For many children and young people, Scottish Dance Theatre offers a first encounter with contemporary dance. These moments matter. A workshop, school visit or family performance can make dance feel visible, exciting and possible, opening the door to future audiences, participants, artists and advocates.
Schools and Workshops
Schools and workshops have carried dance into classrooms, halls, youth groups and community settings across the company’s history. These encounters invite young people to move, create, watch and meet professional dancers directly.
These people were genuinely interested in the kids. They had a lot of time for us, encouraging us, and knowing that it was really important for children to be doing these creative things.
– Tanya Richam-Odoi, community participant
Children’s and Family Productions
Children’s and family productions ask what dance can feel like when it is made with young audiences in mind. Works such as The Magic Doors, Nonsense and Dreams, What on Earth!?, Innocence, Pirates! and Little Ray treat children as imaginative, intelligent audiences, offering performances full of play, emotion, skill and wonder.
First encounters can change how people see dance, and how they see themselves. By making high-quality performance feel welcoming and relevant, the company has helped to build confidence, curiosity and cultural belonging, creating pathways from first experience to lifelong connection.
