Years 4 & 5 were very excited to welcome author and principal dancer of The Royal Ballet, Yasmine Naghdi, to Coleridge last week!

Yasmine Naghdi has been dancing with The Royal Ballet since 2010. Her many roles with the company include Odette/Odile (Swan Lake), Princess Aurora (The Sleeping Beauty), Juliet (Romeo and Juliet) and The Sugar Plum Fairy (The Nutcracker). She has performed all over the world and is passionate about communicating that ballet is for everyone! Yasmine has co-written a series of books, ‘Ballet Besties’, which were created to help spread a more inclusive message about ballet.

Yasmine talked to the children about learning to dance as a child, her dancing career, her experiences as a performer, and also her inspiration and writing process for ‘Ballet Besties’. She brought in one of her costumes, as well as her ballet shoes, and we all had a go at some of the positions in ballet. As a particular treat, Yasmine also dazzled us with some of her ballet moves ‘en pointe’!