Mark Johnson

Project |03 UCLan Dance

 

 

UCLan Do It: University of Central Lancashire’s first ever dance competition a huge success

 

 

UCLan’s dance team took 1st place in Advanced Jazz and Novice Hip-Hop to the delight of a noisy crowd who gathered in their numbers at the Sir Tom Finney Sports Hall. The event was UCLan’s first dance competition held at the University and they did not disappoint.

 

Other notable successes for UCLan included a very impressive 2nd place in Novice Contemporary, 2nd place in Novice Ballet and a 3rd place finish in Novice Jazz, leaving a good days work all across the board.

 

Universities across England, even as far as Belfast (Northern Ireland) travelled to participate in the event. Universities included were Essex, Lancaster, Salford, Chester, Manchester Met and Queens (Belfast). The standard of dancing on show was eye-catching to say the least; nearly as eye catching as some of the outfits in fact.

 

The Judging panel consisted of Alice Salmon; a participant in Miss Dance, appearing in Modern and Tap Championships, Jessica Jackson, who has performed on numerous high class stages such as the Royal Albert Hall, and more notably semi-finalist on last year’s Britain’s Got Talent and winner of the BBC 1’s Strictly Dance Fever, Joseph Hall; all were dazzled by the standard of dance on show. Hall delivered a few words at the end of a thoroughly enjoyable day for all involved, ‘The standard on display today was of the highest calibre, many of you should be dancing professionally! Fantastic.’ The result backs up an impressive month or so for team UCLan who put on a fine display at Liverpool John Moores University.

 

The results were Beginners Ballet 1st place, Lyrical 1st place, Contemporary 3rd place, Beginners Jazz 2nd place, Advanced Jazz 1st place and Beginners Hip-Hop 2nd place.

 

Maria Berna de Torres, choreographer for the Hip-Hop team said, ‘I’m so proud of my girls, JMU was amazing, but today I can’t describe how happy I am to be part of this. The first ever competition at UCLan will be one to remember that’s for sure. It makes it even better to do it in front of friends who obviously can’t travel to competitions to watch us. I want to thank the girls for their hard work.’

 

Jessie Froggett, a stand-out performer in Advanced Jazz and Novice Hip-Hop labelled the event as ‘Amazing.’ ‘Today has been a huge success. Watching the other acts that were on before us made me really nervous, the standard was high! Overall, it was a really vibrant and friendly atmosphere with dancers from all different universities sharing their appreciation for dance. Thank you to everyone who supported. Hopefully we can continue to perform, and impress the judges; it’s been an amazing day.’

 

Continue they will; UCLan will now travel to Sunderland on the 15th of March to take part in their third dance competition of the year; a repeat of their success here would be testament to the hard work shown today at the Sir Tom Finney Sports Hall.

 

All money raised from the event was donated to leading UK Children’s charity Barnardo’s.