Dear STUDIO family

As an optional addition to STUDIO classes, our students can prepare various routines to enter into Dance Festivals. These provide a really enjoyable and rewarding performance opportunity, students will not only learn about how the creative process works from first inspirations through to a polished stage ready routine, but also experience wonderful improvement in their technique, and sense of performance. With costume, props, stage makeup and exciting choreography, festival will promise to be an absolute highlight for your young dance enthusiast.

Festival is fantastic and festival is most definitely lots of fun, but it is also a commitment in terms of your time and dedication and the various costs needed to bring everything together. Please have a good thorough read through the following information and advice before signing up for all the excitement.

Thank you

Miss Emilie L.I.S.T

Miss Emilie THE STUDIO

Festival Season 20/21

Photograph taken from Weymouth Dance Festival

2019

“Peter Rabbit”

Under 10’s Character Ballet

Featuring the bunnies with Mr.McGreggor.

Lets Create!

Welcome to Festival, we have two paths of involvement, you can choose either or both.

1: SDTQ: Solos, Duets, Trios, & Quartet routines in a variety of genres.

Ballet Modern Tap

Contemporary Lyrical Musical Theatre

Greek Character National

Choose your favourite dance genre and decide if you would like to go solo or join up with other students to create a duet, trio or quartet. We will then team you up with one of our teachers to start rehearsing! STUDIO time is booked via our website with availability throughout the year, the team will be able to guide you through every step of the way to help get you stage ready.

2: SPC: Our STUDIO Performance Company is a pre arranged rehearsal package casting students suitably into our range of group routines. The quantity of routines develops steadily at each level. Wings & Wands / Introduction Level Dance: One routine as standard

Junior 1 / Junior 2: Two routines as standard

Junior 3 / Junior 4: Three routines as standard

Seniors / Premiers: Four routines as standard SPC kick starts with a Summer Intensive during the summer holidays, thereafter you will need to keep Sundays plus a few of other after school days free up until October half term for ongoing rehearsals.

SPC PLUS is designed for our students who would like to be involved in more than their standard number of routines. Each season our creative team prepare between 20 and 30 STUDIO Performance Company dances…..just let us know how many PLUS routines to cast you in! (Please note that each SPC PLUS routine will incur additional rehearsal costs but at a reduced price.)

Our STUDIO festival season

The first and main festival of our season is: Weymouth Dance Festival taking place in October half term. New SDTQ routines will always commence at Weymouth, and rehearsals for these must be underway by June 1st in order to be entered for the current season. Once a routine has

competed at Weymouth, you can then continue it on at as many consecutive festivals as you wish.

1. Weymouth - October half term 2. Exeter - February half term 3. Torbay - Easter holidays (SDTQ only) 4. Cheltenham Regional Semi Finals - May half term / Bournemouth 5. Mid Somerset - Summer Holidays (SDTQ only)

Who can take part?

Festival is open to all of our students aged 3-21 (taken on September 1st 2020). Where applicable, we ask that our students please prioritise their current I.S.T.D dance examinations

studied in classes before adding festival to their schedules. The exam experience will not only greatly enhance the student’s technical and artistic ability which is very beneficial for the stage, but unlike festival, will provide accredited qualifications which can be used for further study post school, (exams are not applicable to Wings & Wands, Introduction Level Dance, TRIX, Urban and STUDIO BROS). STDQ students will need to be training with us in the genre that they wish to prepare a routine for. STUDIO Theatre students may prepare Modern, Tap and Musical Theatre pieces, and STUDIO Classical Ballet students: Ballet and National. Some genres, for example Contemporary, Lyrical, and Greek cross over between Theatre and Classical, the team will be able to guide you if you are uncertain. During your rehearsal time, your teacher will be predominantly setting choreography ready for the stage and will rely on students being equip with their skills already gained from their regular classes. If students would like to join SPC but are not training in a certain genre, this is where clever casting comes in, each group is always cast using the company’s best strengths. The important thing for us is that everyone can be included.

Ingredients for our perfect festival recipe

Before getting started, its good to know exactly what is needed and what sort of work goes into creating each and every one of our festival routines.

• Some inspired ideas • Good planning and preparation (expect a few emails and to do lists!) • Plenty of practice both at THE STUDIO and home • Commitment and good attendance • Suitable music choices • Skilfully edited tracks • Beautiful and suitable costumes • Possibly some props • Correct hair styling • Stage makeup • The right shoes, undergarments and accessories • Forward planning for your available time and budget • Plenty of family support and encouragement • Teamwork… even when competing against one another, we stick together…. kindness, helpfulness and pride at all times all the way.

Photograph taken from Weymouth Dance Festival 2019

Mia and Erin’s Tap Duet

“Now you know what its all about, please check out the finer details”

SDTQ rehearsals

You can book your rehearsal time on THE STUDIO website: https://www.thestudiodorset.com/product-category/studio-hire/. Each sessions is 30 minutes long and covers the cost of using THE

STUDIO facility. Once your teacher has been allocated to you, they will get in touch to explain how they would like to work with you, things like how many sessions to book, how best to keep in contact, their payment and cancellation policy, and what to bring along to rehearsals etc. Please note that private appointments are closed to parents and spectators to allow student and teacher the best possible, productive working environment, parents will be invited to watch the final few minutes to take any notes or recordings to help with home practice. Once your teacher feels you are at the point where your routine is ready and needs only regular run throughs to keep things maintained and building in strength, you will have the option to join a SDTQ study group with other students who are at a similar stage with their routine. Your teacher will then get in touch closer to the competition to do a final spruce and polish.

The life of a routine

Festival for us is pretty popular, we have lots of students wanting to learn lots of things and, its of course important to be able to accommodate the time everybody needs and keep standards high for our school’s reputation. With this at the forefront, each of our routines have a 2 year

minimum replacement lifetime per genre, this will not only enable us to manage our workload, but also give the student the chance to fully strengthen and develop their routine to its potential while keeping an eye on the cost for you. This is only the minimum lifetime for a routine, depending on the student and if the style and theme is still age appropriate, we would recommend keeping routines for slightly longer if possible. Your teacher will be able to develop an existing routine to match your progressing ability.

Exclusive but inclusive

Students need to be learning their dance and theatre skills with us in order to join us for festival, this is the exclusive bit, but, we are also very inclusive, and this is a rare thing for a dance and theatre school. We of course need to asses suitability and utilise our student’s strengths, but

festival at THE STUDIO is fundamentally open to any of our active students who are prepared for a touch of hard work. From as tiny as Wings & Wand through to our experienced Premiers, we welcome you all.

Photograph taken from Weymouth Dance Festival 2019

“Spoonful Of Sugar”

Under 10’s Classical Ballet

Music

Music choice and also a good quality edit is really important, music needs to be age appropriate, suitable for the student, and the correct length according to the rules. Working with our students every week, we get the chance to understand their personality and their

strengths, and together with our training and experience will be able to select a great routine for them. Music editing is one of the most time consuming elements of the creation process, to get it right can sometimes take hours, so please note that any new music will incur an editing cost, this fee will be shared between the student for use until the routine is retired, and THE STUDIO for future use in THE STUDIO library once the student has finished using the routine. Music used from THE STUDIO library is free of charge and we have hundreds of fantastic pieces for our students to enjoy using. In addition to choosing and if necessarily editing our music, quite a bit more goes on to get it ready for the competition. We will compose playlists and shared files so that teachers and families have easy access, each track will then be put onto two disks to provide your master and backup copies to compete with. This needs to be correctly labelled with your personal competitor information and checked on two separate devices to make absolutely sure that your performance goes smoothly, nothing can throw a performer more than faulty music. Groups don’t need to worry about music, all the arrangements come within your SPC package. For continuity in quality and ease of organisation, all music arrangements fall under the responsibility of THE STUDIO.

Costume

Similar to the right music arrangements, costuming also plays a very important role in the overall presentation of a routine. Again it needs to be suitable for the style of the dance, age appropriate, but also a little special to make students feel confident on the stage. From

our collective years of experience in putting performers onto the stage, we have learnt what goes down well with the judges, what works and what doesn’t, and what will make our students really stand out from the line up. We have a wonderful STUDIO wardrobe full of variety and vibrancy for our students to access for their festival routines, our team will work together to coordinate the perfect outfit to bring your routine to life. For continuity in quality and ease of organisation, all costume arrangements fall under the responsibility of THE STUDIO.

Being stage ready

The festival experience is a fabulous confidence booster for those involved, but, if not prepared properly can have an opposite effect. As teachers and parents we have a responsibility to

protect the students against this so, If either Miss Emilie or your teacher/choreography has concerns about a routine being ready in time for performance, its not a worry by any means, we would simply discuss getting in some additional practice or postponing to a forthcoming festival. First and foremost, we want to keep everything enjoyable and stress free for everyone. We have a final start date of June 1st for all routines entering in the current season, any routines started beyond this will roll over to the following season in order to give them the required preparation time. For the start of each festival season, we book a local theatre venue to give the students some valuable rehearsal time on a proper large stage and in front of a supportive audience (all of you!) They will get to experience what it will be like on the day both back stage and on stage, and get a feel for using wings and making smooth entrances and exits. Be sure to clear your diary for this and invite all of your friends and family to come and enjoy the work of our talented young performers.

Having humility

Its lovely to win, who doesn’t like the feeling that winning gives you? Be it as competitor, a parent, or a teacher, us human beings have an in built desire to succeed, which is both normal and healthy. However, if an experience makes you more confident, teaches you a new skill, improves your ability, makes you some new friends, lays you some happy lifelong memories but doesn’t

necessarily get you a medal?….. Then we think its most definitely a worth while experience. Festival is fundamentally a competition but please remember that there is a more colourful picture to consider, the creative process for a festival entry is months and months of learning and improving, whereas the presentation of all that hard work is albeit fantastic, but just minutes of stage time. And the outcome? Well its often in the hands of the gods, when all is said and done the adjudicator is only one opinion, yes a very knowledgable one, but simply, one single personal choice made at that moment in time. Unlike examinations where a strict marking structure is there to follow, adjudicators simply pick their favourite performance, a different judge on a different day might pick an entirely different 1st, 2nd, and 3rd line up. So, as well as the experience of getting prepared for the stage, we like our students to learn about humility and being able to cope healthily with both ends of the competitive spectrum, and understand the true value of what winning is.

Top tips

Time is forever too short in our busy lifestyles so our top guidance for SDTQ’s is to definitely go for quality over quantity, two well prepared entries will be far more rewarding for you than several less rehearsed ones. We welcome students to have an extensive repertoire, but ask

families to make sure they can plan for the time and also the cost required to get everything right and ready. Try and plan for your SDTQ sessions to run regularly to keep continuity in learning and make progress quicker, and also get the most out of your STDQ sessions by practicing lots at home, this will reduce the amount of sessions you need to book with your teacher. A device for filming your routines will be invaluable, iPods/tablets etc make great gifts for festival students of any age and help them to remember their routine and track their progress. Keep a notes: if you record each correction that you are given and keep crossing them off, your routine will end up pretty perfect! If your planning to team up with other students for duets/trios/quarts, its worth having a chat with the other families first to see if your schedules are compatible, sometimes trying to arrange rehearsal time can be problematic if everyone has lots of different commitments. For SPC, be careful not to book your summer holiday towards the end of the school holidays when our intensive rehearsals fire up.

SPC Picnic……

Something new for this year! The summer holidays can be a long stretch of time away from your STUDIO buddies so, the day before we start SPC rehearsals, we will plan a get together picnic at

THE STUDIO to give us a chance to regroup and catch up. This won’t be absolutely essential for cast members to attend, but lovely if they can. SPC cast lists and various other information will also be available on this day, don’t forget lunch and a picnic blanket!

And finally……

The last thing to tell you about is the very prestigious “All England” Dance Festival. This is a biannual event which we are extremely proud to have attended numerous times, its the

next level of competition for dances which have scored high enough for semi finals. We’ve never quite made it to the All England finals in London, this is exceptionally tough, but

anything is possible with a little ‘faith trust and pixie dust’.

Photograph taken from Weymouth Dance Festival

“Backstreet’s Back” Under 10’s

Modern Street Group

“A wonderful stage opportunity that will strengthen students both technically and artistically.”

Thanks for reading, Miss Emilie & TS Team

We hope you can join us for our best ever festival season yet!

Each of the prices above will qualify for a early bird discount of £2.50 per item, details of which will be published onto our website. Please note that our STUDIO payment policy will apply for overdue payments.

SDTQ Rehearsal Costs and Editing Fees

30 Min Studio Booking £7.50

Private SDTQ Rehearsal Please contact teacher

SDTQ Group Practice Sessions - 5 week block £21

STUDIO New Music Edits - for music choices not available in THE STUDIO Library50% of your editing cost will be covered by THE STUDIO for future use.

£30 min (50% covered by STUDIO)

SDTQ Bookings - For dispersement of festival entry fees, coordination of costume and music, and cost of partaking in our theatre stage rehearsal - payable by Sunday May 3rd

Weymouth Solo

Weymouth Duet

WeymouthTrio

WeymouthQuart

£27.50 £22.50 £20 £18.50

SPC Group Bookings - For dispersement of festival entry fees, coordination of costume and music, and cost of partaking in our theatre stage rehearsal - payable by Sunday September 6th

WeymouthSPC Group

Variable - guided between £10 - £22.50 per routine

SPC Enrolment Fees (20% of overall rehearsal fees and administration fees) - payable by Sunday April 5th

Wings & Wands / Introduction Level Dance £25.50

Junior 1 & 2 £43.50

Junior 3 & 4 £61.50

Senior & Premier £79.50

SPC Plus Groups (price per group offering a reduced cost) £17.50

SPC Rehearsal Fees 1st Instalment - payable by Sunday June 7th

Wings & Wands & Introduction (one group) £38.50

Junior 1 & 2 SPC (two groups) £74.50

Junior 3 & 4 SPC (three groups) £110.50

Senior & Premier (four groups) £146.50

SPC Plus Groups (price per group offering a reduced cost) £32.50

SPC Rehearsal Fees 2nd Instalment - payable by Sunday July 5th

Wings & Wands & Introduction (one group) £38.50

Junior 1 & 2 SPC (two groups) £74.50

Junior 3 & 4 SPC (three groups) £110.50

Senior & Premier (four groups) £146.50

SPC Plus Groups (price per group offering a reduced cost) £32.50

SPC rehearsal fees are based on £6 per session (£5 for additional PLUS groups), the total cost of rehearsals have been divided into 3 separate payments. Please note that STDQ and SPC stage rehearsals are included with your general festival fees. SPC PLUS routines are additional to your standard SPC package, students must first be enrolled in SPC in order to add PLUS routines - thank you.

Dates - SPC Cast Members must attend each SPC rehearsal along side their STUDIO term classes

SDTQ Routines final date to start rehearsing June 1st 2020

SPC Picnic Friday 21st August

SPC Rehearsal 1 Saturday 22nd August

SPC Rehearsal 2 Sunday 23rd August

SPC Rehearsal 3 Monday 24th August

SPC Rehearsal 4 Tuesday 25th August

SPC Rehearsal 5 Wednesday 26th August

SPC Rehearsal 6 Friday 28th August

SPC Rehearsal 7 Tuesday 1st & Wednesday 2nd September

SPC Rehearsal 8 Thursday 3rd & Friday 4th September

SPC Rehearsal 9 Tuesday 8th & Wednesday 9th September

SPC Costume Fittings Thursday 10th and Friday 11th September

SPC Rehearsal 10 Sunday 13th September

Start of STDQ 5 Week Rehearsal Blocks Week Commencing 14th September

SPC Rehearsal 11 Sunday 20th September

SPC Rehearsal 12 Sunday 27th September

SDTQ Stage Rehearsals Sunday 4th October

SPC Stage Rehearsals Sunday 11th October

SPC Rehearsal 13 Sunday 18th October

SPC Rehearsal 14 Monday 19th & Tuesday 20th October

SPC Rehearsal 15 Wednesday 21st & Thursday 22nd October

Costume Prop Collection / Sign Out Friday 23rd October

Payment Dates

SPC Enrolment Sunday April 5th

SDTQ Festival Fees Sunday May 3rd

SPC Rehearsals 1st Instalment Sunday June 7th

SPC Rehearsals 2nd Instalment Sunday July 5th

SPC Plus Rehearsals Sunday July 5th

SPC Festival Fees Sunday September 6th

Conditions

Participating festival students must be regularly attending classes at THE STUDIO.

SDTQ students should be training with THE STUDIO in the genre that they wish to prepare a routine for.

Students must not attend or represent other schools or organisations that present a conflict of interest to THE STUDIO.

All SPC casting will be handled by THE STUDIO, families and students will be unable to choose which SPC groups they are part of.

All of our festival students will be required to have some but not all items of STUDIO merchandise to wear to and from festival ie: Hoodies/Onesies/T Shirts/Joggers, please note that personal clothing items may not be worn when representing THE STUDIO at a festival.

All of our festival students will be required to purchase a STUDIO costume carrier to transport their costumes to and from the festival venues.

All choreography will be handled by THE STUDIO and our creative team, in special circumstances students may be invited to choreograph or collaborate with their teacher, parents and family members are encouraged to help students to practice, but should not alter or add any choreography to the routine.

All music arrangements are handled by THE STUDIO. All costumes arrangements are handled by THE STUDIO.

All fees are non refundable / transferable, payment dates must be adhered to.

In the unavoidable case of further rehearsals needed for an SPC group entry, rehearsals will be invoiced at a 50% reduction.

Festival students will be required to purchase a variety of items of kit including hair and makeup products, specific footwear and undergarments.

Excellent levels of attendance, punctuality and commitment is expected from everyone involved.

Private Appointments are closed to spectators.

Full STUDIO uniform should be worn for all rehearsals with neatly presented hair.

For SDTQ rehearsal bookings, each of our festival creative team have their own payment and cancellation policy which must be adhered to, please contact them directly for details.

All new SDTQ routines must commence at the first festival of the season: Weymouth. Rehearsals for which must be underway by June 1st. Only existing routines will be permitted to enter at subsequence festivals during the season.

Any SDTQ’s that might not be stage ready in time for Weymouth Festival are permitted to postpone until a subsequent festival, THE STUDIO will not be able to be responsible for any loss of fees incurred.

In the event of a cancelled festival entry for any reason, THE STUDIO cannot be liable for lost costs, this includes personal expenditure such as travel and stay.

Please note that small amendments to our policy may occur during the development of our festival season. Thank you.

“If you ever have any questions or need help with anything at all, please always ask myself or one of our team. Remember that we are working and planning life for The Studio all the time so we will always be the best people for you to speak with.

Lastly, please always remember that we are a’Dance Mom’ and ‘Diva’ free school that believes in being competitive in a kind and healthy way…please always keep the fun.

Thank you.” Miss Emilie