Thank You for a wonderful Festival in 2018. This was our twenty first Festival and was to prove our biggest ever non-All England year with an unprecedented number of entries and no less than eleven schools joining us at the Rhoda for the first time, so as organisers, we owe you all a huge thank you for making our Festival the great success it was. We saw some fantastic dancing with truly outstanding performances from very talented dancers and we are indeed enormously fortunate in Woking to have such remarkable talent on our doorstep. But not only on our doorstep and we must make a special thank you to those dancers, teachers and parents for whom Woking isn’t just around the corner and who made considerable journeys to be with us. Thank you to you All!

Thank you, too, to our wonderful adjudicator, Miss Jill Baldock. This year, we had only one adjudicator (we had three last year) and Jill heroically undertook all of the adjudication duties single handed, arriving every day with a smile for everyone and kind words of wisdom and encouragement for our dancers. Her wise insights and great experience were put to the very best of use and all dancers were made to feel special and valued and have all benefitted from her valuable insight. We thank her, too, for her commanding presence in the auditorium and who can forget her graceful and impromptu on-stage demonstrations of technique.

We also thank our audiences for their very valuable contribution to the Festival, not only in the buying of tickets, but by being there to support the dancers and being such an appreciative and enthusiastic audience and helping to create the true theatrical experience that the Rhoda McGaw engenders.

Finally, our most grateful thanks go our wonderful volunteers who work such long hours to ensure that everything runs smoothly backstage, running the music up and down stairs to the sound box, keeping the backstage areas and wings in good order and ensuring that the dancers get to the stage at the right time, announcing the dancers on stage, keeping the music playing from the sound box and the keeping the whole Festival crew supported with food, tea, coffee, cakes, calories and other vital supplies.

Next year will be an All England qualifying Festival and, in looking forward to the next twenty one years, we hope to see you all again.