DANCING, drama and music will fill The Princess in Burnham during the Highbridge Festival of the Arts, which gets underway today.

Talented contestants have been split into three categories for the ten-day festival – dance, speech and drama, and music.

Judging the dancers, who will perform from today until Sunday, will be Yasmin Taylor-Hazzard.

Yasmin trained at the Royal Ballet School before studying with Ballet Rambert.

After working with the National Youth Ballet she went on to dance with the Dutch National Ballet in their tour of Romeo and Juliet.

Now, Yasmin is the principal of a successful dance school, runs Greek workshops and choreographic competitions and is an adjudicating member of the British and International Federation of Festivals.

The speech and drama category will run on Monday and Tuesday and will be judged by Janet Tuckett.

Janet trained at the Barbara Macrae Studio and has taught speech and drama for more than 40 years.

She has been an adjudicating member of the British Federation of Festivals since 1976 and has since spread her expertise to include work with the Guild of Drama Adjudicators and other festivals.

She also runs an award-winning youth theatre group in Bristol called Blue Lodge Drama.

People competing in the music section will be judged by Alan Dean, when they perform from Wednesday, March 9, to Friday, March 11.

After his studies, Alan became a senior lecturer and PGCE music|co-ordinator at Manchester Metropolitan University.

He has worked with some top names in vocal music as a director and repetiteur in opera, operetta and musical theatre.

Alan’s keyboard performance experience ranges from concerti to jazz, including a BBC broadcast on the Tatton Park harpsichord, piano accompaniment at the Millennium Festival in Leeds and at the North West Regional Championship in Liverpool.

And Alan is also a music adjudicator and accompanist member of the British and International Federation of Festivals.