CFHTT interview with Team England Jazz

Hi guys,

CFHTT are excited to be interviewing Team England Jazz. This year is the first ever unified Team England Jazz with athletes from all across the country coming together to represent their country. We sat down with Team England Jazz manager Beckie to talk about what inspires her to create this Team.

Hi Beckie

Hi Caroline

This year we have the first unified Team England Jazz. What inspired you to create this team?

Last year I watched the Jazz finals at ICU Worlds and felt it was such a shame that England didn’t have any representation.  When I saw that applications were being accepted for the 2018-19 Team England Managers, I decided to go for it (after lots of encouragement from my mom and sister!) and was given the job!

 

Who are the coaches for TEJ and what is their background?

I am the coach and choreographer of SA Supreme who has competed in the Open Jazz division at Dance Worlds 5 times, being placed in the top ten each time. 

Our highest placing is 8^th which we are very proud of!  This year we are very lucky to be competing in both Jazz and Lyrical.  I have been dancing since the age of 6 starting with ballet and tap, then when I was 8 my mom opened her academy (then called the Sharon Ann Freestyle Dance Academy).  We introduced cheer into the academy in 2004 and competed for the first time in 2006.  We also competed in Pom for a while which is when I started choreographing more in order to take some of the workload off my mom!  I remember watching the Jazz division at FC Nationals and being really inspired, so I asked if we could start a Jazz team to which she answered ‘I really don’t have time for it but if you want to have a go that’s fine’.  We received an at large bid to Worlds after only competing for the second time at FC Internationals in 2012 which was such a huge honour! 

Rebecca Mancini is the head jazz and lyrical coach at ADA and is the coach/choreographer for ADA Virtues, their lyrical/contemporary Worlds team.  She trained at Swindon dance from a young age studying jazz and contemporary then going on to do an urban degree at the University of East London specialising in all urban styles.  She has competed with ADA Dark/Dominion Angels for 9 years at the USASF Dance Worlds and has been lucky enough to have placed in the top 3 five times.

Danielle Robinson is the head of dance at The Yorkshire Martyrs cheerleading and dance school.  She has danced since the age of 3, training at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance and then receiving her first class degree from the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts.  She has been a part of the first ever unified Team England Pom and now she is honoured to be a part of the coaching staff for Team England Jazz.

 

What did it take for athletes to make Team England Jazz?) e.g. requires skills/personality traits you were looking for.)

At tryouts, the dancers were asked to perform their pirouettes, turns in second/fouettes, and various leaps and jumps.  Dancers from different programmes tend to perform skills in slightly different ways, so we established exactly how we wanted the skills to be performed and observed who was applying this to their skills.  For me, the main obstacle for a unified team is training the dancers to dance in the same way so this was very important to us when selecting the team.  The dancers also had to learn a short piece of choreography so that we could observe their performance skills which for me is a major requirement.  We also observed who was picking up the choreography easily as this trait is a huge advantage for a team that trains monthly.  The girls were asked to improve at the end of the choreography so that they had the chance to show us any other skills/tricks that they hadn’t had the chance to show yet.  We also wanted to select dancers who had a strong work ethic and didn’t show signs of giving up when it got tough.
   

 

Which Dance teams do your TEJ athletes come from

SA Supreme
Intensity Explosion
Cheerforce Ten – Ladies of Ten
Yorkshire Martyrs
TCA (The Cheer Academy)
LIPA (Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts)

How often do you train?

We train once a month for 6 hours at a time, overall we have 8 training sessions in the UK and will have two, 2-hour training sessions in Florida.

 

What will your costume be like at Worlds?

Our costume is a beautiful Royal/Navy blue unitard with rose gold sequins on the chest underneath a mesh material:

What are the goals for TEJ this season?

Our goal is for the girls to put out as clean a routine as possible, to the best of their ability, to perform their hearts out and come off the floor with absolutely no regrets.  If they manage to achieve this then getting through to finals would be the icing on the cake!
How do you typically conduct a class from start to finish?.

The first two sessions were purely choreography, I wanted to get the routine finished as early as possible so that we had more time for cleaning.  We start with a warm-up that involves conditioning and stretching, we did some technique work in the earlier sessions but the past few we have mainly been concentrating on the routine.  I know how much work it takes for a team who trains weekly to get their routine clean enough for Worlds so feel that this should be our main priority during training.

We also give the girls weekly homework which they post on our Facebook group.  They have to post videos of themselves practising the routine on a weekly basis to receive feedback.  Sometimes the coaches give feedback and sometimes we ask them to give each other corrections.  They also have to work on their technique/skills and post videos of this too.

How was the TEJ Showcase?

It was very nerve-wracking as our last training session had been 4 weeks prior.  Although it wasn’t a ‘Worlds ready’ performance, it went so well considering the last time the girls had danced it together was 4 weeks ago!  Their energy and performance were amazing, you could see that they were truly enjoying being on that floor!

How are you mentally preparing your athletes for Worlds?

– By making them practice their routine weekly outside of training
– Having high but realistic expectations of them whilst at training
– Pushing them to be full out with their performance every time
– Making training sessions hard so that it will feel easy when they compete
– Doing positive visualisations of the routine

What other team are you most excited to see at Worlds and why?

Team Japan is always out of this World! I watched them live for the first time this year and they gave me goosebumps! I can’t wait to see what they bring this year.  I am also very excited to support all of the other Team England dance teams at ICU.

What is the best bit of advice you can give to the TEJ athletes?

Make sure you put everything into your performance and don’t hold back, you don’t want to come off the floor with any regrets.  Don’t let yourself be intimidated by all of the other amazing teams, let yourself be inspired by them and bring some of that inspiration into your performance.  At the end of the day, you can’t control what the other teams are doing, only what you are doing so be the best you can possibly be.

That’s great advice Beckie Team England Jazz are lucky to have you as their Manager. We can’t wait to see what this year’s Worlds has in store for Team England Jazz and no matter what happens you have already done the UK proud.

If you would like to follow their journey make sure you go to @teamenglandjazz