Apply for YDE Young Creatives

9th July 2010

Youth Dance England’s (YDE) annual choreography and mentoring programme, YDE Young Creatives, has partnered for the third year with the Royal Opera House and The Royal Ballet School to create an outstanding opportunity for aspiring and talented young choreographers.

YDE Young Creatives supports and develops 15-19 year olds who have a passion for creating their own dance performance work and who are looking to develop their skills and technique in this field.

The programme offers life changing opportunities for young people, including a 3-day workshop and performance residential at The Royal Ballet School’s beautiful White Lodge in the centre of Richmond Park, working with professional and high profile choreographers and mentors to perfect their pieces and create new work, and showcasing their finished work on stage in the Linbury Studio Theatre at the Royal Opera House

The talented young choreographers will be shortlisted by a panel of dance professionals and artists and offer a diverse range of dance styles and backgrounds. Last year’s selection of 12 YDE Young Creatives developed contemporary, street and physical theatre pieces, showcased at a sell-out performance at the Royal Opera House in April 2010.

The deadline for this year’s programme is until 4th November 2010. YDE encourages young people from all backgrounds with an interest in any dance style to apply to the programme.

Young Choreographers from the south east have an excellent track record in getting through, and last year five of the thirteen young choreographers selected nationally were from the south east. It is a fantastic opportunity, and Hampshire Dance encourages all 15 – 19 years olds in the south east with a passion for choreography to apply.

Short-listing will happen in November 2010, with the residential and performance taking place in April 2011. Past participants have gone on to study at The Place, Laban and P.A.R.T.S, the prestigious dance conservatoire based in Belgium.

To find out more and download an application form, visit YDE’S website

Comments from the YDE Young Creative 2010 included:

“Everything’s been amazing. This has been the one thing I’ve been looking forward to the most, performing on such an amazing stage in an amazing venue… it’s really opened me up to new things and if I entered it next year I’d think about choreographing a group piece” Freya Thomas, aged 18

“The diversity of the people here has made me realise that there’s so many different ways to choreograph and so many different ways that people move, and everyone has their own individual style so I’m inspired to be more individual myself.” Harry Davies, aged 15

Linda Jasper, Director of Youth Dance England, commented:

“YDE is delighted to be working once more with two such highly esteemed and respected dance organisations. These partnerships offered the YDE Young Creatives programme an enormous amount of added value and offered our participants an experience they will remember for the rest of their lives – their words, not mine!”

As programme partners, The Royal Ballet School and Royal Opera House jointly stated:

“The Royal Opera House and The Royal Ballet School share a commitment to developing the next generation of choreographers. We both have programmes which widen access to ballet and dance, and to the skills and resources of our organisations. We are therefore delighted to be working in a three-way partnership with Youth Dance England to deliver this innovative project.”