The Teachers
Principal
Jane Scholl was
trained at the Hampshire School alongside Sir Anthony Dowell, Maina Gielgud and Mrs Hampshire's daughter Susan,
then The Royal Ballet School and The
Rambert School. While in Paris she spent 10 years as principal choreographer to a local theatrical company.
Her daughter joined West Berks Ballet School in 1989 and Jane became
so enthused that she herself started taking classes again. She studied for and passed her Cecchetti Vocational examinations and is fully qualified with the Cecchetti Faculty of the ISTD. Jane has been Principal of WBBS since 2002.
Claire Bowden trained at WBBS for 14 years before continuing her studies
at
the London Studio Centre where she obtained BA (Hons) in Theatre Dance and
gained a Diploma in Musical Theatre. Here, she also qualified as an ISTD
teacher of both Modern and Tap dance, and was thrilled to return to the
school in 2002 in order to introduce these new genres. Claire also
teaches
dance and extra-curricular modern and tap at Downe House in Cold Ash. She
runs dance workshops in schools and regularly choreographs musicals and
pantomimes for local dramatic societies.
Lucie joined WBBS at the age of 4 and studied ballet, modern and tap and was a Saturday morning Classroom Assistant and setting an inspirational example for our smallest dancers as well as being a Cecchetti Senior Associate. We are proud to have Lucie, now a fully qualified Cecchetti teacher, on our teaching faculty. With 3 small children of her own, she knows just how to make our smallest dancers feel like proper ballerinas.
Gemma has been a keen dancer all of her life, joining WBBS in 2002. Gemma completed a BA in Dance Studies at Roehampton University in 2012 and came straight back to WBBS to assist Claire with the Modern and Tap classes and teach at all of the Summer Schools. In 2022 Gemma graciously took on the role of ballet teacher for the youngest ballerinas in the school to start a new chapter in her teaching career. She is a keen actress and regularly choreographs for the local amateur dramatic society, KATS and if you sometimes can't recognise her... she does change her hair colour quite a lot! Gemma is very excited to be given the opportunity to teach with such a prestigious school and can't wait to see what her future holds with WBBS.
Cara Drower
After 12 inspirational years teaching pupils of all ages at WBBS Cara has found her dream house by the seaside in Folkestone and will no longer be teaching those classes. Cara will concentrate on training future Cecchetti teachersworking towards their DDI and DDE qualifications .
Cara was Head of Dance at The Arts
Educational School, Tring Park for 18 years. She was on the faculty of
The Royal Ballet School Teacher Training Course for 6 years. She is a Fellow of the Cecchetti Faculty of the ISTD, a
major examiner, holds Maestro Cecchetti Final Diploma. And is a frequent
guest teacher in the USA and Canada.
West Berks Ballet School
