Bulls School students swap books for ballet shoes as Royal New Zealand Ballet educator visits

Bulls School juniors get moving with Royal New Zealand Ballet educator Lucy-Margaux Marinkovich. Photo / Supplied

Pens were cast aside, books were closed and ballet shoes were put on when Bulls School students were visited by a Royal New Zealand Ballet (RNZB) educator recently.

Lucy-Margaux Marinkovich took the juniors and seniors for an hour of dancing, moving and grooving followed by a question and answer session.

It was the third time someone from the RNZB has visited and Bulls School sports and cultural co-ordinator Shannon Skelton-Morris said student participation was growing.

"Each year at Bulls School we've just had more and more kids joining the workshops, from kids that have been dancing for a long time to kids with no experience at all.

"This year we had 25 to 30 kids in each workshop. When we started out, we probably had about 15."

The junior workshop was mostly about general movement, while the seniors did body percussion and were taught manoeuvres from Dancing with Mozart.

The increased numbers might be due to more boys getting on board.

"Quite a few of the boys turned their noses up at doing the ballet workshops at first," Skelton-Morris said.

"But as soon as I said to them 'actually when you're playing rugby, you need strength, you need balance and you need flexibility' they started getting more involved."

Bulls School often gets guests in to promote physical activities. Almost two months ago Jump Jam creator Brett Fairweather visited and there will be more to follow.

Skelton-Morris has Japanese drummers lined up next, as well as Palmerston North Boys' High School personnel and some kapa haka groups.

She said it is important to bring in professionals who can support the kids and help with their development.

"These people are specific in their roles, they inspire the kids and having someone different is always far more exciting than having the teacher in front of them.

"In these experiences they get regular exercise, they learn lots of things to do with music and timing, and the skills are transferable into other sports too."

When Skelton-Morris was at school they did not have many programmes that inspired dance, so she went to Shirley McDouall's School of Dance in Whanganui.

"Not many people know that there is an RNZB educator that will go into schools, the only way that you'd know is if you're into ballet," she said.

"Lucy was an amazing educator, any schools that are interested should contact them through their website because it would be really cool to have more schools involved."