Footwork: Adults & Preschoolers

About the workshop

Designed for children ages three to six, Rolypoly Family's well-loved Dance Playground explores dance and movement through unusual play structures to develop creativity and body confidence. Dance Playground allows children to independently express their thoughts and learn about body awareness through exploring and performing movement safely and freely. They will learn that everyone is unique and that there is no one right way to dance.

About Bernice Lee

Bernice is an artist, performance maker and facilitator, and dance practitioner. She teaches and has taught a diverse range of students, from toddlers to pre-professional dancers to adults beginning or needing to dance, and has performed for babies and grown-ups alike. She is co-director of Rolypoly Family with Faye Lim. She has a joint practice, Tactility Studies, with Chong Gua Khee. Bernice’s work is driven by playing and performing. She cares about expanding our imagination of and for the future, and constantly seeks languages for transformation. She performed and created with Maya Dance Theatre and Frontier Danceland (2011-2017), holds a BFA (Hons) in Dance from The Ohio State University and an MA in Fine Arts from LASALLE College of the Arts.

About Neo Kexin

Kexin is a contemporary dance practitioner with roots in Chinese dance. Driven by the seemingly contradictory nature of impermanence, she seeks to find the space in between, and the means to shed the tangible and intangible burdens we carry through life.

About Rolypoly Family

Rolypoly Family stretches our experience of dance and play – centered in delight, respect and safety. We create communal dance experiences to honour and celebrate every person.

Established in 2018, Rolypoly Family, led by Faye Lim and Bernice Lee, provides a safe, respectful and imaginative space for children and families to dance and play. With extensive professional backgrounds in performing, creating and teaching, Faye and Bernice incorporate their love for dance and movement, together with their expertise in facilitation and pedagogy, in Rolypoly Family’s classes and programmes. They believe that playing and dancing are important components of life, and in our modern society inundated with tech and instant gratification, children and families can benefit from more playing and dancing.

The Rolypoly Family name is a statement of these beliefs – that families come in all shapes and sizes, that kinship can grow through creative and physical play (yes, rolling!), and that rhyming is as fun in language as in dance.

About the workshop

Dance Thrilogy will be showcasing our pre-school syllabus from our highly acclaimed READY SET DANCE series. The class comprises five components: a welcome song, warm up, basic ballet and port de bras, free movement and follow and travel.

Its learning objectives include musicality, body awareness, listening skills, travelling while maintaining posture and arms, intuitive dancing as well as pattern and direction. The class will introduce the foundations of classical ballet such as positions for arms, feet and legs.

About Kamilah Turner

Hailing from the United States, Kamilah has worked professionally as a performer and trainer with various dance companies in the US and Britain for the last 20 years. She has extensive experience both as an instructor as well as a performer. This includes having trained under several US dance legends in ballet and modern dance. Highlights of her career include performing with the Lion King cast on London’s West End, where her leadership and teaching skills were put to good use conducting workshops for the company. Following that up with seven tours with Disney Cruises, Kamilah knows better than most just how to take a song and bring it to live with music and movement. Between performing tours, Ms Kamilah hones her teaching skills attending masterclasses and workshops, and teaching at various dance schools.

About Dance Thrilogy

Located in Marina Square Mall, Dance Thrilogy (D3) distinguishes itself as one of Singapore's top dance schools. Offering a diverse range of training in ballet, tap, jazz, acrobatics and musical theatre, it nurtures talent and fosters creativity.

Since 2014, it has boasted a distinction rate of over 90% in RAD UK and CSTD Australia exams. Its dancers regularly top competitions, consistently claiming championship titles. Few would argue that D3 produces outstanding versatile dancers; the standard of the average D3 dancer is significantly high.

Aside from its amazing annual concerts, it regularly captivates audiences with outstanding performances. It has collaborated with  Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, Mediacorp, Asia’s Got Talent, Marina Bay Sands, and has supported NKF at their special events.

About the workshop

Introduce your young ones to the world of dance through this fun and interactive workshop, designed for preschoolers ages four to six, as well as their guardians! Together, you'll learn a simple pas de deux, a duet dance, designed to encourage connection, movement, and creativity. This unique session is the perfect opportunity for families to connect with each other through movement. No experience needed, just bring your smiles!

About Nicole Chai

Nicole started dancing at the age of seven under the tutelage of Ms Ong Long at Singapore Ballet Academy. After completing a Bachelor of Arts at National University of Singapore, she decided to follow her passion and pursue dance at LASALLE College of the Arts. In 2019, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Dance with First Class Honours.

Over the years, she has performed in works choreographed by renowned local and international choreographers such as Martin Schick (Switzerland), Annie & Franck Apertet (France), Theo Clinkard (UK), Jacky Yu (Hong Kong) and Kuik Swee Boon (Singapore). Interested in being more than just a performer, she ventured into teaching, arts management and choreography. Her choreographic works have been presented at various platforms including the ASEAN Youth Cultural Forum, Shantanjali Arts Festival and M1 Contact Contemporary Dance Festival’s Open Stage. Apart from teaching and assisting ballet and contemporary masterclasses, she also had the opportunity to teach creative movement, ballet and jazz at various international schools in Singapore.

In 2017, she joined the Singapore Ballet Academy faculty and has had the opportunity to learn alongside esteemed colleagues. In NUS Dance Synergy, Nicole undertook community-based dance projects which involved elderly, youth-at-risk and autistic children. This sparked her interest in community projects and led her to do an internship at Superhero Me, where she worked with children with special needs.

Nicole is also a recipient of the LASALLE Future Leader Scholarship.

About Sammi Chia

Sammi started her dance training at Singapore Ballet Academy at the age of five and has obtained the Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) Level 4 Diploma in Vocational Graded Examination in Dance.

She completed her diploma in Business Studies at the Ngee Ann Polytechnic (2020) and she is also a graduate from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) with a diploma in Dance (2023).

During her studies at NAFA, she has performed in several productions, such as Third Space, Crossings, and In Youthful Company at Esplanade and da:ns Festival, and has worked with renowned artists and choreographers such as Yarra Ileto (Singapore), Kuik Swee Boon (Singapore), Jacky Yu (Hong Kong) and Eileih Muir (England).

She was also the production manager for NAFA’s Dance Science Production, supervised by Dr Filomar Cortezano Tariao, where she worked closely with disabled children with cerebral palsy and autism to produce a full-length dance performance.

Sammi began her teaching journey at Singapore Ballet Academy in 2019 as an assistant teacher learning alongside the SBA faculty. She hopes to inspire young dancers and share her passion and knowledge with her students.

About Singapore Ballet Academy

The Singapore Ballet Academy (SBA) was established in 1958 as a merger of the Frances School of Dancing and the Malaya School of Ballet, then two famous ballet schools in Singapore. The Academy is founded on the ideals of creating awareness of ballet being a beautiful art form, providing training to the highest standard and a platform for stage performances.

About the workshop

Dance & Grow is an interactive dance class designed for preschoolers and their parents. This class provides a special opportunity for parent and child to foster a love for dance while bonding. This movement workshop also encourages motor skill development and parent-child bonding while providing an early exposure to dance.

Together you’ll learn to stretch, twirl and move in harmony. The joy of dancing becomes a shared experience, fostering a sense of unity and connection that goes beyond the dance studio.

About Lindsey Lum

Lindsey graduated from School of the Arts Singapore (SOTA), where she majored in ballet and contemporary dance. An Examination Training Accreditation (ETA)-certified CSTD teacher as well as an RAD Professional Dance Graduate and Teaching Diploma Graduate, she has over 20 years of dance training and extensive experience teaching children and adults. She has choreographed and coached for both group, solo jazz and ballet competitions and teaches RAD Ballet and Elite Ballet classes as well as Jazz classes.

Lindsey is a competitive Latin dancer who has won over 80 awards in both local and overseas competitions. After over 20 years of dance training, she has now embarked on her career as a teacher and choreographer.

About City Ballet Academy

City Ballet Academy was founded by Xia Haiying – an award-winning principal dancer of international repute, and Koh Kai Mui. City Ballet Academy seeks to provide a well-rounded and balanced array of training programmes catering to the unique needs, abilities and learning goals of every student. With the support of a strong teaching faculty, we continuously refine our training programmes in order to maximise every child’s innate potential and groom them into confident, well-rounded individuals.