Dancers take to Hay Park

Students from Dance it South West are preparing for their annual concert which this year won’t be like any other.

This Saturday more than 100 students aged from three to 65 years old will take over the Hay Park Pavilion as they put on their annual dance show.

Dance it South West founder Tamara Sloan opened the studio in 2012 and has hosted a concert every year since.

“It started off in the Scout Hall in Carey Park with about 20 students and the next year we had to move to the Italian club because we had grown so big,” she said.

“We danced there for years but eventually outgrew that space and moved to Bunbury Regional Entertainment Centre.

“This year, because of the COVID restrictions, we couldn’t have all the students back stage at BREC and had to move the concert to an outdoor venue.”

Ms Sloan said it was important for the students’ mental health to host the annual event.

“We have five-year-olds enrol in February and the first thing they ask is ‘when do we get our costumes for the concert?’,” she said.

“The concert is the most exciting part for the students and they needed some kind of normalcy after their year was disrupted.”

But the global pandemic has made securing staging for the event extremely difficult.

“We tried to go local but they couldn’t offer us anything that could work,” Ms Sloan said.