The Peggy Hawkins Scholarship Fund

March 2013 saw The Place announce the recipients of this year’s Peggy Hawkins Scholarship Fund which aims to support talented students in completing their course of studies and taking advantage of new performance opportunities. Four London Contemporary Dance School students were awarded the Scholarship on the basis of their commitment and impressive results in technical ability, choreographic potential and contribution to the life of the School. Dancewear Central would like to congratulate these talented dancers and wish them luck for the future! Peggy Hawkins was the mother of Anthony Van Laast, the internationally renowned choreographer and Patron of The Place who has choreographed musicals including Sister Act, Mamma Mia!, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Van Laast established The Peggy Hawkins Scholarship Fund in honour of Peggy’s life and her passion for dance. The fund, now in its second year, helps talented students complete their studies and take advantage of new performance opportunities, and the students are also mentored by Anthony and his close friend Pernille Charrington. The Fund is a part of The Place’s Fund for Excellence which has raised in excess £400,000 to support students over the past three years. In the past month The Fund for Excellence has been boosted by awards of £40,000 over two years from the Headley Trust and £418,325 over the next three years from the Leverhulme Trust (the third largest single award in Leverhulme’s £9 million Arts Scholarship programme). An ex-Ballet Rambert dancer, Peggy Hawkins lived in different locations around the world, where she invariably founded a dance school and taught choreography. A follower of Emile Jaques-Dalcroze’s Eurhythmics method, which combines learning and experiencing music through improvised movement, Peggy Hawkins received the Dalcroze Specialist Certificate in Eurhythmics once back in London, and continued to teach and choreograph well into her eighties in her own school. An accomplished pianist, Peggy also played for classes at London Contemporary Dance School in her spare time.