Sheffield City Hall: Peter Pan family show from city's June Gill dance school goes on at last

Members of the June D Gill School of Theatre Dance visited Gulliver’s Valley Theme Park Resort in Rotherham, which has its own pirate ship, for special publicity pictures for their upcoming show.

The pirate ship may be on dry land but members of the cast will be flying through the air in the show, with professional help.

The famous city dance school will be presenting its musical theatre production at Sheffield City Hall on Saturday, July 9 and Sunday, July 10. The show starts at 7.15pm on Saturday and 5.15pm on Sunday.

June Gill said: “Peter Pan and his friends will be flying into Sheffield, bringing the magic of Neverland to the prestigious City Hall. This production is for all the family and it is bursting with dance, drama and singing, along with Tinkerbell’s pixie dust!”

Tickets are available in person from the City Hall box office, which is open 10am to 4pm Monday to Friday, or online at www.sheffieldcityhall.co.uk.

‘I started in a grotty scout hut with a dozen pupils’

June Gill said she was “beyond thrilled and excited” to finally be bringing the show, which she has produced, directed and choreographed, to the City Hall stage.

Peter Pan has been cancelled four times over the past two years – three times because of the pandemic and once because of problems with the building.

June admitted that the final cancellation reduced her to tears and the member of staff who received the news hardly knew how to break it to her. But now the show will go on at long last.

The dance school has been established for 50 years: “I started in a grotty scout hut with a dozen pupils,” June recalled. “I remember it well. I needed a proper job and just hated it – I wanted my own dancing school.”

The senior and international examiner for the International Dance Teachers’ Association said: “I have a studio in my own home and have a big studio I hire. I started dancing at the age of five.

“The schoolteacher sent for my mother – she thought I’d been naughty. She said, ‘You’ve got to get this child to dance. She’s been dancing in the playground, in the hall, in the classroom’.”

She’s never looked back and says she still loves what she does, even when it means setting off for classes on cold winter days: “I don’t love every lesson but I don’t lose the buzz, it’s never left me.

“It’s not a job and not a career, it’s a way of life. The word retirement isn't in my vocabulary – they’ll carry me out in a box!”

This show features the whole dance school, which is based at Caxton Road, Broomhill, right from the three-year-olds who appear as little Thumbelinas.

For more information on the dance school, where students can learn ballet, tap, modern jazz, theatre craft and street dance, go to @Junedgillschoolofdance on Facebook.

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