Mampara Dance was founded by Natalie Hunt in 2011 to bring a fresh burst of dance and fitness to the city. We run classes in dance, gymnastics, cheerleading and fitness across London: our West London Dance and Fitness Studio (Active Body Collective) in Fulham; our three Cheerleading & Gymnastics Academies in Fulham, St Margaret’s and Barnes/Hammersmith; at Sadler's Wells and the Urdang Academy in East London (Angel Islington). Classes include Cheerleading (including stunts, dance & tumble), Pom dance, Commercial Dance, Jazz Dance, Barre Fitness, Ballet, Flexibility, Body Conditioning, Personal Training, Bootcamps, Acro Stunts and Gymnastics, Argentine Tango and Ballroom Dance.
• Commercial Dance: A full body cardio jam, drawing on the funkiest routines from MTV to build your rhythm and coordination. This fun-filled session breaks down the steps for each week's routine, covering both the basics and more challenging moves, encouraging you to let go and have fun to your favourite music chart hits. Starting with a cardio warm up and stretch, the class moves into the routine teaching section. A total body conditioning workout that's too much fun to notice!
• Beginner Ballet: A beautiful, elegant class to help you sculpt and tone, strengthen and stretch, whilst learning the graceful art and science of ballet. Learn the foundations of this timeless dance with a centre warm up, strengthening barre ballet technique exercises, centre adagio and allegro work and beautiful relaxing reverence. Sculpt graceful lines, improve all over body strength, flexibility, elegance and posture, reinvigorate your energy and build a slim, strong silhouette through the joy of classical ballet movement.
• Jazz and JazzFunk: An energetic and lively pair of classes, jazz and jazzfunk are a fun and creative way to build dance skills and technique. Combining elements of strength, technique and control from ballet, theatricality and razzle dazzle of Musical Theatre and the upbeat funk of street dance you won't even realise you're working out!
• Cheerleading Dance Classes: A fantastic strengthening and core conditioning programme, training for cheer dance, tumble and jumps helping you improve flexibility and tone every area of the body. Class covers a cardio warm up, strengthening, conditioning and flexibility exercises, cheer dance routines and an optional section on jumps and tumble.
• Cheerleading Stunt Classes: An open stunt training session working through level 2-4 stunts. Open to beginners; those already hooked but unable to commit to a full time comp team training schedule; and people already in teams wanting even more stunts but on a drop-in basis. A fantastic strengthening class.
• Dance Fusion: A fantastic commercial & jazz fusion dance class: Drawn from styles including Street, Jazz, Contemporary, Cheerleading, Flash Mobs & Show Stoppers, putting together and polishing-up new dance routines each week.
• Flexibility and Sculpt / Stretch-n-Core Conditioning: For all over body strength and flexibility. Stretch and tone with this class using elements of ballet and contemporary dance, barre conditioning, yoga and pilates to build long lean graceful lines, improved flexibility and strength. Incorporating more elements of flow and flexibility, intense bursts of barre cardio to firm and burn are used to prepare the body for small simple contemporary and ballet dance sequences created for strengthening and stretching and a floor based flexibility section to help you relax into it’s new leaner self.
• Barre Fitness: Sculpt and tone from top-to-toe with this ballet, yoga and pilates inspired programme designed to boost your metabolism and help you achieve the long lean graceful lines of a dancer's body. Improve your core, lower and upper body strength, lengthen and stretch your muscles, invigorate your energy and focus your mind for all over body conditioning. A mix of relaxing stretches and dance-based cardio burst intervals to firm and burn whilst developing elegant posture and a slim, strong silhouette.
• Flexibility / Flex and Flow: Flexibility is the key to a healthy, well aligned body that maximises your performance in other dance and sports disciplines and supports your body, protecting it from injury and health problems as we age. Whether you're mobility is restricted from hunching over a laptop every day, your muscles are tight from sports such as running, or you need to hit your splits in dance lessons these classes are invaluable to your over all well being. Add to that that stretching helps to elongate your muscles which otherwise tend to bulk up when we exercise and you will find this class the perfect aid to over all condition, body comfort and long elegant limbs. We also build strengthening exercises into our classes to help you control and protect your mobility, be it supporting your back or lifting those developpes.
• Barre Fit Express: The perfect conditioning blast. Combining cardio bursts and dynamic stretches from ballet, yoga and pilates to boost your metabolism and help you achieve the long lean graceful lines of a dancer's body. Improve your core, lower and upper body strength, lengthen and stretch your muscles, invigorate your energy and focus your mind for all over body conditioning. Firm and burn as you stretch and tone whilst developing elegant posture and a slim, strong silhouette.
• Barre Fit Express / Barre HIIT: Combining everything you love about Barre with traditional exercises from high intensity interval training - with a bit of a Barre twist. This is shake and burn heaven!
• Bootcamp: Our bootcamps combine hard work and fun to give you the kick start you need to hit your goals or top up your training. Our programmes start with an intensive, low impact fitness session of between an hour and a half and 3 hours, combining Barre Fitness, Body Weight Conditioning, Body Sculpt, Floor Barre and elements of Pilates and Yoga. From there we usually move onto a little burst of dance cardio or some fun Commercial and jazz dance choreography to let you unwind and let lose after all the muscle burn and shaking. We like to see you smile before you leave! Each camp ends with a full 30 minutes of flexibility and stretch, ensuring your body and heart rate relaxes, helping to prevent injury and speeding up the recovery process, and encouraging the muscles you've targeted through the session don't bulk up as they build but elongate to be long, lean and elegant.
• Personal Training: Whatever your fitness goals, please contact us to discuss personal training programmes where we can tailor classes to meet your needs, from low impact sessions to HIIT we can combine high cardio, low cardio, Barre, body conditioning, flexibility, dance, Pilates, Yoga, weights, core HIIT and more to suit your preferred exercise approach.
• Performance Group - For those that want to get involved in performance opportunities at events, sports matches and more, we have a performance group which meets one / two weekends a month to polish skills and build up routines from the weekly class content.
London lives can sometimes keep us late at work, so late joiners are very welcome but must take responsibility for their own warm-up.
About the founder: Natalie is trained by IDTA, Barre Concept and BGU in dance, fitness and cheerleading. She also trained for five years in Argentine Tango, in London and Buenos Aires. Her company Mampara Dance offers dance classes, performances and workshops for all ages, including wedding first dances, dance parties, dance for schools, for public and private events and festivals and at studios across London. Previously co-founder of Dancelicious Dance Company Shanghai-London, her performance credits cover theatre (including with Diversions Contemporary Dance Company & Wayne Sleep), TV & online (choreographed and directed by Tony Lundon & Ashley Banjo) and live events (including at The Oval for the Twenty20 Cricket season & for the Formula 1 season closing party). She runs the cheerleading squad for the current American Football Premiership Champions (The London Warriors) and teaches at studios across London including at The Urdang Academy, Sadler's Wells, Spirit Young, Sylvia Young, The Place, City Academy and Dance Attic.
