Young ambassador for SeeAbility, 10 year old Isabella from Sticklands Primary School in Evershot, Dorset, is joining forces with her Mum, Alice Moore to put on a Strictly style show at the Octagon Theatre in Yeovil on the evening of Friday, 8 July. Entitled Strictly SeeAbility, all monies raised on the night will go to SeeAbility’s ‘Children in Focus’ campaign.
Isabella has been learning to dance ballroom and Latin at the Allen School of Dance in Yeovil for the last four years and has brought together her dance friends to stage this ‘one night only’ show. Six local figures have been chosen to take on the challenge of learning not one but two dances with their ‘professional’ dance partners from the dance centre. They have each been given either a ballroom or Latin dance and in addition to that they will need to learn how to waltz to compete in a waltzathon after they have danced their couple’s routine. Each couple will be judged on their routines by professional dance teachers, although the audience will also be able to vote for their favourite to win, so the leader board could very well change in the interval of the Show!
One of the amateur dancers is Isabella’s Mum, Marketing Manager for private equity company, Rutland Partners; corporate partner to SeeAbility for 2016. Alice said: “Since I started working with SeeAbility through Rutland’s corporate partnership Isabella has taken a great interest in the work that the charity does. She is especially keen to raise money for their ‘Children in Focus’ campaign and raise awareness of what it is like to live with sight impairment and has organised an awareness day at her school earlier this year where children and teachers, through a series of fun activities, were able to experience what is like to live with varying degrees of sight loss. This show gives Isabella the chance to raise money and awareness for SeeAbility in a fun way that includes all her friends from the dance centre.”
SeeAbility’s ‘Children in Focus’ is a national campaign that is focussing on getting specialist sight tests for children in special schools in England. For the estimated 100,000 children that attend these schools, almost 40,000 will have never had a sight test, despite being 28 times more likely to have a sight problem than others. All the funds raised from ‘Strictly SeeAbility’ will allow the charity to conduct these much needed specialist sight tests and continue campaigning for them to become standard procedure in special schools throughout the country.
One such school that will benefit from SeeAbility’s work, hopefully in the not too distant future, will be Fairmead School in Yeovil, who are in full support of the Show and the work that SeeAbility does. So much so, Mr Ben Crump, Assistant Head, at Fairmead has agreed to be one of the amateur dancers and will be dancing a jive with Marie Brolly on the night. The other amateur dancers include 2Lt Kyle Moore, Platoon Commander for 6RIFLES based in Dorchester who will be dancing a Cha Cha Cha, Greg Morrison, Principal at Preston School, who will be dancing a tango, Trudy Dyke, from Specsavers, who will be dancing a Pasodoble and Gill Lawson, from Sherborne School, who will be dancing a Quickstep.
There will be lots of sequins and sparkle on the night with the show hosted by west-end star of The Play That Goes Wrong, Bryony Corrigan, and celebrity photographer, Paul Dyke. Tickets can be purchased through the box office at the Octagon Theatre or online at www.octagon-theatre.co.uk and cost just £12 for adults and £9.50 for OAPs and children.