by Hali Warame had never attended a single dance course when she said last year for the National Youth Dance Company. The K-POP obsession of the teenager in East London had charged her love for dance. In 2023, someone from the NYDC team saw their autodidact Victoria Monét routine and suggested that they were auditing. Warams still look happily astonishment: “I never danced outside of my bedroom.”
Now she is shortly before the debut in one of the legendary dance stages in the world when Nydc appears in Sadlers Wells in the first YFX festival from Youth Dance. The artistic directors of NYDC are Kenrick Sandy and Mikey Asante from the Storming Hip Hop Company Boy Blue: Warse’s Dance Journey begins with the best.
YFX gathers talented young dancers from all over the UK, just one of the summer show cases. At the beginning of this month, the London Children’s Ballet gave its annual flagship show in the Peacock Theater, while the Royal Academy of Dance, which dances in dozens of schools in London and Southeast -England, organized step in the Cadogan Hall.
The activity is impressive, the enthusiasm is obvious. But the landscape for youth dance looks uncertain. A third of the British schools do not teach a dance (although it is the given national curriculum), so that the possibilities depend on programs such as Step in To Dance (strongly financed by the Jack Petchy Foundation) and scholarships from the 10 national centers for advanced dance centers in Great Britain. Her continued financing was only secured after ferving campaigns by numbers such as Sir Matthew Bourne, who warned of “a world in which there can no longer be Billy or Betty.
Asante and Sandy meet video to tell me about their own first steps. They met for the first time in their secondary school in East London. “Entertainment, dance, music was all my life,” says Asante. Sandy, originally attracted to sports, saw the dance group of Asante in the local youth center in Forest Gate: “And the rest is history.” Soon she started her own group, which finally led to Boy Blue in 2001.
They were always self -starter. “We rehearsed every day,” says Asante, “and two or three times a week, wherever we could.” They drew an infrastructure of free resources of local organizations and committed people who “raised the idea of youth engagement – they were inspired when young people thrive.” As Sandy says: “There were many options and there was a hunger.”
Have things changed since their day? “One hundred percent,” emphasizes Asante. “It is a completely different world. Just as social media has inflated any other industry hyper, it is the same with dance.” Social media have made young people who made better more experienced, but also made less social. “There is no real interaction. When we danced, they had to go to the dance courses, get out there. Now people can just stay in their room and learn the latest trend.” “Pandemy made us very dirty,” argues Sandy. “Many young people drove off, they fought.”
Joce Giles, director of learning and commitment to Sadlers Wells, looks over the sector and sees a changing landscape. Youth programs and family budgets are squeezed: everything is much less accessible. “It is a challenging time, but the sector comes together to stand up for the meaning of what we do. The effects are incredible for a relatively small investment.”
To see this effect in action, I visit the dance youth company (Sync) at the Royal Academy of Dance in Battersea. There are a number of age groups and heights, including a couple light and limber twins. I’m not the only observer – a small child on a scooter keeps returning to the street. The session is led by Irena Čuturić, originally from Croatia and herself dancer with Boy Blue. She smiles and positively and encourages the dancers to work out things for herself instead of bringing them into shape. “I always had a passion to work with young people and to support them pastoral and creatively,” she says to me.
Čuturić describes the fusion of different young strangers into a collaborative unit. “We make sociable games to get in touch with someone you have never met before, or with choreographic and creative tasks that you bring together. You cannot always choose who you work with, because that’s not how life is, isn’t it?” Some dancers behave like unofficial trial directors and conduct their younger colleagues. “We love to see it! Some dancers naturally rely on management positions that I point out – because there are so many roles in dance, not just dancers and choreograph. We give you space to explore all of these things.”
It also insists that dance does not distract from school work, but rather improves the commitment – everyone grabs it as soon as the music starts. I speak in the corridor with three South Londoners from the Sync company, all of which are super motivated. Tilly set up her own dance courses at school to teach classmates. Missy has his sights on a career in West End. Rithiekaa plans to study politics, but believes that I have become much more confident since participating in the step classes, and public speaking was so much easier for me.
Ballet may enter a world of the Street Dance Eife from NYDC and dance – but the London children’s ballet shares the same commitment. Ruth Brill, the artistic director, danced with the company at the age of 11 before he had a career at Birmingham Royal Ballet and returned to the head of LCB. “The heart and soul of the London children’s ballet are, as it was always, a chance,” she explains. “Our mission is to change life through dance.”
Is this a society of Hothous treasures of the middle class? “It is open to young dancers of all backgrounds,” emphasizes Brill. “When we see a special personality or a spark, we will give this young person a shot.” Nevertheless, as she admits, things have changed since pandemic. The number of auditions has dropped for a while and the cost of living is bitten. “Financially if parents have to prioritize where the money flows, they will obviously decide to feed and dress their child about a dance course.” LCB bridges the gap with free weekly courses in his development program, which is sponsored by Big Yellow Storage and Audition Masterclasses: “We would like to help you do your best.”
The rehearsals for the main show take place every six months every year – months in which glasses grow and change children. “If you connect with your body, it is an absolute game changer that hard work is worthwhile if you stick to it,” she says. “They see that they build friendships, even those who are so shy. They become more self -confident and learn something as simple as with presence in a room – if one day they are presented at a board meeting in a board meeting, we will probably have helped them.”
Over there at NYDC, Sandy Mentors, but not Mollycoddle – expectations are high. “We use the work – so you will use the work.” Did Boy Blue see how people have changed in the company in their months? “NYDC is a massive opportunity to grow up,” confirms Asante. “Varier age groups, different skills, very different upbringing – it is a real life.” Giles sees it every year. “Some of them may not have been outside their own region, but they will be a team.” They can also appear in large phases: “This feeling of excitement and joy remains with them for a lifetime.”
Although war seeds are connected to your NYDC cohort without formal training. “Background does not matter,” she says. “I grew more about my dance myself. Nydc changed my life – I had never tried to dance professionally, but now I know that I want to follow it and either dance again for someone who is really famous or becomes a choreographer. It has changed my entire perspective – dance has given me a goal.”
The YFX Festival From Saturday, July 19 to Sunday, July 27th, take place in Sadlers Wells and Sadlers Wells East.
