Last Saturday the family and I went along to Northern Ballet’s annual open day. We went a couple of years ago when they first opened their lovely new building at Quarry Hill, my eldest daughter signed up for ballet classes there and then. Back then it was just lots of classes to try out. This year I was impressed that there were all sorts of activities on, not just casses.
My eldest loves her classes at Northern Ballet so we’re a family already familiar with the offering. When I heard about this open day I assumed it wasn’t for us, we already go every week. But having had a look at the programme I thought I’d take the opportunity to let my little boy try a class. He seemed excited as he knows his older sister goes to Northern Ballet and has asked to go along before. But on the day he was a little apprehensive about being the only boy in the class. Given that Priya is in an all girl class I knew it would overwhelmingly female however I persevered, once we were there I hoped he’d forget about his concern and get stuck in.
I’m always keen for both my kids to realise they can do anything they want and I wanted Dom to give it a try without getting caught up in the ‘ballet is for girls’ thing which he already believes – he’s only 5. As expected the class we tried out was full of girls, but once we arrived and made our way to the studio he seemed to have forgotten his concerns. The teacher was great at getting all the children involved she went round and spoke to each child individually which I thought was a lovely touch. It made all the children feel really special.
We’d spotted a couple of craft and singing things to do on the programme so we went along to have a look, it was all based on one floor which made it really easy to get involved in a few things without needing to navigate around the building. Although not difficult to get around there are a lot of stairs so traipsing around isn’t really an option. There were lots of helpful staff on hand and they were all very willing to chat and help the kids as well as chat about their jobs and Northern Ballet in general.
We also got to see some professional classes from the viewing area which the kids were mesmerised by.
Just as we were about to leave we spotted a Phoenix Dance and Northern Ballet performance on the programme which we thought we’d try and see while we were there. Surprisingly the theatre wasn’t full so we got front row seats for a half hour performance, the perfect length for the attention span of a five year old. Both performances we saw were amazing and sitting right at the front on the same level as the dancers was a brilliant experience, one that I felt really lucky to have experienced.
It proved to be a really great Saturday day out for all the family, we all found something we really enjoyed doing and I loved the fact that the kids were really inspired by going. Both of them spent the rest of the day pretending to be ballet dancers, Dom used his sisters old ballet shoes and I realised that I’d achieved my hearts desire, to help a little boy see that ballet is not just ‘for girls’.