Keeping Up With Juliette

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, Today, I'm going to be updating you on all the things that I'm currently doing in dance, as part of a mini dance diary entry. I hope you enjoy!🙂💜 As I've mentioned last Saturday, I'm now doing weekly street dance classes with a girl called Ivy, who joined my Easter and February half term street dance workshops that I hosted as part of my fundraising for Tanzania. We began the sessions on Tuesday this week at 4:30pm and it was a really fun hour-long session. I did a warm up and a cool down and I included some elements of technique in the class; we worked on our splits and general flexibility. Just some more in depth dance elements that I thought would really improve her performance. I also taught a new routine to the song Now or Later by Sage the Gemini. It was really challenging because it was really fast and quite technical but I think Ivy really enjoyed it nevertheless. I'm glad I get to work with her on her...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, Last Saturday was an amazing night. The Strictly Come Dancing 2020 final was filled with amazing dances, I was absolutely blown away! Congratulations on Bill and Oti for winning this year's series. I'm so happy that Oti got yet another win and I'm happy that a slightly more elderly man with fantastic dance talent, was able to win that trophy. Truly, well done to them! However, I was also just as impressed with the effort that everybody else in the final put in on that night. The competition was so close this year, I wasn't sure who was going to win because everyone had so much talent. Consequently, I would like to showcase each of the couple's dances that I loved from the night, today! I think it's only fair to start off with Bill and Oti's performance since they did win. I loved their showdance that they did to the song The Show Must Go On by Queen. Not only was the song very meaningful and an excellent...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, I know that this series of Strictly Come Dancing has been a bit shorter than other series but I still can't believe that today is the final! If you need a reminder of who remains on the competition then you should know that there are only 4 couples left. There's Bill and Oti, Jamie and Karen, Harvey and Janette, and Maisie and Gorka. I'm so happy that these are the couples remaining because they all deserve to be there. They all danced amazingly well last week and I can't wait to talk about a couple of them today. Bill and Oti's tango to Metallica was probably one of the most creative tangos that I think I've ever seen in my life. When Bill said that he was going to do a dance to heavy metal music, I wasn't really sure what it was going to look like at first. I mean, I know that the tango is quite staccato and fierce but I thought that the dance was going to get overshadowed by the music. However, it was...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, I can't believe that the end of Strictly Come Dancing 2020 is so close right now. It's the semi-final today and I'm excited to see who will make it to the final! However, last week it was musicals week on Strictly Come Dancing and there were a lot of amazing dances. I especially liked Maisie and Gorka's jive to Little Shop of Horrors as I thought that that was really fun. I also liked Ranvir and Giovanni's Viennese Waltz to She Used to Be Mine as I thought that she told the story really well. Let's talk about these two couples today! I really liked Maisie and Gorka's jive because I think that they really brought out the element of fun in the dance. I thought that the music suited the jive well and I thought that Maisie's acting was on point throughout the whole of the dance. It was a really fast-paced and difficult routine for a celebrity to do but I think that Maisie handled it just fine because she...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, I feel like Strictly has a real Christmas atmosphere to it so I thought that I would make my reviews a part of Blogmas. Enjoy! I'm really happy that Harvey got a perfect score for his couple's choice routine last Saturday. In most circumstances, the celebrity dancers want to get a perfect score and so they kind of expect it to happen. However, this came to the surprise of Harvey and I truly think that he deserved it because he worked hard and really executed the dance well. Like Craig, I wasn't thinking too much about the dance itself because I was just enjoying watching it in the moment. I really liked the choreography that Janette did because it was a nice mixture between contemporary and street commercial and it really suited Harvey's style well. What I really liked about the dance also were the lifts. At the beginning of Strictly, Harvey was really nervous to do lifts because he felt like he wasn't going to ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  I think that there were so many amazing dances performed last Saturday on Strictly. I was really impressed by how much everyone had improved since the beginn ing and I think that we can really start to see who has advanced in their level of dance. Today, however, I'm going to be talking about Ranvir and Giovanni's first Argentine tango of the 2020 series as well as Jamie and Karen's amazing street commercial routine. I think that these two dancers have really improved from the beginning and I would love to highlight that today. I was really impressed by Ranvir's execution of the Argentine tango. It was really a superb effort. She kept her performance dramatic through her facial expressions and she really tried to remain as close to Giovanni as possible. I also really liked how still she remained in her lifts and I think that that really enhanced the execution. What I thought she could improve on for next time was k...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  On Saturday, I watched the first episode of Strictly Come Dancing 2020. I was hoping to write a whole lot of reviews for this year about each of the celebrity dancers on the show, like I did with the dancers last year. However, with Covid-19, I wasn't even sure if the show would continue this year. When they announced that there was going to be a show, I was happy but there were clearly many changes that the producers of Strictly had to put in place. Firstly, Strictly started a little later this year. Secondly, the partners all met a few months before the opening night and have been living together as a household. Thirdly, apart from a few people, there is no live audience. Fourthly, there are fewer contestants and all the group dances have been pre-filmed to reduce the transmission of the virus. All this has been put in place to ensure that everyone can stay as safe as they possibly can but I must admit, when I saw all t...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  If you're a dancer, you'll understand how pricey dance shoes can get. In any style of dance really: ballet, jazz, tap, and street, the shoes you'll need are expensive. My black dance trainers that I use for street, cost around £30 and my  black dance shoes that I use for ballroom and Latin cost around £50. The previous pair of ballroom shoes that I wore when I started classes were sparkly, silver Freed's and although they were definitely really pretty, they were also really expensive and cost around £40-£50 so there is no doubt that dance shoes can make you spill your money a bit.  However, there is often a reason for this and hopefully you'll find the right pairs of shoes for you, that will fit your price range as best as possible. The other day, I was watching a video made by Freed of London, on how they make their dance shoes. All I can say is, the whole procedure is incredibly extensive.  Unlike other dance...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  For today's post, in continuation with my All about:____ series, I'll be talking about the well-known ballroom and Latin dancer, Shirley  Ballas! I was always sceptical about who would be best suited to replace the previous head judge of Strictly Come Dancing, Len Goodman, and when they announced in 2017 that it was Shirley Ballas, I didn't really know who she was at first. However, I remember my dad walking into the living room when she was introduced to Strictly and he said "oh my God, is that Shirley Ballas?" so I kind of gathered that she was a real star of her time. BBC Strictly Come Dancing As part of one of my Blogmas posts for 2018 (you can read the post here ), I wrote about my dance icons of the year and alongside Maddie Ziegler and Claudia Dean, I also included Shirley Ballas because my mum came into the room one day and said "you have to watch Shirley and her partner Corky dancing, it's a...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, Firstly, I just wanted to say how grateful I am for your viewership on my previous post about Black Lives Matter. I posted what I would believe to be an unpopular opinion, considering what the majority of people have said on the media but I did believe that my message was important so if you haven't read that post yet, then I'll link it below for you to give it a read. Secondly, there are also far too many of you guys who are amazing readers of my blog but are not subscribed so if you haven't already done so, please click on the subscribe button at the top of this page and enter in your email address. You can unsubscribe from this at any point but this just  ensures that you receive a notification every time I upload a new post because I know how much you really like to read them. And without further a due, let's get on with today's post! 💜 In continuation with my All about:_____ series, I'm going to be tal...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  I wanted to create a dance series that encompasses things in the dance industry that people wouldn't really talk about or see. The series is called "All about:_____," and I'm going to be explaining the new things that choreographers, dancers, and people have come up with that change the way we look at dance and in today's post, I'll be talking about Burn the Floor. Burn the Floor is a ballroom and Latin dance company, produced by Harley Medcalf, that has performed many famous live shows across the world. Some of these places include the West End in London and Broadway in New York City. This incredibly successful theatre group has performed in over 130 different countries and has never failed to deliver on their jaw-dropping, electrifying, and original choreography that intrigues their audiences. Many of the company's cast alumni are recognisable ballroom and Latin world champions that have performed...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Yes, if you haven't already figured it out, I'm writing this post on a bit of a whim. Every time there's an international or national day of anything, A)I always end up missing it and B) I tend not to care that much about it anyway. When it comes to celebrations like International Women's Day or National Siblings Day, it's not that I don't care about women's rights or I've just completely forgotten about my sister but I'm just one of those people who believes that these sorts of things should be celebrated everyday. I'm not one of those people who understands why you need to have a specific day to remember these things. You're probably wondering why I'm then making a post about International Dance Day. Well, I still think it's a bit rubbish to have just a S-P-E-C-I-F-I-C day to celebrate dance, when dancers celebrate it every time they dance. However, scrolling through Instagra...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  There's a common misconception that in order to become a great dancer, you have to start your training at a very young age. Whilst this definitely makes it easier to ensure that you're an advanced dancer later in your training, like many other things, it's not impossible to be something great starting a little later. Many dancers who do start late, are often self-taught and in my opinion, they can often be more outgoing than the trained dancers you see. This is mostly because self-taught dancers have to work a little harder to get noticed, whilst trained dancers have been introduced to the dance setting ever since they were young. One famous self-taught dancer is Matt Steffanina, who began teaching himself how to dance at 13 years old and now has a successful YouTube channel, where he showcases his dances. To me, dancers like him show that anything is possible, if you've got the right mindset and work ethic. I al...