Four young Port Stephens dancers made their television debut on Tuesday morning.
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Charlie Fisher, 5, Giuliana Culley, 4, Scout Southall, 5, and Sophie Thompson, 3, from Taylors Beach-based dance studio Complete Performing Arts and Classical Coaching appeared in the brand new season of popular Nick Jr show Ready Set Dance.
"It was such an incredible feeling to be able to provide this amazing opportunity to our local talent," said studio owner and head teacher Madelyn Comley.
"We were so proud of all the hard work the students and their parents put in and seeing them dance on set at Nickelodeon studios has definitely been a highlight for us."
Ready Set Dance is a preschoolers dance franchise for 2 to 5 year olds created by four Sydney-based dance studios about four years ago. Taking notice of its popularity, the program was picked up by Nickelodeon and adapted for television. The first season aired on Nick Jr last year.
On establishing the studio in Tanilba Bay last year, Ms Comley also signed up to be part of the Ready Set Dance program.
It was a good first year for the Shearwater Drive studio which won the Examiner's 2019 Annual Business Award for best dance studio as well as the Ready Set Dance Making A difference Award.
The award recognised the studio for making the Ready Set Dance program as inclusive as possible.
"We were recognised because we provide opportunities for kids evenly, no matter what their situation may be," Ms Comley said.
"We have a student, a little girl with mitochondrial disease who is in a wheelchair. She comes into our Ready Set Dance ballet classes. We also have quite a few students with autism or learning difficulties. We welcome students of any ability into all our classes."
As a reward, all Making A Difference Award winners were offered the chance to audition some of its preschoolers to be part of episodes in season two of Ready Set Dance.
Each episode is about seven minutes long and shows a different style of dance for children at home to learn.
In the episodes, the main cast called the Kid Crew and animated characters Twirl and Freeze are assisted by preschoolers to teach children at home a dance.
"Our little preschoolers got to go on set with the Kid Crew who are all these amazing dancers aged about 8 to 16 years old. They're phenomenal," Ms Comley said.
"We picked five students from diverse background who could make the trips to Sydney and handle being on set but only four could make the end date for filming.
"At the beginning of this year the students made the trip to Sydney for a rehearsal. We rehearsed more here at the studio then they made another trip to Sydney late in January to the Nickelodeon studio for the filming. It was the whole works, costumes and makeup.
"Seeing them [students] on set having so much fun in their costumes with the Kid Crew was really definitely a highlight in probably my whole life. Being able to offer these opportunities for our kids is really important to me."
Scout, Charlie, Giuliana and Sophie appeared in the second episode of the season with children from a Sydney-based studio. It aired on Nick Jr at 8.30am AEST on Tuesday, May 19.
It is also available to watch on the Nick Jr. Play App.
With season one of Ready Set Dance now showing on free to air station 10 Peach, it is hoped the episode with Scout, Charlie, Giuliana and Sophie will eventually show on all televisions across the Port.
When the Examiner asked Charlie, Giuliana, Scout and Sophie if they were excited to see themselves on television all four answered an enthusiastic "yes".