This week we’ve been speaking to Ellie Webb, the lovely captain of Troupe – Durham’s University’s official performance team!
Ellie has been dancing since she was thirteen, and as a third year classics student at St Mary’s, this is also Ellie’s third and final year serving the dance team.
Troupe boasts a wealth of dancing styles, but mainly focuses on street, jazz and contemporary. They display their dancing mastery at both college and uni wide events, including balls and fashion shows. More recently the team’s prestige has also been recognised externally, with requests to perform at a charity event for Sir Ian Botham and at a military base in Darlington.Just this term the group have a plethora of scheduled events, including: DUCFS, Hatfield’s Lion in Winter Ball, and others at five other colleges.
With such a chaotic schedule, the team are clearly worked very hard, but Ellie enthuses about the camaraderie amongst the girls and ensures that they have great fun. As well as this they also get free tickets to ents at events which they might not otherwise get a chance to go to – particularly the famed Castle Summer Ball, which Troupe have performed at the past two years.
Another thing which Ellie professes to be an absolute essential in getting her through their rigorous training is a good hair band! As she can not stand having her hair in her face when she dances – we hear ya, boys will never understand our pain.She also testifies that baggy trousers and leggings are the way forward in exercising attire.
Interestingly, despite Ellie’s dancing elegance ( – which we can assume from her enviably delicate size 3.5 feet!) – she confesses that she probably looks like an amateur herself when on a night out and certainly is not embarrassed by pitiable boogying attempts. Comforting to know that all Durham clubbers are on the same page here.Liking a range of music, Ellie welcomes many styles – she admits to being a new found Belieber, in the wake of his recent album. Her preferential night in Lloyds, rather than Loveshack is due to the pitchers.
Impressively, Ellie reckons she could be ready for such a night in just 30 minutes. As a pretty low maintenance gal, she hails her make-up must- have as concealer. Likewise, she favours a shower to a bath – so is clearly pretty good at saving the earth as well as her own time, you go Ellie.
Her guilty pleasure, hopefully enjoyed with a helping of Bieber is Haribo – which, (all food being neutrally nutritious) she chose to eat forever. A much more tempting choice than biting your own nails, which Ellie admits is her worst habit.
But hold your judgemental thoughts, Ellie has assured us she is not one to leave signs on her unattended Billy B computer, in fact she hates those people… ‘they are never 5 minutes away’
As well as this, the considerate captain also tipped us on what she believes to be the most underrated place in Durham – Bella Mamma, which is a little Italian restaurant in Neville’s Cross, apparently it’s a little far out but worth the walk!
We’d like to wish Ellie all the best for her remaining captaincy – and her future dancing – which despite not being pivotal to her career will ardently remain a hobby. And of course, all the best to Troupe in their upcoming events – which they would be delighted to see you at!
Follow Troupe on their social media pages to stay up to date with all their events and performances
Facebook: Durham University Dance Troupe
Twitter: @DurhamTroupe
Instagram: troupedurham
For bookings contact us on the Facebook page or email e.a.webb@durham.ac.uk