Strictly Fun Ballroom

We won the title of North Wales Amateur Latin Champions and even represented Wales on the original Come Dancing with Angela Rippon! Eventually, we both went on to train with different dance partners and I was lucky to have several lovely partners including David Wanless, Micheal Boundford & Kevin Lee. In 1987 I was invited to dance professionally with David Griffin (British 10 dance champion). We performed in Hong Kong, Yugoslavia (as was), The Savoy Hotel (London) and several other UK venues. Sadly in August 1989, when we were on the brink of entering the professional competitive circuit, David was sadly killed in a car accident whilst he was on holiday. I was never able to fill the gap that he left in my personal or professional life but decided to study to become a dance instructor in his honour. In 1991 I gained my IDTA Latin American dance teachers (Associate) qualifications and taught in local dance schools on an adhoc basis for a couple of years. During my dance career I have been truly privileged to have trained under the expert guidance of so many world class dance instructors including; Sammy & Shirley Stopford (Shirley Ballas), Carol Smythe, Adrian Prtichard, Norma Graves, Nina Hunt, Micheal Stylianos, Alan Fletcher and Bill & Bobby Irvine. All of whom have shared a little part of their knowledge and expertise with me and which I hope to share with all of you. Meantime I met and married my husband who helped me gain a new passion in my life - being in the mountains, rock climbing, mountain biking and just spending time outdoors in nature. We were both working for The Welsh Ambulance Services as Paramedics while we had our children (two beautiful daughters and I went on to work in a variety of health care settings including teaching, research roles and module lead for health promotion on a paramedic degree programme. After over 30years of frontline emergency work, teaching and research roles in the NHS, I decided to try something different and agreed to work with a company delivering Heritage crafts and skills courses through a government funded scheme. This role opened my eyes to the powerful positivity that creative arts can have on wellbeing and mental health. For decades I had spent most of my working life picking up the pieces of broken people, through sickness, injuries or mental health crisis. Recently I have begun to realise that I not only have the appropriate health care and dance knowledge and skills to help support peoples wellbeing but to perhaps even improve it. Therefore, in accordance with MIND's Five steps to wellbeing our new beginner's class will enable you to tick all of the following wellbeing boxes ;
1. Get active - physical activity helps with positive mental health
3. Take notice - paying attention to being in the moment / engrossed in what you are doing
4. Learn (new things) - dancing certainly challenges the brain cells to coordinate movement and remember dance steps and routines
5. Give - I'm sure at some point during your dance lessons you'll be able to offer a smile or word of encouragement to others

My passion going forward is to get as many people as I can to enjoy moving their bodies to music, learning new skills, stimulating their brains, increasing social connection and improving their physical and mental health through Strictly Fun Dancing classes.