Dance school part of Team England at World Cup

Members of the dance school performing
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The group will send about 30 dancers to the contest

  • Published

A dance school from Wiltshire will be hunting for global glory later this year, as they head overseas for the Dance World Cup.

Considered the biggest international dancing contest outside the Olympic games, the World Cup will take place in Prague, in the Czech Republic, and feature more than 50 countries.

Wooton Bassett School of Dance will fly out to join up with Team England, with about 30 pupils across 31 different performances.

Students say while they are nervous about the prospect, they're also "very excited".

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Kate Lawrence runs the dance school with her daughter

Kate Lawrence and Vicky Lawrence are a mother-and-daughter duo who run the school.

Vicky told the BBC: "We've got 33 students and that's the most we've ever had, and we've got 31 numbers, so it's just absolutely amazing.

"We've got every genre - we've got folklore, we've got song and dance, we've got tap, jazz."

Kate added: "We're very privileged to get through, we were so excited after the auditions that we got through to the finals of the dance world cup... we're not just there as Wooten Basset Dance - we're there as Team England.

Vicky also said it was "lovely" to be able to perform alongside other dance teams that theirs would usually be competing against.

Kate added she never expected to end up taking children to the world cup of dance, insisting it was her daughter who pushed her to take on the challenge.

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The group will join other schools from the country to form Team England

One student at the school, Melody, went to the event last year, and told the BBC she was "very very excited" to be heading back.

"I'm going to have to train really hard and practice a lot to hopefully keep the title."

Talking about a number where she'll sing and dance, classmate Mia said it's "nerve-wracking", adding: "You have to keep up the momentum the whole way through and you have to have enough energy to sing... it's a lot but it's really exciting."

Emma, also at the school, said the event is an "amazing atmosphere", and relished the thought of being around nearly 7,500 other dancers at the event.

The event takes place at the end of June at the Prague Congress Centre.