Hundreds of dancers have made the most of being back on Dunedin’s big stage for the first time since the pandemic.
Rasa School of Dance owner and administrator Tara James said the academy’s end-of-year show featured about 450 students, split into separate sessions for juniors and seniors, yesterday evening .
The school’s youngest class were preschoolers and the oldest was a seniors’ group, some of whom were in their 80s, she said.
The focus of the school was on being family-based and all inclusive and the performance yesterday was about living up to its motto of "for the love of it", James said.
It was the school’s 19th end-of-year show and the first time students had been back at the Regent Theatre since 2019, due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
It was fantastic to be back at the "amazing facility" that had supported them for many years and it was a great experience for the dancers to be back on the big stage, James said.
All choreography was done in house, largely by the school’s 10 teachers including James’ wife and school principal Lisa Wilkinson, who has 30 years’ experience dancing.
Before Covid-19 the school had about 200 more students, which underscored how the pandemic had affected people’s ability to commit to activities, James said.
She hoped to encourage people to get back into doing things that brought them joy and there was nothing better to lift serotonin levels and spirits than dancing.
"Dance is good for everyone," James said.
