Looking to get creative in your region? Why not get your dancers to bake a cake related to irish dancing or Irish Culture, here is how the Midlands(UK) accomplished this.
The Midlands wanted to give their dancers something fun to do during the locked down times. Obviously some classes continued to zoom and then eventually outdoor lessons, but there were some dancers who didn’t have that opportunity to be creative.
Ray Chambers (Chambers) and Leanne Nelson (Scanlon) put their heads together and after talking to lots of teachers around the world, we thought that it would be a fun idea to do the midlands bake/cook off. We opened it up to all dancers in the region and we even had prizes from midlands based sponsors: –
- Irish Dancing Magazine
- Irish Dancer.co.uk
- Zoom Make up session from – Roisin Conway – R Cosmetics
- Personal Trainer session with Megan Kerrigan
All of the prizes were exciting for the dancers and it gave them something to do with their family and friends at home. The idea of the competition was more about team building.
We had entries from lots of schools!
- Chambers Academy
- Scanlon
- Kidd
- O’Malley
- Glenddaragh
- Matthews
- Carey
The judges were all ex midlanders who we had met over the years and it was a great opportunity for them to all get together.
- Ciara Sexton – Previous Lead in Lord of the Dance and World Champion
- Andy O’Reilly – Performed in Sell out shows such as heartbeat of home and Riverdance
- Angela Reilly – Previous dancer from the midlands with Scanlon in Birmingham and now TCRG
The dancers emailed their photos of their cooks and cakes to Ray who removed any pictures of faces and anonymised all of the photos giving them numbers for the judges. Each judge allocated scores for the dancers and they were given grid marks.
The winning cake was by Bonnie Moriarty from the Scanlon School.
