KATIE VENTRESS explains why her York dance school not only puts on shows - but raises money for good causes too
THE Katie Ventress School of Dance, in James Street, York, was founded in 2014. We put on dance shows for friends and family every other year and we always donate 100 per cent of the profits to charity.
Since 2014 the school has raised more than £13,000 for various different charities.
Every other Christmas the show includes the younger children from the dance school and those profits always go to SNAPPY.
Every other spring we do a larger show for all the older students and choose a different charity every time. We have just done our spring show, after delaying it for a year due to the pandemic, and we raised £4041.15 for Martin House Children's Hospice.
Martin House provides free hospice care for children and young people with life-limiting illnesses, and we chose them because they provide help and support for several families within our dance school family.
Having a child or a sibling with a potentially life-shortening condition can take people to the heights and depths of emotion - it can be overwhelmingly busy, enormously satisfying, lonely and isolating. Martin House provides the opportunity for families to meet others, to make friends and to share experiences.
Our spring show this year was called Dancing Through Time and included 170 dancers aged five-19.
The show took a journey through the past 100 years, starting in the 1920s and travelling through to the Covid lockdowns of 2020.
It provoked all sorts of emotions from the audience who laughed and cried throughout the show.
From tears of sadness in the 1940s as people were reminded of the loved ones lost in the war, to feelings of pride in their young dancers for overcoming the tough year of 2020 and looking positively towards the future.
I am incredibly proud of our entire dance family! The students, teachers, parents who helped, friends who volunteered, so many people came together to make this show as successful as it was.
Thank you to everyone for their generosity in raising such a huge amount for such an incredible charity.
For more information on the dance school visit: www.katieventressschoolofdance.co.uk
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