Login with email
We’re raising money this Challenge Week to keep Dance Society accessible, affordable and inspiring - funding our new showcase venue, costumes for dancers, professional workshops and rising competition travel costs.
Dance Society has been running for over 15 years, and we are an ever-growing society with currently over 400 members. We offer affordable opportunities for students to dance; supporting all aspects of student wellbeing, helping students to build their confidence and skills, whilst feeling part of our supportive community!
As a society, we have received numerous awards at the prestigious Love York Awards (LYA) and York SU Activities Awards. Most recently we won ‘Student Group of the Year’ in 2025 at LYA, having also been highly commended for this category in 2023 and 2024 at LYA. In 2023, we won ‘Student Group of the Year’ at the York SU Activities Awards. We have been highly commended in 2022 and 2024 for ‘Event of the Year’ for our annual inter-university York Dance Competition, the biggest event that we run.
We offer weekly student-led classes in over 10 styles and provide multiple performance opportunities throughout the year, from competitions to showcases.
Our discounted classes are great value for students on a budget and the family feel of the society really adds to the university experience, something you might not get at the local dance schools!
Our social community is active and thriving with our weekly socials and events like pottery painting and ice skating for all of our members to connect outside of dance and build friendships for life.
We also provide opportunities for our members to choreograph and teach. Choreographing their own routines allows members a creative outlet, a chance to develop their leadership skills, therefore empowering our members!
We’re fundraising to be able to provide more opportunities for our dancers and to ultimately help keep our costs student-friendly and accessible to everyone - more details below!
We would really appreciate any donations you are able to make to support our society!
We’re raising money to fund our performance and workshop opportunities which are a major creative outlet for all of our dancers! Our goal this year is to raise £2,750 to achieve this!
As our previous Spring Showcase venue is unavailable this year, this has introduced a new and unexpected cost needed to put on this performance. Showcase venue hire costs £971.88 this year. If we raise £1000, we will be able to cover the cost of the new venue, helping to keep costs low for dancers - some of our members may only perform with us at Showcase, so it is vital that we can ensure that dancers are getting a high quality event and can showcase their hard work!
Every year we host our Spring Showcase for dancers to perform their routines to family and friends! Reaching £2000 of our fundraising goal will allow us to introduce costume budgets for our showcase dancers that participate in this event! Costumes are an essential part of the performance and allow dancers to feel confident on stage. With a costume budget of £5 per dancer per team, this will allow us to provide costumes to almost 50% of our members.
We would love the opportunity to be able to host more workshops throughout the year, led by dance professionals! Lots of clubs have regular training with external/professional coaches and we would love to provide our members with the equivalent standard of training. Student-friendly prices are one of our key priorities - if we reach £2500, we will be able to invite more professionals in to host workshops at a low cost for our members. By raising £500 this would allow us to put on 5 more externally led workshops each year!
Our competition dancers travel to two external dance competitions every year - this year over 100 dancers are representing the society at Sheffield and Loughborough dance competitions! With the rising cost of travel, hitting our goal of £2750 will allow us to continue to subsidise dancer competition fees, minimising costs for our dancers. By keeping fees as affordable as possible, we can ensure that all dancers regardless of their financial situation can continue to represent not only the society, but the University, across the country. £250 will help to pay for 5% of transport costs to Loughborough, our biggest competition of the year.
We appreciate any donation that would help us reach these goals! Any money raised above £2750 would help us with our day-to-day operational costs including the paying of all our student teachers, the cost of studio hire for our ballet classes, and any other equipment needed for the society to run to be able to provide so many opportunities to all students!
UYDS provides a community for our members, with plenty of opportunities to build friendships for life!
By joining UYDS people can feel at home in something they are familiar with even in a new and intimidating environment starting out at university. Dance provides a well needed respite from the academic demands of university, offering a creative outlet and helping to support students’ mental, physical and social wellbeing. We often hear quotes like “Spring Showcase is the highlight of my year” and “Dance helps me to build my confidence whilst at university.” Dance is an integral part to many of our members’ university experiences, creating a positive community where members can express themselves and make friends for life!
Whether it’s attending weekly classes, rehearsals, socials or any of our other activities, there’s something for everyone! Working in professional standard theatres and with industry leading professionals such as Adam Garcia inspires our dancers to challenge themselves while developing their technique and creativity. Participating in our non-selective showcases and lessons allow dancers to try a new style, pushing themselves out of their comfort zone and build confidence, developing their performance and technical skills in the process.
By helping us to reach our goal, we will also be able to support students with the rising costs of our competition travel. We will be able to continue to subsidise the high competition fees for over a quarter of our dancers, helping to remove financial barriers and allow us to make dance more accessible!
Your donations are incredibly important in enabling us to make our society more accessible and providing exciting new opportunities, giving our members an experience they couldn’t get anywhere else!
Ongoing
Run/walk/swim/cycle to Loughborough (130km!) - commences 07/03
All members log their number of km in the exercise of choice to collectively run/walk/swim/cycle 130km - the distance to Loughborough where we attend one of our dance competitions!
Darcey shuffle’ shared 20 times on Instagram
We will perform a short dance routine and share this via Instagram, to see how far the Darcey shuffle can spread!
Bring a friend to class - 09/03-15/03
All classes this week will be open classes available to both members and non-members where everyone can bring a partner and learn a new dance style! Classes will be £3 per person, or £5 per pair.
Events
Dance do tech and tech do dance - 08/03
In collaboration with TechSoc we will be teaching some of their members Tap dance, while they teach us to operate their technical equipment!
Societies sports day - 10/03
All societies taking part in Challenge Week will compete against each other in a societies sports day where representatives from various University Sports Clubs will teach us their sport!
SABBS and Erasmus Society dance off
Some of our members will take on a dance battle with some of the Sabbatical officers and Erasmus Society!
Unlocking
£50 = Merch to lectures
All members wear their favourite piece of UYDS merch to lectures across campus!
£500 = 500 turns
Upon reaching this target all our comp dancers and anyone else who wants to participate will be taking on the challenge of completing 500 turns collectively!
£1000 = UYDS flashmob in York
Committee members dance at various landmarks throughout York
£2000 = Dance off with the Sabbs and Erasmus society
Posting the video of our members taking on a dance battle with some of the Sabbatical officers and Erasmus Society on Instagram!
£3000 = Tattoo
One of our members will get a tattoo of our mascot Darcey if we reach this goal!
Darcey does…
Every £250 Big Darcey (our mascot) will do an activity! Tune in to find out what…
You can keep up to date with everything we do in Dance Society through our social media! Find us on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/uoydancesoc
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uoydancesoc/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UoYDanceSociety
We’d love for you to follow us to be able to see not only our challenges, but the impact your donation would have!
We would love you to donate as much or as little as you are able and any donations are hugely appreciated. Your donation could also help us unlock fundraising challenges which will help us reach our goal even faster (you can see these on the challenges page).
If you are looking to support an individual dancer or challenge please put a message with your donation saying who!
Alternatively, if you are unable to donate then please do spread the word by signing up as a Challenge Week ambassador for our society, and by sharing our social media posts so as many people as possible can read about our efforts! 💛🖤