Longridge dancer joining world’s elite

Leiya and mum Taryn after the Longridge pupil won the US Open title for her ‘swing’ dancing.

Longridge prides itself on being non-selective with staff united in seeking out and nurturing ability in all pupils. To emphasise that fact, one of the School’s most recent arrivals is sprinkling some ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ stardust around the place.

Leiya Crosbie is a 12-year-old dancer who joined Longridge in January of this year. She attended primary school in Berwickshire but parents Taryn and Neil looked for a school that could help to develop her dance and musical talent while enabling her to progress academically around the demands of global commitments as one of the leading ‘Swing’ dancers of her age in the competitive partner dance world.

When we caught up with Leiya, the polite youngster started by apologising for being a little tired.

“I just flew back in from France yesterday, and I’ve been catching up on work this morning, so I’m very sorry if I don’t seem 100 percent,” she said.

Leiya was born in Edinburgh and is a proud Scot but has spent summers and holidays in the US, with her mother’s family hailing from Brooklyn, and many dance competitions taking place across the States, and so she speaks with a great Scots-American accent. Mum Taryn grew up attending several dance programs across Manhattan including the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in New York, made famous by the movie ‘Fame’, Broadway Dance Center, Dance Manhattan, Steps on Broadway, then eventually performing on Broadway.

Taryn and Neil, who was born in Africa but grew up in Scotland, met as competitive dancers while travelling the world, competing at World Swing Dance Council (WSDC) events, before settling in Edinburgh. After they married, they opened West Coast Swing Edinburgh, their local dance school and run Swing Resolution and Festival City Swing, with their partners – the real ‘Strictly Come Dancing’, where dancers travel from across the world to win WSDC points and gain professional credentials in the industry.

Following in her parents footsteps

When Leiya came into the world there was something of an inevitability about her following in their footsteps, having spent much of her childhood in dance studios. Her parents are well known swing dancers, with her mother a teaching and performing ‘Lindy Hopper’ – the form of swing that originated in Harlem, with Charleston, East Coast and West Coast Swing, and Balboa, Carolina Shag other well-known swing dances that are enjoying a new resurgence nearly 100 years on from their creation.

By the age of ten Leiya was so immersed in dancing that she was moving out of the ‘promising’ Novice division and competing with the best teenagers across the globe. Now, representing Scotland and Great Britain, she competes at the US Open Pro Am division against adults, with her instructor Paul Warden.  They are currently Britian’s Pro Am champions.

“I love it at Longridge,” she said, “and I’m glad mum and dad brought me here. Everyone is so friendly and supportive. My parents also looked at schools in the US, because I spent a lot of time there as well, and I have a lot of family there, but there are nice, small classes here, you get to know your teachers and other students really well, and I get to practise my music a lot, which I love.

“I grew up watching my parents have such great fun dancing, my father teaching my mum to move from Lindy Hop to other forms of swing, and I have watched the movie ‘Fame’ many times, so I always wanted to be a dancer.

“I didn’t take to it straight away. I can remember sitting under a table with a tablecloth over it, and just painting under there. Then, I started to watch what they were doing a little more, and eventually I came out from under the table and started learning how to dance.

“I asked my mother when I was about seven years old if I could start going around the world to dance like they did. I wasn’t allowed to start competing until I was nine, and then when I was ten I went to my first competition in the US, and finished second, and I went back last year and won it, which was amazing, and it has all sort of grown from there.”

Competitive dancers will progress from Novice to Intermediate, Advanced, All Star and then Champions divisions, dependant on their training and the number of competitions they can attend.

WSDC events attract as many as 1500 competitors to each event, and almost every major city across the USA, Europe, Asia-Pacific countries have annual events serving thousands of dancers seeking elevation and professional credentials.

They tend to have a few years at each level as they gain points from international competitions. However, Leiya is already performing in Intermediate division and is just three points from reaching Advanced – she is aiming to pick those up in the coming months in the US and Germany, and become the youngest Advanced dancer in the world.

Leiya has enjoyed workshops and private lessons with some world famous instructors, including Robert Royston (‘Swing’ on Broadway), Tatiana Mollman and partner Jordan Frisbee, who were featured in films – including ‘The Polar Express’ – multi US Open Champions Sarah Van Drake and Kyle Redd, and Nicole Ramirez, who has appeared on TV shows including ‘Dancing with the Stars’ and ‘So you think you can dance’.

‘I love that there is one Scottish flag and it’s me’

But Longridge’s newest pupil is extremely down-to-earth, ‘chilled’ even, despite the levels of competition she is now entering, and the many hours spent in planes, trains and automobiles.

“I just love it all,” she said, the wide smile and beaming eyes underlining the sentiment. “The flying is when I catch up on my schoolwork, so it’s OK.

“I just love performing and competing, and I love taking my Scottish flag and when all these hundreds of flags come out from around the world, there is the one Scottish flag there and that’s me.

“I represent Great Britain mostly, but I always put my Scottish flag up there. And I like coming home to see friends and all our amazing pets! We have 20 chickens, nine parrots, and fish.

“I enjoy it all. I love working with Tatiana and Nicole, and it is a bit funny now that I’m competing with adults and my partner is Paul, who is over six feet tall, and I’m, I think under five feet – he’s like a giant and with some lifts I feel I’m going very, very high!

“It’s maybe not as popular in Scotland but in France and other countries you see lots of people like me dancing Swing. I’m just back from the Med in Swing competition [near Toulon on the French Riviera], I’ve competed in Spain and I’m going to the German Open this year, but my next competition is in North Carolina, so it’s quite a mix of places.

“But you don’t just compete. You do workshops there with the instructors and so you have a lot of fun while you’re learning.”

Looking forward to life at Longridge and in music

With music a big part of life at Longridge, Leiya is also learning to play guitar and piano, and, with a songwriting uncle in Portland, Oregon, she has started writing her own songs.

“I have started busking, which is a lot of fun, and I like to think I’m like Taylor Swift,” she said. She then burst out laughing, revealing that she doesn’t take herself too seriously, and added: “I don’t know if I am any good at it, but I like learning and I would love to be a professional dancer one day and maybe perform songs.

“I know I’m just young still, but I like to dream of getting a call ‘hey Leiya, could you please come and teach dancing at this event?’ or ‘Leiya, could you fly to Spain, or France or Italy, and dance for us?’ That would be cool.

“I don’t know where it will all go but I am glad I am at Longridge now. I can do my schoolwork and get my grades when I’m older, hopefully, but I can still dream.”