Bedford primary school students win medals in their first ever dance competition

Little dance stars from a Bedford primary school took second and third place in their first competition.

The 15 Key Stage 2 pupils from Shackleton Primary took place in the competition on March 24 organised by Be Active Beds, and placed joint third in the Lower KS2 division and joint second in the Upper KS2 division.

The Shackleton Primary Dance Program, led by local community dance company VyMy Dance & Fitness, entered youngsters from the after school Street Dance club and the Key Stage 2 Dance Team.VyMy Dance & Fitness director Nisha Vyas-Myall led both groups in their competition entry.

Having been given the theme “Eco-Saving Planet Earth”, all children were asked to talk about what environmental issues mean the most to them. The dance team wanted to do a dance about littering and the street dance wanted to explore deforestation.

Working collaboratively with the teacher, the children created original pieces of dance over the course of five weeks, culminating in their participation in the competition.The judges were very impressed with the content of their dances and the amount of energy they put into their performance, earning them their first ever dance medals.

Teacher Nisha said: “This is the first competition I have been able to enter children into since before the pandemic hit, and the dance team especially have been locking forward to showing what they can do. Their hard work and focus really paid off when they performed their dances in front of so many other talented young people. We even had teachers from other schools come over to compliment us!”

The Shackleton Dance Team will have a little break before taking their dance to their next competition in Milton Keynes next month. VyMy Dance & Fitness has been providing dance programs to primary and secondary schools across Bedford borough, Central Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire since 2015. Its dancers have had performance opportunities across their local area and placed fourth in the UDoIt National Schools Southern Qualifier in 2020. They will also be performing their first original show, Dimensions, in BedFringe this year.