In a week that saw the UK Budget and celebrated International Women’s Day, dance students began to return to College and pro dancers looked for opportunities within the forthcoming re-opening of performance venues. The team at Dincwear Dancewear spotted the following points of interest.

General Sightings

• The UK Budget didn’t have much help for most pro dancers. An extension to cuts on business rates and VAT may benefit some Theatres.
• Nimax’s Nica Burns stated that socially distanced versions of “Six” & “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie” plan to re-open in the West End from May the 17th, with Theatres initially operating at 50% capacity.
• Sadlers Wells launched its new Artist Residencies 2021 programme to support dancers & choreographers to get back into the studio. There is more information on the website and the deadline for applications is Wednesday the 31st of March.
• It was announced that Strictly winner Oti Mabuse will be a judge on the new ITV show “The Masked Dancer“.
• Principle dancer Lauren Lovette is leaving the New York City Ballet to pursue other interests.
• Brendon Hansford announced that he was setting up a new professional dance company in Dubai. The auditions are on the 21st of March at 8.30.
• The Place, London, launched an MA Screendance course – “a practice-led course that embraces the nature of dance film-making”. Visit: www.icds.ac.uk/screendance for more details.
• Spanish dancer Teresa Viera Romero died in New Orleans.
• It was reported that the Victoria & Albert Museum is going to close its Theatre & Performance department to save costs.

Future Dance News

• Strictly winner Joanne Clifton will star in the online Easter panto “Snow White” as the Wicked Witch Morgana
• New dates were announced for “Hairspray” & the “Priscilla” UK tours. The “Hairspray” tour will begin in Plymouth on the 24th of June and “Priscilla” will begin at Cheltenham on the 23rd of June.

Online Dance Classes

• Charlotte Tonkinson of The Royal Ballet is offering a live Ballet & Repertoire class on the 27th & 28th of March. More details on: www.charlottetonkinson@hotmail.com
• Collette Guitart, star of the hit musical “Six”, is giving a dance class on Saturday the 13th of March for £5. Details are on Collette’s Instagram page.
• Oti Mabuse is giving a dance class on Saturday 13th March from 6.00 – 7.00 pm for £8. It is suitable for all ages and details are on www.otimabusedancestudio.com

Appointments

• English National Ballet seeks to appoint an experienced Filmmaker / Editor to: “communicate the vibrant life of the company”. There is more information on the ENB website.

Film And Video

• Some amazing dancers performed to “Cool” from “West Side Story” around New York City in a new video directed by Josh Bergasse & choreography by Jerome Robbins. The dancers were: Yesenia Ayala. Darius Barnes, Alexa Debarr, Jess Leprotto, Alicia Lundgren, Georgina Pazcoguin, Ahmah Simmons, Ryan Steele & Alex Wong.
• We spotted Cameron Valentina in the latest Mercedes AMG advert. This came through the AJK agency.
• We spotted Kimberlee Collicutt in the Bollywood film: “The Girl On The Train” – out now on Netflix.
• We spotted Shani Ross, Megan Charles & Becky Wong in the latest video for Adidas.

So things are beginning to pick up in the dance world. We hope that you may have found something of interest to you – and the team at Dincwear Dancewear will keep our eye’s open for anything dance-related for our next “Pro Dancer News” in a weeks time.

That is all for this week from the news team at Dincwear Dancewear, See you all next week!

This post has been created by the Dincwear Dancewear Team.