They were not there to perform. They were there to ask questions.

The invitation came from James Asser MP, the Member of Parliament for West Ham and Beckton, for a session titled "Ask your local MP — Student Q&A". It was held in Committee Room 16 at the House of Commons, and it brought together young people from across Newham's Eastern European communities. Stephen Timms MP joined the round table as well.

Our group was nine children, all aged 10 and over, accompanied by three adults from the school. Every one of them is a member of our competition team. The invitation reached us through Cllr Larisa Zilickaja, whose work championing Newham's Eastern European communities made the whole evening possible.

What the children actually asked

We had expected the polite questions. What is it like being an MP. How do you become one. They asked those. Then they asked harder ones. They asked what artificial intelligence is going to do to the jobs they are working towards. They asked whether the government is doing anything to protect their privacy. They asked whether the skills they are building now will still be a competitive advantage by the time they enter the workforce — which, for the youngest child in the room, is the middle of the 2030s. Both MPs answered them directly. The children also heard, first hand, what the job of a Member of Parliament actually involves week to week, which turns out to bear very little resemblance to what any of us see on television.

Westminster Hall, the Central Lobby, and one staircase

After the round table, the group was taken through the building: Westminster Hall, with its nine-hundred-year-old roof; the Central Lobby; the Chambers. On the steps beneath the great window of St Stephen's Hall, two of our dancers dropped into the splits and the rest struck a line behind them. It is the photograph from the evening that we keep coming back to — not because it is the most dignified, but because it is the most honest. They were completely at ease in a building that intimidates most adults.

Why a dance school is writing about Parliament

Here is the part that matters to us. A child who has stood on a stage in front of two hundred people, in a costume, under lights, and kept going when it was frightening, does not shrink in a room full of MPs. Nobody teaches that in a public-speaking workshop. It is built slowly, in an ordinary studio, on ordinary Saturday afternoons, one repetition at a time. It is the same thing that gets a nervous eight-year-old through her first show, and it is the same thing that got a ten-year-old to raise her hand in a committee room at Westminster and ask a Member of Parliament about data protection. We talk a lot about posture, technique and exam results, because those are easy to measure. This is the thing that actually changes children, and it is almost impossible to put on a booking page.

Next: Dublin, January 2027

The same nine dancers are now preparing for the AD Dance Competition in Dublin in January 2027. Training continues at Chobham Academy.

Join us this term

DWU Dance School teaches ballet, street and commercial, acro, Bollywood and competitive dance to children aged 3 to 18, at Chobham Academy in East Village, Stratford, E20. We also run classes for adults. Our autumn term runs from 1 September to 19 December 2026, and unlike most schools in the area we teach straight through the October half-term.

You have not missed the start — you can join mid-term and pay only for the weeks that remain.