Keeping Up With Juliette

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Last Sunday, I went into town with my friend to have some lunch and hang out. Oddly enough, although I have made many trips out into town by bus with my sister, this was the first time that I'd actually taken the bus into Cambridge by myself. You might think that this is a bit late for me, but with Covid preventing me from taking the bus into college last year, I haven't gotten much practise. However, in the end, last Sunday I was able to take the 11:20 am City 8 bus into town and I survived! For half of the journey, I sat on the top part of the bus next to a young girl and her mum. The girl was making me do Tik Tok dances with her which was rather awkward but I'm glad that I was able to meet some new people on my travels. For the last half of the journey, I sat on the top front of the bus, basking in the sunshine until the bus eventually stopped at the station. It took me a while to get my bearings and figure out whic...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, Today I wanted to talk about quite a sensitive topic but I believe that it's also quite an important topic to talk about. After watching a lot of YouTube videos about dancers talking about the issue surrounding body image in dance, I wanted to give my take on it today. I was inspired by the stories of Kathryn Morgan and Joanne Clifton who have all dealt with body confidence in the past. This isn't something that I've fortunately had to deal with personally but as a person who enjoys dancing her free time, I can understand where some dancers are coming from.  I think that the main thing that dancers really struggle to maintain is balance, especially if they're involved in the competitive side of the industry. I think that it's absolutely important to keep athleticism in mind when you're a competitive and professional dancer. It becomes more difficult to execute some key bits of dance technique when you haven...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  You're probably reading the title of this post and are wondering what it is that I'm going to talk about today? Well, believe it or not, being your authentic and original self in dance is really important. What I mean by this is that it's sometimes important not to commercialise your movements and just to go where your body wants to go instead and express the emotion in the dance that you want to express. I for one am guilty of trying to add a difficult leap or a fan kick or a flip in my dance when in actual fact, sometimes a routine doesn't have to have that many layers in order to be great. Sometimes being organic and true to yourself is better than trying to do what every "dancer" does. This is something that I learnt recently in dance at school and I thought it would be good to share it on here. You're probably asking, if you're not doing what a "dancer" does, then what are you putti...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, On Thursday, I had my first day of school at my sixth form college. I was quite nervous because I didn't know what to expect and it was going to be a new environment for me to be in. This was especially enhanced by the 6 month lockdown period that meant I couldn't go to proper school for the whole time and so stepping into a new building and embracing a new way of life was definitely difficult for me. Although I knew I was finished, I felt like I still needed to go back to secondary school because I never really had time to say goodbye properly or formulate that I wasn't going to study at secondary school anymore.  However, bravely, I woke up on Thursday, had my breakfast, got ready, and got in the car with my dad to go to college. I arrived at 10:00am and signed my name on the register before putting on my mask, sanitising my hands, and going into the hall for assembly. Since we weren't allowed to change and since ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Over the years, I have become a big fan of Ben Fogle's New Lives in the Wild documentary, where he visits people who have given up the usual rat race of life, to start living in the wild pretty much self-sufficiently. If you don't know who Ben Fogle is, he is an adventurer turned TV-show host who, before he began filming his New Lives in the Wild documentary, did many crazy explorations across the world. One of his famous explorations was where he sailed the entire length of the Atlantic Ocean alongside his partner, James Cracknell. I remember reading about this scary adventure during an English exam where we were given an extract of Ben's documented story. I found it crazy how his boat capsized many times and he still managed to cross the entire length of the Atlantic Ocean. Despite failing his A-level exams, Ben has managed to accomplish this as well as reaching the top of Mount Everest in 2018. He is a true inspirat...

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,  It was the beginning of the Easter holidays and regardless of whether or not we were in quarantine, I was ready to relax a little bit. So me and my sister Alice, decided to watch a movie outside. However, we couldn't really see the screen very well so my dad proposed that we build a tent so that we could watch the movie. The last time I built a tent, we were on a camping holiday and I'm pretty sure that I had to ask my dad for help. That camping holiday always seems to bring fond memories because the first campsite we booked was right next to a road and it was really rubbish. However, we managed to find a second campsite by this big farmhouse and a field and it was brilliant. We ate porridge and bacon sandwiches by the fire and although it was simple, it was a holiday to remember. Now it was time for us to build the tent again and we surprisingly succeeded. Aside from the fact that I read step 3 on the instructions first...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  When people say that interviews can go both ways, believe them. I've been talking a lot about this competitive sixth form college that I've been really trying hard to get to. I went to their open evening and the students seemed really nice and the subjects actually seemed quite interesting. Consequently, I was really quite interested in going there. I went to this other sixth form that I was initially quite interested in, which does the International Baccalaureate, as they offered small taster sessions for year 10 students and I really wanted to go. I was quite disappointed as some of the subjects initially seemed quite wishy washy and not clear and their punctuality was not great, so this other competitive college seemed like the best place to go. Some people I knew really well, also expressed an interest in going there so I thought I could go there too. However, I was really unimpressed by the interview they gave. Firs...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, I know that I was supposed to write a review of the Greatest Dancer for today but I think that I'm going to move that to next week because I really want to talk about something that I think is really meaningful. As much as I love dance, I do feel as though the meaning of dance has changed over the years and that people nowadays are doing dance for different reasons. In the past, dance was based a lot more around creativity and a different way to express how you feel about something. I think that tap dance was actually a style performed on the streets, where the dancers would literally attach pieces of metal to the soles of their shoes and create a completely different way of moving. Now, we see this form of dance on Broadway musicals like Chicago, where the style is now associated with class and elegance. I think that it's completely natural that things change as everything has to evolve with it's time, in order to be...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, If you follow me on Instagram, @jujupage1, you will know that I've spent the last 3 days on a little family holiday in Yoxford, Suffolk. I shall be posting all about how it went but today, on New Year's Day when you'll be reading this, I wanted to talk about something that you may find useful for the rest of the year. We want to start this new decade on a high so today I'll be focusing on the topic of perseverance. Now, on my holiday, I watched the first part of a new film that I've never seen before and it's called Eddie the Eagle. If you're a late 80s kid and British, you'll most likely know who Eddie the Eagle is but if you didn't know who he was like me, he was the first British ski jumper to compete in the winter Olympics, since 1928. His real name is Eddie Edwards but he was nicknamed Eddie the Eagle since he was able to compete at the age of 22 years old. Despite being passionate in spor...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, I think that the so called 2010s have been an evolutionary set of years. Personally for me, since I'm only 15 years old and going into the year 2020, there's a lot to say about this past decade because I learnt how to read, write, and generally deal with life. Going from a 6 year old in 2010 to a 15 year old in 2019, obviously I have gone from a child to a teenager and have grown drastically, I hope, in in intelligence, personality, and wisdom. However, there's a lot more to be acknowledged about myself because at the age of 7 years old in 2011, I first started doing dance properly. I did commercial street and I have really, I believe, excelled in it as of thus far and it has actually become one of my favourite styles of dance that I still continue to do and enjoy. However, I've also grown in confidence ever since I published my first article on this blog at the age of 12 years old. It was only a What I Eat In A D...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, On Sunday, before going to my dance exam, me, my mum, and my sister all went to get our Christmas tree. My mum had to deliver a cake first for a young girl's birthday party, so on the way back we got our Christmas tree. We bought the tree from the usual rectory farm in Milton. We walked in and immediately started to claim our tree since we were a bit late in getting ours this year. We usually get the tree on the 1st of December as a tradition but we couldn't do that this year because my mum had a pop-up restaurant at home and we needed the space in the living room. One funny conversation I heard between a man and his wife, was about their tree. The woman said "I think that this is a nice tree!" Then the man replied saying "It's a nice tree but it's too big!" If you've ever wondered why we don't bring our dad along to get the tree is because A, it's not really his thing, and B, becau...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, Today, I'm going to be talking about Karim and Amy's Viennese waltz, Alex and Neil's jive, and Emma and Anton's jazz routine. I know that Karim's dance didn't go as planned because Karim was a bit nervous last Saturday but there are definite areas where he can improve and hopefully do better next time. I'm also going to talk about Alex and Neil's jive as I feel as though Alex is really improving as a dancer and we can see her personality shine through in more and more of her dances. Lastly, I'm also going to talk about Emma and Anton's amazing jazz routine, as I thought that it was really her style of dance.  Last Saturday, I thought that Karim had a breakdown. I think that everyone in the audience knew that he could dance better than he did. However, it's like Motsi said, he's got to stop letting the pressure get to him. I feel like the Viennese waltz has been the most difficult ...