Thursday 18th June 2020

Hey Team,

Sorry it has been so long- home schooling and trying to work at the same time has taken over and it is difficult to get anything done! Fortunately Pops will return to Pre School next week and maybe things will start to calm down. Lockdown life is full on!

Anyway, we just wanted to say that we hope you are all well and we will be thinking of you this weekend.

We will truly miss seeing you all up there on the stage this Sunday, but we have to say that we do not miss all of the work that it takes to get you up there and with that in mind, we thought we would share what it takes to put on the show...

It usually starts in July when we book the theatre for the following summer and from there we start to collect music and ideas. 

We always have an eye out for costumes, but January is the time when we would start to bulk buy costumes as there are usually lots of sparkly things in the sales after Christmas!

By the end of January we would hope to have allocated songs for all of the classes with a view to start rehearsals in mid February. This is when we send out the initial show letters to parents and start the dreaded show admin. Parents then start to return permission slips and costume hire money, which are usually chasing right up to the show. The reason that we ask for them to come in early is that we have to start collect information on performers for licensing purposes, which is a lengthy process.

Whilst you are all practicing your routines, the work behind the scenes becomes all-consuming. I am sure that many of you think that the teachers just come in to work for a couple of hours a day and that is it. I wish! My job running the school is mostly admin and I tend to work from 9.00-3.00pm five days a week before I get to the studio to teach or watch other classes in the afternoons. 

As a dance school we have to do so much in order to keep you all safe.. Health & Safety, Safeguarding Policys, GDPR, Risk Assessments, Insurance and Accident Reporting Forms are always in place but with a show we have to step things up another level and the paperwork is endless. 

Firstly we have to find chaperones to help backstage. With around 350 children participating in a show, we are required to have a ratio of 1 adult to 12 children. Finding that many willing volunteers is no easy task. We are very fortunate that we have some lovely friends and family who always help out, but we also have to pay lots of chaperones, most of which are friends of the dance school and ex students. We must apply for a DBS for each of the chaperones and if possible get a chaperone license for them. Most council’s do not like to issue these so it is a continued headache for us.

As the spring term comes to a close, we continue to purchase costumes for the dances, generally buying 25-30 of each item at a time. This means that we have enough for a large class if we ever want to use them again and also some spares. Jess came to do work experience with us earlier this year and spent lots of her time researching costume options for you all and helping to sort them- she was brilliant!

We have a storage unit in Wimbledon, probably the size of a garage that is full to bursting with costumes and props. The costumes are vacuum packed so when it gets closer to the show we spend several weeks reorganizing them and the unit becomes our second home! We have to work out which costumes we can re-use from previous years, make sure we have enough and sort them into classes. This would be easy if we had an organized system in place and every year we have the best of intentions in doing so. However, after the show all we want to do is get the costumes washed and put away so more often than not they are all over the place in different bags and boxes! One day we would like to have a big sort out, but it is such a mammoth task we would need lots of helpers over a weekend-we will have to rope some of you in to help! 

The costumes that we will use for this years show are packed into individual boxes for each class ready to try on in the summer term.  Costumes that are not going to be used are vacuum packed and stored on the other side of the unit. We have hundreds of black pants and vests to go under outfits as well as tights and accessories so all of these little things need to be found and put in place. Once the costumes are tried on, we name them, fix anything that needs changing and iron them so they are ready to go. We will then re-box the costumes according to dressing rooms so that when you arrive at the theatre all of your costumes will be waiting for you in the correct place- fingers crossed. Those arriving in costumes are given theirs the week before and will return them to us after the show. We also take a few boxes of spare costumes to the theatre in case garments get ripped or dirty or any other costume emergency.

In the summer term we take our musical theatre students to a recording studio where we put down backing vocals for the show. They still sing live but this helps boost the sound in such a large auditorium.

As for admin, it is endless. Firstly we need to sort a running order, which is like piecing together a jigsaw. You need to make sure that those who may be in several dances do not clash and will have enough time to do a quick change.

We then have to make schedules for the day of the show and the rehearsal, costume letters listing everything that student’s need for each dance and tell parents where and when children should be collected. Programmes also need to be written and sent to print. Last year we were absolutely gutted that despite triple checking that every dancers name was mentioned in the programme, when it came to print something went wrong and lots of dancers names were missed. 

Another thing that we have to work out are dressing rooms and signing in sheets. The students who sit in the auditorium to watch are allocated seats in the grand circle and given backstage areas for part of the show if needed. Again, this is another juggling act, as we need to swap these children halfway through the show and also get them from the dress circle to the stage for the finale so they are seated with that in mind. If one child were sat in the wrong seat they would potentially miss their moment on stage, as they would not be called up with the correct group so it is vital that this is planned with military precision. 

I guess by now you can see that I am an absolute control freak, but our biggest fear would be someone coming to inspect us on the day and stopping the show because we hadn’t put everything in place. With this many people involved, you have to be on top of everything! 

In addition to this we have to speak to the local councils and ask permission for the children to dance on stage. Easy you may think. No. It is an actual nightmare! Fortunately most of our dancers have not participated in any professional work which means that we apply for an exemption to perform. Amy takes the lead on this and we have to complete a spreadsheet with student’s names, contact details and dates of birth according to which borough they live in. We then submit them to the relevant council for them to approve along with our plans. If they do not approve this, Merton Council would not let the children on the stage to perform. 

It is always particularly nail biting as despite us starting this process early in the year, Wandsworth Council (the borough in which most of our students live in) tend not to uphold their side of the bargain until two days before the show. You can imagine how many tears of frustration have been shed! For those children that have participated in professional work we need to go down another route and get them a license to perform. It is all very complicated. 

When it gets closer to the show we start to compile the information packs for the chaperones at the rehearsal and the theatre. In each of these there will be a list of the students that they are looking after and will let the chaperones know if any of their students have any allergies or medical conditions that they need to be aware of. Chaperones are given all of our policies, codes of conduct, running orders and schedules, seating plans, etc so they have a clear idea of how the show will work. Last year we had 45 helpers back stage so that is a lot of notes! 

On the morning of the show we meet at the storage unit to collect costumes in a van. When we arrive at the theatre the technicians are setting up the lights and we organize the dressing rooms.

Whilst you are all queuing at stage door and signing in with Amy, I will have a meeting with the chaperones who are usually looking at me like rabbits in headlights whilst I reel off endless important bits of information- it is a lot to take in! They need to know where they need to be and at what time and also where their group will sign out at the end of the day. Chaperones now have their own T-shirt’s and name badges so that they are easily identifiable to the students and parents.

Once everybody is at the theatre, we have our health and safety briefing and aim for a technical rehearsal. The reality of the situation is that time is so limited on the day of the show and we just about manage a dress rehearsal. Last year this finished two minutes before front of house opened. In an ideal world we would have another day to do a technical rehearsal and have 25- 50 lighting cues in place for each piece of choreography but unfortunately we just cannot afford to do this and so I direct the lighting technician as we go!

When the curtain comes up, Amy manages backstage whilst I cue the sound and lights. We communicate on cans but the whole show goes by in a complete blur. In the interval we run backstage for a quick change so that we don’t look like tramps when we have to go on at the end! At the same time Tilly and Eve who usually run call up, are switching the dancers from the upper circle ready for Act Two to commence. 

When it comes to the finale, it is planned to the second and more often than not only rehearsed on the day of the show. Amy and I take a side each and shout instructions whilst the chaperones move the lines that snake down the corridors towards the front of the stage.

The end of the show is always exhilarating but also met with huge relief, hence our emotional states during the speeches! Public speaking fills me with absolute fear. I used to have a speech written but my hands would shake uncontrollably and I would mess up the words so now I just take on a few notes and wing it. And then usually cry! But it is always with tears of pride for our students. 

Once the curtain closes and the dancers go back to the dressing rooms, we have the task of making sure that 350 children are safely returned to the correct parents. We then collect all costumes and return them to storage or our homes and head back to my garden for drinks, pizza and sometimes a sing-song (Diane!).

You may think that it ends there but in fact it takes several weeks to wrap up the show. All paperwork that the chaperones were given has to be shredded for safeguarding reason, notes are reorganized and money and DVD order forms are collected. 

We return to storage and sort through endless boxes of extremely sweaty costumes. They get sorted according to colour and over the next couple of weeks we wash and  pack them up. At this point last year I was mid home renovation so unable to do any of this and Amy took on the bulk of washing, however I remember that the year before I managed to do 15 loads of washing the day after the show and it barely made a dent. If you think that most costumes consist of a couple of items of clothes, e.g. trousers and top or leotard, dress and tights, it is literally thousands of pieces of clothes to wash. And I hate washing at the best of times. Which is why we put them back in the storage unit and ignore them until it is time for the next show! 

We also need to sort through show photos- typically on a show day we take around 5000 pictures of you on stage, however most don’t work because of the lighting and movement so we edit these down to a couple of hundred and put them on social media for you all to see. 

With so much to think about, so many sleepless nights and with the stress of the build up, it is often quite hard to process how well the show has gone on the actual day and takes a while for it to sink in. However as I look through the photos I am always filled with an enormous sense of pride for our students. 

The show DVD must also be edited although we leave this to the production company. After all of these years, I have only been able to watch one show back after the event and I am sure that after reading this you will understand why! 

Shows are hard work.

We love them, but they are hard. 

But every year, we see all of you on stage and see the buzz that you get and how much your confidence grows each time and it makes it all worthwhile. You are the reason why we do this and strive to make each one better than the last.

So we start the process all again!!!

Fingers crossed we will do it all again in 2021...

Becca xxx

We will do this again!