My summer holiday is never complete without some dancing, and over the past two days, I have had the pleasure of spreading and sharing the dancing joy with the students of Moorland Ballet Academy Summer School.

Moorland is a privet school in Lancashire with an Elite Football Program and a Classical Ballet Academy. The ballet academy was founded by two wonderful past teachers of mine Lynsey and Simon Kidd, who both taught and guided me during my student years. Knowing personally what good teachers they are, I was honored to hear from them and be invited to join them during the summer course.

Even though I only spent two days at the school, I truly enjoyed teaching the summer students – a mixture of full-time students at the school and young dancers from outside, some coming from as far as Japan, and already saw improvement in that short space of time. I had the pleasure of teaching a great bunch of 11-13 year olds and an older group of 14-18 year olds. Both classes worked so hard for me so thank you for that girls and boys.

Being quite new to teaching I am learning as I go and with each experience of standing in front of a class rather than among it, I am improving my skills. My aim is to build a class on what I know through being a professional dancer and what I have learned from previous influential teachers of mine. For example, I always enjoyed a class when I could see the development of the movements and thoughts throughout the training – beginning at plies following all the way to the last grand allegro. Hopefully, with this technique, the dancers can also feel the links from one exercise to the next.

I hope these young dancers have enjoyed, learned and felt improvement with my classes. I had a great time and you all were a pleasure to teach. Seeing Lynsey and Simon was lovely as always and I want to congratulate them on their achievement with the school. Thank you so much for having me. Till next time.

With love,

Harriet