About the tutu Club owner | Playgroup Southampton, Hampshire

Katie Hazell (AISTD, ARAD) Creator and founder of The tutu Club

First & foremost I am Mum to two amazing girls, both 5 years and under. I am inspired every day by their little quirks, boundless energy and cheeky smiles, and know how important it is to find activities for them to do that not only do they enjoy and feel part of, but that ticks all of my boxes as a busy Mum too.

I started ballet classes at the tender age of 3 years purely for the reasons behind the tutu club, I needed an energy packed, creative outlet. This weekly run around for my Mum and I soon progressed to many weekends away attending dance festivals, competing with top talent from all over the country and led to some fabulous memories - winning a scholarship for the Royal Ballet Summer school and picking up the Imperial Society Of Teachers of Dancing’s prestigious “South Eastern ballet champion” title at 12 years old and dancing alongside the English National Ballet... I was hooked!

I continued my training across all dance disciplines forging my way to achieving a bursary grant to attend a vocational placement at the world renowned Northern Ballet School in Manchester. After 3 fantastic years of tough but incredibly enjoyable training, I graduated, with distinction in my teaching exams, Advanced RAD under my belt and also the school's final year award for “Best all round dancer” all of which I am incredibly proud to have achieved.

From dancing college I was given the opportunity to sail the world with one of the biggest cruise companies, Princess cruises, and at 18 it was one I could not refuse. I spent the next 3 years as Dance Captain on a number of ships visiting many, many countries, developing life long friendships and realising the absolute joy that my training had given me to experience.

Since my return to the UK in 2004 I have worked in the media world, with ITV and Meridian and then, up until the arrival of my gorgeous girls, my second passion - fund raising for children’s charities based out of, Power FM and Ocean FM. Running 'Help a Local Child' on a local level, brought me so much pleasure by working with so many children and helping to change their tomorrows – something which I hope to return to one day…

Laura Lewis - DDE ISTD, Nat Dip Professional

Laura joined the tutu Club in October 2011 - and currently teaches the Thursday classes.

Laura was fortunate to be awarded a full scholarship to attend the prestigious Laine Theatre Arts in Epsom, Surrey, and graduated college with a National Diploma in Professional Dance alongside a ISTD Foundation in Dance Instruction teaching qualification.

Upon leaving college Laura worked in both TV and theatre including the Royal Variety performance at the London Coliseum, with John Barrowman and Meatloaf.

Laura is currently studying to further her teaching qualifications with the ISTD and works at a variety of dance schools in the local area teaching ISTD Modern, Tap, Ballet, Jazz and Street dance to students of all ages. She also specialise in choreographing dances for local and national stage dance competitions as well as choreographing for annual dance shows and preparing students for regular dance examinations.

After a year of searching... The tutu Club feel extremely lucky to have such a fantastic teacher as part of the team!

Harriet Hannides

Harriet joined The tutu club on work experience in our first year, and very quickly proved herself to a be an important member of the team.

Harriet started ballet at the age of 2 following the Royal Academy of Dancing syllabus, Imperial Society syllabus and Cecchetti. She has also taken part in many workshops including classes with Wayne Sleep and summer schools with Ballet Creations and Arts Ed and has performed with the English Youth Ballet. Harriet has been studying Irish Dancing for 16 years and now competes at a national championship level.

Harriet has 14 GCSEs including Dance, and has passed a dance leadership course taken at secondary school. She has completed A-levels at Brockenhurst College in Dance, Business Studies and Math's: Pure and Statistics.

We quickly snapped her up, on her year off from studies and she now assists in all the classes… The children all adore her, and so do we!

About the club