KNT's Day of Dance

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For the last 3 years KNT Danceworks has offered its adult dance students a chance to learn repertoire.  We have had intensive workshops for beginners and advanced students on Swan Lake, La Bayadère and Coppelia.  This year we can look forward to something different.  A day of dance on Saturday, 18 August 2018 when we can sample all sorts of styles that we do not always have the opportunity to experience.

There will still be a chance to learn repertoire at the day of dance but this year it will be special because we will be dancing for the first time a ballet that Karen Sant will choreograph specially for us to music composed by our good friend and classmate, David Hotchkiss (see Why Terpsichore Northwest 10 July 2018).  That class will take place between 15:30 and 17:00.

There will, of course, be classes on ballet technique for beginners and pre-intermediates and intermediates and advanced students between 14:00 and 15:30 as well as jazz and lyrical contemporary in the morning.  Karen has promised us special guest teachers  which will increase the cost to £15 per class. That will reduce to £26 for two which is not at all unreasonable for a whole afternoon's ballet.

The day of dance will take place in the Dancehouse Theatre studios at 10 Oxford Rd, Manchester M1 5QA between 10:00 and 17:00.  The theatre is a few hundred yards from Oxford Road Station and literally round the corner from the Chester Street NCP multistory car park which offers special rates on Saturdays.

Why Terpsichore Northwest?

David Hotchkiss

© 2018 David James Hotchkiss: all rights reserved
Reproduced with the kind permission of the copyright holder

The idea for this blog was inspired by a visit to Birmingham last Saturday.  As I trudged through the streets of Digbeth to New Street station I reflected on my good fortune in having been born in Manchester.  Even though I now live apud Brigantes  ("wi' Tykes" or "in Yorkshire") and notwithstanding the attractions of Birmingham and other great cities, I still glory in urbs mea suava et mercantilia.

Manchester is a city of dance.  Two great dance companies staged their first performances there:

• English National Ballet at the Opera House on 5 Feb 1951; and
• Northern Ballet at the University Theatre, Manchester  on 28 Nov 1969 

(see Manchester's Favourite Ballet Company. 25 Nov 2015 Terpsichore).  With the Hallé, BBC Philharmonic and Manchester Camerata, Manchester is also a city of music.  Such a fine city in such a great region deserves its own blog to track and comment on what is happening in dance and music in general and ballet in particular.

On 27 April 2018 I featured the young English composer David Hotchkiss in Daethon and Arundel - A New Four Act Ballet.  David is now in Hungary but I made his acquaintance at KNT Daneworks when he was living in Manchester.   I understand that one of his works is to be choreographed by Karen Sant and taught to the repertoire class on a "Day of Dance" that KNT intends to present next month.   

It is to cover events such as this that I have decided to launch Terpsichore North West.