A Level Dance students impress at university show

28 February 2023

Students taking Dance A Level were praised for performing and choreographing like university level students while presenting their classwork at an esteemed theatre in Higher Education.

The Capstone Theatre is based at Liverpool Hope University’s Creative Campus, and Birkenhead Sixth Form College were invited to bring our dancers to perform alongside undergraduates and other dance schools across Merseyside.

‘We Love Dance’ was a student event management project that included groups from toddler to the over 50s, and involved working with other choreographers, lighting and sound technicians, videographers and more in a professional environment for hands-on experience.

The A Level students impressed to such an extent during the performance that the university’s Dance lecturer compared them to undergraduate standard, which bodes well for all of their future university pathways and beyond.

The Year 1 Dance students performed their repertoire to Regina Spektor’s ‘Laughing With’, while the Year 2s were accompanied by a fusion of Beyonce, James Blake’s ‘Forward’ and Olafur Arnald’s ‘This Place Was Shelter’.

Dance teacher at Birkenhead Sixth Form College, Kirsty Thornton, said: “This was a fantastic opportunity for the dancers to experience the full spectrum of elements for a large-scale show, and soak in what it would be like to be a professional. They performed exceptionally well and to get such positive feedback from the experts was really pleasing but also well deserved."

Kirsty explained: “The students also got the chance to work with current university students who were doing a range of different courses, combining Dance with other disciplines such as Education, Media, Film and others, which really opened their eyes to the possibilities of taking dance forward in terms of university and careers.

“Dance at A Level is fun, challenging and rewarding, and taking part in shows such as this is such a brilliant opportunity to expand their learning and personal development. The training and performance elements involved prepare students for so much more outside of just dancing too, developing confidence, organisation, planning, teamwork and so many other transferable skills that broaden their horizons in every way.

“Both year groups deserve huge credit for their choreography and performance, but also for the way that they conducted themselves in a professional arena.”

You can follow our dancers on Instagram at bsfc_dance, and click here for the highlight reel from the show, or here for the 'from studio to stage' reel.

For more on studying Dance at A Level at Birkenhead Sixth Form College, click here.