Storytelling in Motion: Ainsley Ricketts' Masterclass

Choreography by Ainsley Ricketts

Most technical classes ask dancers to execute. Ainsley Ricketts' masterclass at The Manor LDN asked something harder: to actually mean it. The session was built around performance, storytelling, and individuality — pushing dancers to treat every phrase as something with intention behind it, rather than a sequence of steps performed correctly and left at that.

That approach comes from a career that's given Ricketts genuine range to draw from, spanning commercial dance, theatre, and television, with work for global artists including Charli XCX, Troye Sivan, and Bebe Rexha, alongside major events like the MTV EMAs and The Joy Awards. It's the kind of background that makes "storytelling" more than a buzzword in his classes — he's had to tell a story through movement on some of the industry's biggest stages, and that instinct shaped every correction he gave in the room.

Finding a studio built to actually hold that kind of class matters more than it might seem — a room needs the right scale and energy for storytelling-focused work to land, and The Manor LDN's Finsbury Park studio gave Ricketts exactly that. Dancers left with more than a combination; they left having been pushed to find something specific and individual in their own movement, which is precisely what a class like this is supposed to do.