Performances

These are evening shows presented by our talented team of dance professionals that allow you to delight in the varied colours and styles of our team. They will include:

Belly Dancing

 

Belly dance is primarily a torso-driven dance, with an emphasis on articulations of the hips. Unlike many Western dance forms, the focus of the dance is on relaxed, natural isolations of the torso muscles, rather than on movements of the limbs through space. Although some of these isolations appear superficially similar to the isolations used in jazz ballet, they are often driven differently and have a different feeling or emphasis, which is usually more subtle and contained.

 

Correct posture and muscle control is as important in belly dance as it is in other fields of dance, and enables a dancer to move the hips freely whilst avoiding lower back injuries. The basic posture used varies slightly between styles (in particular, the knees may be more or less bent, weight may be held slightly further back or forward, and ‘resting’ arm position may vary), but a kinesiologically correct posture should always be used. Some belly dancers also study Pilates or Alexander technique in order to achieve a healthy and efficient posture.

Contemporary Dance

 

Contemporary dance is a popular form of dance which developed during the middle portion of the twentieth century and has since grown to become one of the dominating performance genres for formally trained dancers throughout the world, with particularly strong popularity in the U.S. and Europe. Although originally informed by and borrowing from classical,modern, and jazz styles, it has since come to incorporate elements from many styles of dance,[1] but due to its popularity amongst trained dancers and some overlap in movement type, it is often perceived as being closely related to modern dance, ballet and other classical concert dance styles.

 

In terms of the focus of its technique, contemporary dance tends to utilize both the strong and controlled legwork of ballet and modern dance’s stress on the torso, and also employs contact-release, floor work, fall and recovery, and improvisation characteristic of modern dance.[2] Unpredictable changes in rhythm, speed, and direction are often used, as well. It sometimes also incorporates elements of non-western dance cultures such as elements from African dance including bent knees, or movements from the Japanese contemporary dance Butoh.

Bollywood Style

 

The term ‘Bollywood’ comes from the combination of the names of Bombay (now known as Mumbai) and Hollywood. The Bollywood film industry, based in Mumbai, is the largest film industry in the world in terms of ticket sales and the amount of films made per year.

 

Bollywood films are mostly musicals with very few movies made without at least one song and dance sequence. The films feature love interests, comedy and action thrills. The plots are often melodramatic and often feature star-crossed lovers, corrupt politicians, twins separated at birth, conniving villains, angry parents, courtesans with hearts of gold, dramatic reversals of fortune, and convenient coincidences.

Bhangra

 

Bhangra refers to several types of dance originating from the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent.[1] The earliest developed of these was a folk dance conducted by Punjabis in the central northern areas of the region to celebrate the harvest, and whose general practice had ended by the Partition, 1947.

 

In the 1950s, a new folk dance, representative of the state of Punjab and composed of glimpses of men’s Punjabi dance styles, was created and eventually received the title of bhangra. In 1954. first time bhangra was performed on stage. First developed in India and attaining a rather standardized form by the 1980s, the folkloric bhangra was exported to other countries by Punjabi emigrants. By the 1990s, a still newer style of dance called bhangra was being staged in the Punjabi Diaspora, often characterized by a fusion with Western dance styles and the use of prerecorded audio mixes. Aside from these specific dance genres, Punjabi dancing in general, especially when done to popular bhangra music, is often casually called “bhangra