ACE Dance Festival

ACE Dance Festival

The Ace Dance Festival is an annual county wide project which gives young people an opportunity perform on a professional stage and work with Dance Artists to develop their confidence, self esteem and body awareness through the medium of Dance.

It is organised and coordinated by Vanessa Foster, Development Manager (PE & School Sport) for Cumbria Sport Partnership and Lynn Fade Dance Co-ordinator, Cumbria County Council.

The ACE Dance Festival brings together young people from Allerdale, Carlisle, Copeland, Barrow and Eden schools to perform and celebrate their achievements in Dance. This year, performances will take place at theatre venues across the county in February & March 2008.

Teachers and Dance Artists are invited to a training day in November to prepare for the festival. Schools can work on their own or have the support of a dance worker. The dance worker visits the school for six sessions in the spring term.

Dance is one of the six activity areas of National Curriculum PE and is studied at all Key Stages.

Objectives

  • To give pupils the opportunity to perform on a professional stage to an audience with lighting and sound.
  • To enable the pupils to see a range of performances from different age groups and different genres of dance.
  • To enrich the PE curriculum.
  • To enable the teachers to enhance their experience of dance to enable them to teach more curricular and extra curricular dance.
  • To bring dance to an audience (parents and friends) who might otherwise not visit a theatre for a professional dance performance.
  • To create links between schools and freelance dance artists and dance clubs/schools.

The festival has been held annually for the past 7 years. Initially only one performance was held in Carlisle but for the past two years there have been performances in Carlisle, Keswick, Whitehaven and Barrow.

South Lakeland have an established festival of their own at the Brewary Arts Centre.

In 2008, a total of 1800 pupils from 72 schools will take part in 6 performances watched by over 3350 people. 8 Dance artists and 3 performance coordinators will be involved.

For more information, contact Vanessa Foster, Development manger (PE & School Sport) on 01228 226799 or email vanessa.foster@cumbriacc.gov.uk.