FOBISIA Dances on Despite Lockdown

FOBISIA Dances on Despite Lockdown

By Cindy Adair Cross Campus Assistant Principal, Extra Curricular Activities and Sports, Bangkok Patana School

Dance is a wonderful way to express yourself and to move your body to stay fit and healthy. Many FOBISIA Member Schools have growing Dance programmes with a range of styles on offer via their curriculum, extra-curricular activities programmes and increasingly schools are offering GCSE/ A Level Dance and IB Dance.

Throughout October and November, Bangkok Patana School was pleased to provide the opportunity for Dancers from across the region to participate in a Virtual Dance competition. With some schools in full lock-down, whilst others were business as usual, the focus of the competition was participation. We were very pleased with the over 50 entries we received including groups, trios, duos and solos in a huge range of styles. Popping Hip Hop, graceful ballet, soulful contemporary and wonderfully diverse world dance all arriving in our inboxes! We had dancers from Y1 to Y13 compete from Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, China, Malaysia and Nepal.

Our team of judges had a difficult task on their hands to determine the eventual winners. Congratulations to everyone who was awarded a podium finish. When viewing the YouTube clips submitted we focused on those students who really connected with their audience/the camera, who had great energy, clean lines and musicality. This time around it was less about costuming, hair and make-up or even production (lights/sound) to ensure a level playing field for those students recording their performance at home alone.

A special mention to British School Jakarta who despite being in full-lockdown, submitted the most entries overall.