Roxana Smith

I formed a partnership G-Rock and have been jointly performing and devising choreography on the urban-club and street-dance scene for 12 years.
I've been teaching Street Dance for many years, alongside teaching ongoing resident classes I also teach workshops and courses to cater for all abilities. I teach Street Dance from beginners to professionals, from 4 years old to 74 years old!
In my employment as a dance teacher working in youth and community outreach work, I created productions and provided dance workshops and residential projects to individuals & groups from a wide variety of backgrounds. This included pre-school, primary and secondary school pupils, further & higher education students, disadvantaged & unemployed youth, young offenders, people in drug rehabilitation, and the physically and mentally disabled, as well as gifted and talented pupils. This work proved to be extremely challenging at times, however I found each and every project very inspiring and rewarding. I had to constantly think on my feet & adapt & develop my communication and interpersonal skills in order to communicate material effectively to any group or age range.
Over the years, through my arts & community work, I have developed good working relationships with children and young people through listening to their point of view impartially and gaining a mutual respect. When appropriate, in line with anti discrimination policies & health & safety, I am able to challenge/sanction children & young people, without preaching or patronizing them, in a way that has proved successful.
My general philosophy is that Street Dance has no real home yet has a wonderful influence of many great forms of dance, from Jazz to Breakdance, with Locking, Popping and tricks, to the some of the strength and techniques used in Ballet and Tap. Street Dance is a commercial style of many disciplines so has great opportunity to be mastered through individual style and personal expression but first and foremost has the freedom of enjoying to dance on any level in the interpretation to funky tunes from the past eras to today's fresh beats.
In addition to this I also periodically travel to choreograph larger stadium mass movement, commercial and cooperate events. Including Stadium Choreographer and Chartist Melbourne Commonwealth Games 2006 Australia, Choreographer, Women's Nike Campaign, 'Just Add Moves' Documentary for MTV and Stadium Choreographer, Athens Olympics 2004 - Athens, Greece. Through traveling in my dance and choreographic work, I have taught and been responsible for thousands of people, including many children and young people from all different countries, nationalities, & cultures, which has provided me with exceptional communication skills and a greater aptitude to celebrate & promote diversity.
These opportunities have allowed me to have creative control over large segments of a productions and has given me invaluable insight and experience in technical, operational and the logistics of Televised Stadium events. These are areas that I would love to explore within smaller and intimate productions.