The North Yorkshire Youth – Youth Clubs have been treated to some free taster sessions from a new project called Rural Steps.
The project promotes contemporary dance with a view to establishing six youth dance programmes in Skipton, Ingleton, Northallerton, Thirsk, Harrogate and Scarborough. These will be led with a strong focus on engaging young people not previously involved in dance and making it more accessible.
Our sessions were run within our usual busy youth clubs and the young people were brave enough to give it a go and had great fun with the professional dancers, putting forward ideas and creating their own unique routine. We also were generously given free fruit by Tesco in some of the clubs which was thoroughly enjoyed on the night.
In Jennyfields Youth Club young people had the idea to dance the same routine they had learnt to three different styles of music, highlighting how differently dance can be interpreted or expressed. One of the pieces of music used was actually produced by one of the young people who attends the youth club.
The dance projects are inclusive sessions, where anyone of all abilities can join in and there is no need to buy professional gear, just wear whatever is comfortable. Each Dance project will also have a budget enabling young people who attend the new dance clubs to experience professional dance. Groups will work with the professional artists to create a performance segment for York Theatre Royal’s Dance It Up North in Autumn 2019. An exciting opportunity which has now been shared and made available to the young people in our Youth Clubs. We would like to wish the Rural Steps and Youth Dance Projects every success and thank them for taking the time to come into our youth clubs and share contemporary dance with our young people.