Susan Roberts Academy of Performing Arts offers professional training and an open-armed community founded on tolerance, acceptance, and trust. At SRA, we encourage our students to make friendships that extend beyond their age, race, and background, so each child feels right at home with us.
Our students naturally have peers both older and younger than themselves, ensuring there is always someone to look up to whilst, they too, act as a role model for their younger peers. We operate as a community of individuals united by a singular passion: the performing arts. There is a place for everyone; no matter who you are, you are welcome.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Susan Roberts Academy (SRA). The part-time performing arts academy offers professional dance, drama and singing training for students aged 2-18+ years. SRA has been established since 1996 and first opened its doors in Cobham, later expanding to venues in Weybridge and Addlestone.
Classes Available:
Ballet
Ballet is great for deportment and poise; co-ordination, rhythm, presentation, and confidence. We take children from age 2½ to adults. All of our classes work to the RAD exam syllabus (children are able to take exams from five-years onwards), providing opportunities to progress and achieve.
Contemporary
Contemporary dance is a genre of dance performance that developed during the mid-twentieth century and has since grown to become one of the dominant genres for formally trained dancers throughout the world.
AQA GCSE Dance
We offer GCSE Dance classes following the AQA syllabus. Students are able to take the course from Year Nine upwards, with a weekly three-hour lesson over the course of two years.
Drama
Drama is essential for the development of listening, reading, and speaking techniques, as well as teambuilding skills and group work.
We also offer On-Camera TV/Film classes which explores the fundamentals of truthful yet minimalistic acting.
Hip Hop
Hip-hop dance refers to street dance styles primarily performed to hip-hop music or that have evolved as part of hip-hop culture. It includes a wide range of styles primarily breaking which was created in the 1970s and made popular by dance crews in the United States.
Jazz & Commercial
Jazz dance is a controlled explosion of life incorporating muscular control into various different contemporary styles, and are adapted to varied choreographic interpretations. It covers a wide range of styles from classical to commercial, but whichever, it is always dynamic and unique.
LAMDA
Founded in 1861, the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) is the longest established drama school in the United Kingdom and remains one of the most prestigious and progressive in the world. The medal grades for LAMDA also provide UCAS points, helpful for University applications.
Modern
Modern dance is performed to set exercises and incorporates freestyle jazz. The ISTD has also introduced Jazz Awards, a freestyle jazz syllabus, popular with the students and particularly helpful to the late-starter. This class, like modern, is an examination class.
Musical Theatre
Musical Production is a class which involves working with a director, choreographer and musical director, on a book musical or devised project. The class runs as a professional style rehearsal and culminates in a public performance at the end of the rehearsal period. Generally, we will take two terms per show.
Singing
Group Singing
Our group singing classes are an exciting exploration of a wide range of repertoire, including traditional warm-ups with ear training games around the piano through to score reading with full orchestral digital audio tracks.
Private Singing
Singing is studied one-to-one with an experienced vocal coach. At all stages, the emphasis in these classes is to build safe and secure vocal technique. As the students advance, they will begin to develop a portfolio of material suitable for public performance and audition.
Private Singing (Musical Theatre Examination Class)
Musical theatre examinations are performance-based exams with particular emphasis on singing. Candidates are required to choose 3-4 songs depending on the grade from various periods of musical theatre. Technical exercises are not a part of these exams, replaced instead by a discussion with the examiner about the choice of programme.
Tap
Tap has its roots in Harlem, USA. It involves the use of the ankles and feet incorporating different beats and rhythms to music. This form of dance hones in on musicality and rhythm, enhancing a dancer’s ability to listen and keep time to the music they are performing to.
Not only is it a very popular form of dance but it’s good fun too.
For more information on Susan Roberts Academy of Performing Arts please visit the website.
To find out more about local clubs/classes, please visit the Clubs/Classes section of the Raring2go! website.