Annual Theatre Show
Our annual show is one of the most exciting parts of the Flame year. It gives every child the opportunity to perform in a professional theatre, share what they have been learning and experience the wonderful feeling of being part of a full production.
We work hard to make our Shows inclusive, affordable and genuinely enjoyable for the children taking part and the families watching. The experience is designed around our dancers, with fairness, confidence and enjoyment at the heart of the decisions we make.
The Show Experience
Each class prepares four dances, giving children several opportunities to perform and allowing them to show different styles, skills and performance qualities.
Our teachers carefully plan formations so that every dancer has opportunities to perform at the front. For our younger dancers, positions change from one dance to the next so that everyone gets their moment, while from Year 2–3 upwards, changing formations within a routine becomes part of what the dancers are learning too. However old they are, we want every child to feel seen and to know that their contribution matters.
We don't expect perfection. The Show celebrates progress, confidence, teamwork and the courage it takes to step onto a stage.
A Show for Every Child
The Annual Show is for all Flame dancers aged three and over, from our youngest Hwyl a Sbri children through to our older graded students.
Teachers create routines that are appropriate for the age and ability of each class, making the experience exciting and achievable while still giving dancers something to work towards.
Taking part is optional, but we hope every child will be able to join us. The routines are created with the whole class in mind and there is something really special about seeing the children share everything they've worked on with their families.
Performances Designed Around Children
Rather than placing every Flame class into one very long production, we divide our dancers between several smaller Shows.
This means each class can perform four dances while the individual performances still remain relatively short. Younger children aren't expected to spend an entire day waiting backstage, families can enjoy plenty of dancing without sitting through an extremely long production and the dancers have much more opportunity to actually enjoy being on stage.
Every five years, we bring the whole school together for a larger celebration, creating an extra-special production involving all dancers from across Flame.
Learning & Performing
Show preparation begins when classes return in September, with all four routines taught gradually during normal weekly lessons. Teachers introduce the choreography in manageable sections, giving children plenty of time to remember their movements, understand their formations and become confident in what they're doing.
As the routines develop, Show music and practice videos are shared through the Parent and Student Portals, so dancers can listen to their music and practise at home between lessons. These resources are there to reinforce what has already been taught in class, helping children become increasingly familiar and confident with their routines as Show weekend approaches.
Show Season develops much more than choreography. Children learn to recognise musical cues, remember longer sequences, move between formations, work as a team and perform expressively. They also learn something particularly valuable about live performance: how to keep going confidently when something doesn't happen exactly as expected.
Their normal dance development continues throughout this part of the year too, with new and familiar skills incorporated into their routines at an appropriate level for each class. When families watch the finished performance, they're not just seeing four dances; they're seeing the confidence, independence, musicality and skills that have been developing week by week in class.
Costumes
The costumes are often one of the biggest highlights of Show season for our dancers. Finding out which costumes their class has been allocated each year is all part of the excitement, and with four different dances, they get to experience the fun of changing character, style and look throughout their Show.
Every routine has its own costume, chosen to suit the dance and help bring it to life on stage. We always hire our Show costumes, which means we can give the children that full theatre experience without asking families to purchase several outfits that may only be worn once. It keeps the cost of taking part much more manageable and means beautiful costumes can be enjoyed by dancers again and again.
It also means that costume shopping isn't another job for our parents. We organise the costumes, accessories, sizing and changes; families don't need to source or put together outfits for each routine.
There are just a few basics we ask dancers to have for Show season: their nude leotard (for safeguarding and ease of changing), the dance shoes they normally wear for class and their Flame uniform. We'll tell families exactly what they need and when they need it, but everything else is taken care of by us.
The Theatre Rehearsal
Before the Show, our dancers attend a rehearsal at the theatre. This isn't simply an extra opportunity to practise the dances; it's an important part of preparing every dancer for the performance.
For our younger dancers and those performing for the first time, the rehearsal gives them the chance to explore the stage, practise their entrances and exits, learn where they'll wait and understand how everything will work before there's an audience watching. When Show day arrives, they've already done it once. They've stood on the stage, they know where they're going and the theatre already feels much more familiar. This is often where we get all our breakthroughs, and those who were very scared or nervous to perform on show day, leave so excited and arrive on show day with so much confidence.
For our older and more experienced dancers, it's valuable time to transfer everything we've worked on in the studio onto the much larger theatre stage. We can properly set spacing, entrances and exits and really nail the formation changes within their routines. Those formations are an important part of their choreography and help create the patterns, movement and overall visual impact of the dances on stage.
Taking away the unknowns while getting those final details right helps us set every dancer up for an exciting Show day that they can really enjoy.
Backstage
Once dancers are signed in, they're looked after throughout the performance by the Flame team, their teachers and our approved, licensed chaperones.
Our backstage team gets everyone ready, helps with costume and shoe changes and makes sure each class is in the right place at the right time. Parents don't need to come backstage or manage costume changes themselves; safeguarding and the wellbeing of our dancers guide all of our backstage arrangements.
For our youngest children especially, we want backstage to feel like part of the fun. They're surrounded by familiar teachers and friends, and their theatre rehearsal means the surroundings and routine are already much more familiar.
Parents can take their seats, enjoy the performance and let us take care of everything behind the scenes. It's their opportunity to simply be the audience for once, to watch their child perform, see the progress they've made and enjoy how proud and happy they are to be up there.
Tickets
Our Shows are for the families and friends of our dancers and tickets aren't sold to the general public or to anyone outside the Flame community. We want the people in the audience to be there to support the children performing on stage.
Every participating household receives a guaranteed initial ticket allocation before any additional seats are made available. This is typically around four or five tickets per family, although the exact number can vary depending on the number of dancers and families taking part in each performance.
Once families have had the opportunity to claim their initial allocation, any tickets that haven't been taken are released back to the families in that Show. This gives those who would like to invite more grandparents, relatives or friends the opportunity to purchase additional seats without taking away another family's initial allocation.
Depending on availability, families can sometimes secure quite a few extra seats in this second release — some of our dancers have ended up with 15 family members and friends in the audience cheering them on.
Our seating is allocated, and full details of the ticket allocation and release dates are shared with families for each year's Show.
Photos & Video
Our audiences are proudly phone-free during the performance. It's something our Flame families really value and help us to protect; our parents are often the first to remind one another to put phones away so that everyone can see the stage and enjoy the children performing without screens held up in front of them.
Personal photography and filming therefore aren't permitted during the Show. As well as protecting the privacy of all the children taking part, it creates the kind of audience experience our families have come to expect: everyone watching, applauding and sharing the moment together rather than viewing it through a screen.
We arrange professional photography and filming for families who would like those memories captured, so nobody needs to choose between watching their child properly and having something to look back on afterwards.
The exact media options, prices and ordering information are shared with participating families for each year's Show.
Your Show Information
If your child is taking part, you don't need to remember all of the practical details months in advance.
As Show season progresses, the Shows section of your Flame Parent Portal becomes your personalised Show hub. It brings together the information that applies specifically to your dancer and household, including their performance allocation, rehearsal information, Show fees and packages, Show music and practice videos, ticket information and the practical details you'll need as the big weekend gets closer.
We'll let you know when there's something you need to check or do, so you can enjoy watching the Show come together without having to work out which information applies to your family.
The most important thing for us is that every child leaves the theatre feeling proud of themselves, valued within their class and excited by what they've achieved, and that their families get to share in that moment with them.