Keeping Up With Juliette

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, Ballroom dance is a popular form of dance that is performed alongside a partner. Many enjoy this style of dance socially or competitively all over the world. Many who enjoy it competitively perform it at well renowned ballroom theatres like Blackpool and Sadler's Wells or compete in world championships. Others who enjoy it as a way to socialise and to improve a hobby, take part in lessons in their free time. There are many types of ballroom and Latin dance like: Waltz, Jazz, Jive, Rumba, Cha-Cha, Paso doble, Tango, Samba, Salsa, Foxtrot and Quickstep. The smoothest dance out of all of these is the waltz because of its characteristic rise and fall movements. Due to this, it is often performed as the first dance at weddings or it can often be seen gracing the floor at many performances. This can be quite a contrast to the intensity of the tango and paso doble and the upbeat feel of the cha-cha and samba. However, the most contr...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, Over the past few days, me and my family have been enjoying the swimming pool, since next week we will be back at home. On Friday, it was a hot day, so we decided to stay home. My sister and I had to do some revision and work anyway so it was convenient for us. Me and my sister tried taking some photos of each other by the pool in the morning but we soon left and went back inside because it was just so hot; a drastic contrast to the other days. After lunch and revision, we went into the pool, at around 3:00pm. We swam around for a bit and ended up meeting this French family, who were also lodging at one of the holiday homes in the village. We got along pretty well, but later on, we soon realised that they owned very different opinions to ours (let's just put it that way). They had a 10 year old girl and her 14 year old sister there. The ten year old was very sociable and willing to talk to us. She couldn't swim, habitual ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, After a swift flight to Portugal, we arrived at Porto Airport. We got our luggage, went through security, and got a shuttle to the nearby car hire place. The shuttle, or should I say mini bus, was 1 minute long. Good thing too, because I could not find my seat belt and neither could my mum. It seemed like it was ripped out of its place. However, the driver was really nice and I was luckily because it was not  too rough on the road.  When we arrived at the car hire place, we were greeted by a nice worker, who got down my parents details and driving licences and even wrote his name in Japanese. We mentioned where we were from and how my mum was French and how my dad was half Japanese, half English. That's why he showed us that he could write his name in Japanese. He even recognised that my dad's name, Hideaki, meant the mountains and the sun in Japanese. I know, its quite cringey, but also really cool that he managed to ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, Recently, I watched the film Invictus, with my family. It has got a lot of really good actors in it like Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon. It's set during the beginning of Nelson Mandela's presidency in South Africa. Due to the fact that the South African football team has been doing particularly badly, Nelson asks the captain of the team who is played by Matt Damon, to try and win the World Cup. The film, I find, is really interesting because it doesn't just talk about white people discriminating black people, it also talks about how black people have decided to treat white people, considering what they did to them in the past. Nelson Mandela was locked away in prison for 27 years because of his racial background. He was dragged out of his home and locked away in a cell at arms length and width. Everyday, he was forced to break rocks with a pickaxe in the boiling sun. However, he survived and became the president of Sou...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, On Friday, I made ravioli with my mum. Before that, we went on a really long walk around the village to try a pick up some plums to make jam. I thought that it was only going to be a short walk but as we went further and further along, my mum suggested going on a little further, down a lane that I haven't really been down before. It was quite nice and we saw some beautiful horses on the way. However, we were really catching up with the rain and we felt a few drops of water on the way home. We speed walked down the public pathway and I was beginning to wonder where these plums were. Turns out, the plum trees were in the field, right outside our house. I didn't quite understand why we went on that long walk if the plums were right next to our house but we got a good workout in! There weren't as many plums as there were last time my mum came to pick them because the farmer already picked most of them but we still managed...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, On the way into town, me, my mum, and my sister were talking about my final piece in dance for year 11. I've got a couple songs that I think would be good to dance to for contemporary, since that's the style we'll be focusing on. The first song is called Faith's song by Amy Wadge and it's from the Welsh series called, Keeping Faith. I haven't watched the series before but my parents have and it's basically about a woman called Faith, who loses her husband, after he does not return home from work. There are a lot of plot twists and red herrings apparently and that's what makes the series so good. I was listening to the lyrics and I was trying to understand what they meant because it will help me pull off the emotion if I really feel the song. The second song I think would be good to dance to is Seven Years, by Lukas Graham. A lot of people have heard of this song and perhaps it's overplayed but ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, I recently went shopping to Tescos with my family, after going out for dinner and I was surprised to find a big billboard in the entrance way, which showed various photos of plastic pollution in our oceans. Admittedly, none of the plastic bags that you could see the fish and the turtles eating were Tesco branded but at least it showed that something is about to change and in some respects, Tesco want that change to happen. I also saw various plastic recycling bins where people can recycle plastic that the council cannot such as plastic film and laminated plastics. I don't quite know what makes their bins better than the council's but at least it shows that they're aware of the problem and are trying to take action to make our environment better. Also, Tesco has allowed refills for hand soap and I'm hoping shower gels and dish soap in the future since that's what we seem to be using most often. However, I ackno...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, Today, I thought it would be a good idea to show you what I really liked over July, since I don't usually do that. Some of these things include books, items, and events that I enjoyed so there's a whole range of things that I liked over the past month. So without further a do, let's get on with the post. I think the first thing that I've enjoyed over July is my work experience. I am so glad that I decided to take my placement at my old dance studio because I really did learn a lot about what it takes to run a studio and I have more of an insight into what I want to perhaps do in the future. I think that the students really enjoyed my choreography that I came up with and my teacher even said that it was fresh and new, which was what I was aiming for. I think that I'll perhaps do some freelance choreography for different studios before I think about running my own studio. I also really enjoyed having the stu...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  I was wondering what I should post for today's dance post so I decided to create a helpful gift-guide if you have friends or family members that are dancers. I said that this would be good for birthdays but you could also use these as gift ideas for Christmas too. So, without further ado, let's get on with the post. The first thing I would recommend getting any dancer is a foot stretcher. Whether they're a ballerina or not its always helpful for any Dancer to have something that they can use to stretch out their feet. I have an elastic band that I use to stretch out and strengthen my arch and really helps to get pretty ballerina feet. I also sometimes do this before Ballroom classes to get my feet warmed up because sometimes, when I'm standing in heels for hours, they can tend to hurt. That's why I think that gifting dancers foot stretchers can be really helpful.  Another gift that dancers would really f...