This April there will be a magical dance performance of the story The Enormous Turnip for young children and their families.

The production – the first of four Tiny Steps performances – will be especially exciting as it will be performed by an international contemporary dance company, OvDa, plus local dancers, and will be complete with fabulous Russian folk costumes and classical music by Modest Mussorgsky. OvDa’s Professional dancers will perform together with their Bristol Youth Dancers.

What’s more, all youngsters will be actively encouraged to join in and dance, exploring musicality and learning an easy dance routine from the choreography presented!

The first Tiny Steps’ production of The Enormous Turnip will be held at 10.30 – 11.30am on Saturday 23rd April at Redland Park United Reformed Church and will be ideal for families with children aged 0 – 4 years (although older siblings are welcome).

Tiny Steps Performances were created by mum, and also OvDa Dance Company Producer, Svetlana Ovsyannikova, who lives in Bristol with her husband Ben and 17-month old little girl, Amaya. Many South Bristol mums will also know Svetlana through Dance Mums: classes for mums and toddlers at Southbank Centre on Tuesdays, The Elephant House on Thursday mornings and at St Oswald’s Church on Friday mornings.

Svetlana is a professional dancer who first started dancing  in her native country of Russia at the age of 6. She later performed in Eastern Russia and China with a professional dance company, while gaining her BS in Linguistics, Translation and Interpretation. She then moved to New York where she continued to dance, additionally achieving a BA in Dance and Choreography.

Svetlana created Tiny Steps as she wanted to offer regular dance performances to young children and their adults in Bristol which were interactive and relaxed. She also wanted to merge the gap between performers and audience at dance performances and wanted children to have the chance to join in with the dancers if they wished and to learn simple dance steps.

Every performance will be original and different from the previous one and Svetlana is planning on introducing a huge variety of dance types to Bristol families ranging from Ballet, Jazz, Russia Folk, Ballroom to contact improvisation; inspiring our little ones to love music, dance and art.

Svetlana chose the story of The Enormous Turnip for the first ever Tiny Steps event as she knew that almost all young children are familiar with the story and enjoy it.

The performance will last for about 30 – 40 minutes and will be very child-friendly. As Svetlana explains, “it will be a proper grown-up dance performance, but in shorter-sized, toddler attention span-friendly blocks.”

What’s more, there will be delicious cakes, teas, coffee and squash available for both children and grown-ups following the performance.

The Enormous Turnip will be the first of many planned Tiny Steps dance performances and there will be further dance performances for young children and their adults at 10.30am on 11th June, 23rd July and 24th September.

Svetlana hopes that these Bristol Tiny Steps dance events will be successful and she plans to hold future similar events around the South West and, possibly even nationally.

Tickets for The Enormous Turnip cost £12 for a family of four or £7 for 1 adult and 1 child, with each additional child ticket costing £3 and additional adult tickets costing £5. If you would like to book tickets you can do so by clicking here.

If you would like to find out more about future Tiny Step events, please click here. You can also follow Tiny Steps on Facebook and on Twitter.

The Enormous Turnip is a performance not to be missed by Bristol families!