Catherine Zeta-Jones’s niece is one of more than 70 children from a Swansea dance school chasing a Christmas number one, and they have already been to see the reindeer about it.
Ava Zeta-Jones was among the Dancerama performers, aged six to 19, who spent Saturday 24 October at Reindeer Lodge in Mold filming videos for two new festive songs, Christmas Is Here and Christmas Twist.
Both were written by Michael Mullan, the Swansea singer-songwriter behind the city anthem This Is Our City. The school hopes one of them will be the Welsh Christmas number one.
The videos are being edited now, with release dates still to be confirmed.
Ava’s aunt, the Mumbles-born Oscar winner, introduced her to the world in 2021 with an Instagram video of “my beautiful niece, Ava Zeta” on her lap, repeating her sentences back in Welsh. Five years on, Ava is in the red velvet and white fur with the rest of the cast.
A coach to Mold, paid for by the village
Getting 70 young performers, their chaperones and their costumes to north Wales for a day took some doing. Llansamlet’s councillors put £1,000 towards the coaches, the school said, and Davies Coaches cut its rate for the trip.
The day itself, by the school’s account, was Christmas costumes, a lot of excitement and plenty of behind-the-scenes footage, some of which is already on Instagram. Dancerama describes it as a community effort by the performers, their families, chaperones and supporters.
Rebecca Mullan, Dancerama’s principal, said the project was about more than music. “It’s about giving young people the confidence to dream big, believe in themselves and be part of something extraordinary,” she said.
The support from the community, she added, had been “truly inspiring”.
The Christmas number one dream
The school has not yet said which chart week it will go for, or where the songs will be available. That will come with the release dates, along with more photographs, it says.
Ms Mullan said: “Our dream is to achieve a Welsh Christmas Number One and shine a spotlight on the talent we have here in Wales. It’s an ambitious goal, but I believe in the power of music to bring people together, create opportunities and inspire the next generation.”
She said: “If we can bring a little Christmas magic and positivity to people along the way, then we’ve already achieved something special.”
Christmas Twist also features vocals from the Arwen Collective, the Llansamlet youth performers. They sang on the re-recorded This Is Our City in March, when Mr Mullan released it in support of the Ospreys.
That song, first released in 2019 for the 50th anniversary of Swansea’s city status, was shared by both of the city’s MPs and the council leader.
Until then, the children have a song to learn, a video to wait for and, if it goes to plan, a Christmas chart to watch in December.
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