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Saturday night at Magna Carta Theatre. Arriving outside I saw a large group of hooded youths leaning against an array of tricked out cars with inaudible music blasting out from the speakers. They stopped talking to each other and stared at me through the windows of my car, intently watching my every move as I parked next to one of them. Was I intimidated by this? No, because I was there to watch over 66 performers, the majority of who are under the age of 16, showcase the routines they had been practicing for many months.
The Grey Area is a show put on by Matt Walker of The Urban Dance School (UDS). The youths watching me were, in fact, members of a group that performed in the show.
The day began many hours before I arrived with several of the guest companies collaborating with The Urban Dance School to hold dance workshops for ticket holders and members of the public to participate in. Thanks to arts funding from Spelthorne Council and Hampshire Dance, not only was The Grey Area a dance show, but a day dedicated to dance.
Above: Free workshop with guest performers Ruthless
The performances were made up mainly of dance groups that are taught by Matt Walker or one of his dedicated teachers at the Urban Dance School, with professional dance companies such as Surge, Ruthless and, UDS’s very own Ombrascura coming together to make the show one always be remembered.
The first piece was performed by an ensemble of the Urban Dance School’s classes
– from the Sunday afternoon class, their school classes and other local workshops
– to Ne-
Acronikos was the next UDS-
Acronikos are a dance group from Lintons Youth Arts Centre in Epsom, Surrey. The group consists of 13 performers, 11 of whom are recent additions after auditioning in front of a panel of the existing dancers in late 2008. Since then, the group have trained extremely hard to pull off the set that they performed in front of the crowd at the show. This was yet another impressive feat achieved by the dedicated teachers and students of UDS.
To show that UDS are more diverse than just street dancing, Matt Lapinskas and Michaela Finnan of Ombrascura performed a contemporary duet, which was choreographed by themselves, about undecided love. The routine was performed to the beautiful song Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls.
The chemistry shared between the two performers was incredibly intense, so much so that one member of the audience believed in their on stage relationship to the point where she assumed that the pair were a real life couple. This is a true testament to how amazing these two performers are.
Water the next piece on stage, was another number performed by the UDS flagship group. This was a routine that had been performed at major dance events such as Dance Challenge at the prestigious Cadogan Hall at Sloane Square, in summer 2008. This was a fantastic routine that the dancers knew extremely well and the more they perform it, the better it becomes because they are so confident with it.
This routine moved swiftly into another contemporary piece to Des’ree’s ballad Kissing You. This was a beautiful piece of dance using more of UDS’s dancers from Sunday classes to show the diversity of teaching styles.
Before the interval, the audience was treated to an open circle featuring all the dancers invited to perform at The Grey Area. It was an opportunity for the students of UDS and guest groups to showcase their dance skills. Matt Walker, the organiser of The Grey Area and owner, co founder and teacher of UDS said, “The professional dancers and our kids got down not only in the same show, but in an open circle. And the visible improvement [in the student’s development] is huge.”
To reopen the second half of the show, Ruthless performed a swaggertastic set to keep people energised. Keeping it simple, they stuck to over a minute of the same song before going into their other routines, proving sets don’t need to be choppy with music to look tight.
Because of the exceptional standard of dancers at Thamesmead School they were given an entire set, taking on the theme of… womanising! As the only male dancer at that school, James played the lead role as the lady’s man backed up by guest dancers from UDS as he charmed his way around the girls.
To add a splash of variety, a slice of Broadway was brought to Staines in the form of Theatre Land performed by UDS dancers. The first part of this set was Cell Block Tango from the musical Chicago. This was followed up by a performance of All For One from High School Musical in bright surfer gear.
Next up was Pulse, a youth club group from Lintons Youth Arts Centre in Epsom. The majority of these members are also fairly new to dance and stage performances, which made their routine to Evanescence’s Bring Me To Life all the more impressive and enjoyable to watch.
Before the final piece, a UDS medley was performed, put together from several short class routines taught over the previous weeks. An ultraviolet light was used during a blackout to Air Force Ones, giving an eerie purple glow to the dancer’s white trainers. The set finished on a high to introduce the final piece.
The last performance was The Rose Set performed by Ombrascura.
This set has previously been performed at Euphonic Dance Music Festival in Runnymede and also at Triof Music Live at the Lighthouse Theatre, Kettering. However, none of the previous performances of this set had been as important as it was on Saturday night, because the choreography was being judged for an award.
The dancers of Ombrascura are all extremely talented and dedicated performers, and
watching them perform is always uplifting, awe-
The night closed with another, this time impromptu, open circle. By this point in the show, all the performers were high on the adrenaline that comes with the success of The Grey Area that they all ached to take to the stage and show world exactly what they can do.
It was so inspiring to see the young people on stage doing something that they love that promotes dance on a local platform. While the city may get allocated the art grants to put on big shows with professional guest performers, The Grey Area was conceived and planned independently (with the help of grant funding) to bring a dance show with free workshops to the suburbs, something that had not been done before. The Grey Area proved that with a vision for dance anything is possible, and the show merited the effort put in by both the organisers, teachers and dancers who made the show happen.
