Laura Holmes

I have been dancing since I was 3 1/2, when I started going to ballet on Saturday mornings in order to burn off some of my energy and, "learn to stand up straight and have nice posture," according to my mother. When I got a little bit older I added tap, modern and jazz to the dance disciplines that I was studying.

From the age of 11 the dancing bug really bit me and it was then that I began to train more seriously. It was also around this time that I began doing a lot more performing. Between the ages of 11 and 15 I spent my Christmastimes in the juvenile chorus of various pantomimes and other shows (untill I was too old to do it anymore) and also did some extra work on films.

When I was 11 I began attending Urdang Academy as an Associate Student at the weekends, studying ballet, repertoire and pointe work. I then moved onto London Studio Centre as an Associate Student untill I left secondary school. During this time I was also travelling to Battersea to take classes at the Royal Academy of Dance. When I was 18 I auditioned for the Royal Academy of Dance's 3 year BA course. During this time I trained very hard, 5 days a week, taking ballet class every morning aswell as studying other areas of classical dance such as National, repertoire, historic dance and the Kasarvina Syllabus. I also studied dance history, anatomy, Benesh and Laban notation.

I completed my degree in 2004 and I gained a 2.1 from the University of Durham in the Art and Teaching of Classical Ballet and gained my RAD teaching qualification. It was during my time at the RAD that I also gained my LRAD (Licentiate of the Royal Academy of Dance) and trained for my ballet exams up to Advanced 2. Since graduating from the RAD, I have enjoyed working in lots of areas of the ballet and dance world. I have done a lot of work in prep schools in Chelsea and Surrey, as well as running my own dance school for 4 years. In 2006 I took part in a summer arts programme targeted at children from underpriviledged backgrounds in outer London, which was followd by spending the summer of 2007 in Gjakova, Kosovo, working on a summer arts programme with children who were left affected by the 1999 conflict in the Balkans.

It was the summer camps that made me take a little detour from teaching dance full time and made me apply to do my PGCE in Primary Education. I completed my PGCE in the summer of 2009 and began teaching my own class of Year 3's at Auriol Junior School, Epsom, the following Spetmeber. I still teach at Auriol during the day and I am also dance and drama coordinator and run the extra-curricular dance programme there. Having studied ballet for 24 years and having it as such an important part of my life, I reached a point last year where I was really beginning to miss teaching it! So, I emailed Chadsworth to see if they had any appropriate adult classes that I could attend and this lead to me joining the staff in September 2010.

I am delighted to be part of Chadsworth and look forward to sharing my love and enjoyment of dance and performing with the next generation of dancers.