and despite not being a traditional theatre setting, really shows contemporary dance very well in terms of shape and pattern.  It’s up close and very personal which works well with our rep this season; particularly well I think with Catrin Lewis’s ‘Stand Up Straight’, a piece which explores the physicality of Vertigo.
We’ve spent a lot of time in the studio this season perfecting timing for ensemble work, and it has paid off – ‘Synapsequence’ was superb.  Created by Gary Lambert in 2012 for the company, there are a number of very tricky double duets which require precision and accuracy as well as superior technique, so the dancers are really on edge.  Pleased to say they rose to the occasion.

My new work, ‘Fractal’, was aired for the first time on opening night, it actually opened the show being the first piece on the bill.  It relies heavily on musicality and the dancer’s technical ability to carry it through or it can look a bit wan.  The lighting that Mark Read and I created is very simple and grows and decays with the musical episodes, giving the audience a sense of regeneration and development interspersed with resting periods.
Pleased to say that the FFIN A Level students noticed this without prompting!

So première over and Megan and Catrin will be continuing their London sessions with Gary who is making a new duet for first viewing in May 2014
Effie and Mike working on some other projects and I am Wales based running the dance faktry and our youth volunteers project New Ground.  Four of our senior youth dancers with the dance faktry will be performing my work for the Earl of Wessex this coming Monday at the dedication service of Diamond Jubilee Square at St Michael’s Church Abertillery, a real honour for us all.
Next up is Easter Intensives and the Easter Dance Faktry Festival in April, then back on the road again.

Never a dull moment, hope you can catch us at a venue near you very soon …

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 ♥

 

Easter Intensives Deadline Approaching

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FFIN DANCE Winter Dance Faktry Festival 2012 Photo Paul Trask

FFIN DANCE Winter Dance Faktry Festival 2012
Photo Paul Trask

The date for all applications of our professional development course for dancers is Saturday 9th March 2013.  We require you to send a show reel or hyperlinks of you performing and your CV.

FFIN DANCE
info@ffindance.co.uk