Through the Generations at BKSOD
Hello and welcome to our third article in the Through the Generations series!
This time we are focusing on the lovely Shefika, who has a child who attends ballet classes with us.
Shefika generously shared her experiences of attending ballet classes when she was younger:
"I moved to Southgate when I was 6 years old, it was a brand new environment for me and new school and new friends. I always felt a little different back then, as firstly I was Turkish Cypriot and there wasn’t much Cypriots in Southgate back then.
"I felt so uncomfortable and left out, at the time all the girls in my group were blonde with blue eyes, English and slim. I felt really out of place, I was very tanned, dark features, dark hair… I always said to my mum, I don’t look like the other girls, I’m different, I don’t want to come back anymore… so after my last exam I never returned…"
She then spoke about her daughter's experience of ballet classes which, wonderfully, has massively differed to her own:
"Fast forward many years later, my 3 year old kept telling me she wanted to start ballet, so I remembered Brenda Keys and wondered if they were still running, which they were, I emailed and took my little one to a taster session….
"She really enjoyed it, what I loved the most were the diversity in the group, the nationalities, skin types etc, I didn’t want my daughter to ever feel different or left out."
This was very heartwarming to hear and we are so glad that Shefika's daughter is enjoying her lessons and feels included. She had her very first watching week at the end of this term, which was very exciting. Shefika, we hope you enjoyed seeing what she has gotten up to in class!
Thank you for sharing your story with us and we are so glad that things have changed since you attended ballet classes.
Our school is truly is a representation of Southgate and its wonderful, diverse community and we are proud to be exactly that. We believe that ballet should not be an exclusive art form and we welcome absolutely everybody to come and dance with us. After all... everybody deserves to experience the joy of dancing!
If you haven't tried it yet, we encourage you to join in: as well as our children's classes, we have just opened registration for an adult class. So when we say everybody, we mean EVERYBODY!!
Thank you for reading, and stay tuned to hear from more Brenda Key families.
BKSOD x
