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MrsSri

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  1. This article seems to cover all of the issues! It's probably been posted before but maybe worth a re-read. http://www.trespassmag.com/the-body-of-ballet/
  2. PS. What are your thoughts on whether she will be able to access summer/Easter/Christmas weeks? Will they select based on physique too? She has done RAD before but thought it would be fun to try Tring for a week...
  3. Thank you for making me welcome! I've just spent a while reading through your well thought out responses, thank you for taking the time to reply. Hoglett - your thread was really interesting, how are you feeling now? Whilst I appreciate everything said about uniformity, I am thinking about athletes, for example, and trying to work out what that must be like. All 100m sprinters will be muscular and powerful, but there are different heights, physiques, as with other events. They all run competitively fast in order to qualify. That got me wondering about whether coaches select athletes in the same way, disregarding speed etc if they have the wrong shape. But I appreciate that ballet is about aesthetic so perhaps this matters. This is presumably why the Misty Copelands of the world have to fight harder. I don't know the answer, but what I do know is that I have had strangers approach me to tell me how moved they have felt by watching my daughter dance. She does seem to have something in the way of artistry or musicality or emotion as well as technique. She also loves to choreograph. My daughter has started to shift focus to contemporary. What I find strange, as someone not from a dance background, is that classical ballet seems to be the focus of all vocational schools with intake at 11yo and contemporary as an additional. Are there fewer contemporary jobs out there? I would have thought the opposite was true. Perhaps ballet is regarded, still, as a higher art form? I also note that contemporary is not always taught on summer schools, for example, to the younger students. Maybe this is to do with maturity of emotion? I hope she hasn't shifted her focus purely because she feels rejected by authority in the classical ballet world. She has a great body, good technique and she is dedicated to, and serious about, her dance studies. I think, from what everyone is saying, that I will support her to audition for The Place this year (as we live in central London) and see if she can get onto their programme, as advised by her extremely supportive teacher! She auditioned for a dance scholarship this morning for a school specialising in performing arts so she may be in with a chance there, offering her extra opportunities to study. If not I will keep supporting her (she's doing 5-6 lessons a week by choice) and we'll look again at 13 or 16 to see what is out there then. Her teacher wants her to compete so that will give her an opportunity to build her confidence. She seems quite low in confidence at the moment. I think it's stressful in general, this time of life! I would like to say we'd try Tring just for the experience but I am still unsure!
  4. I have not been able to find a thread particularly about this so sorry if I am duplicating. We went to the Tring Open Day today and my daughter was very taken with the school (have read lots of threads and understand the negative/positive points), however, she loves dance above all else and has so far refused to do drama or sing, aside from an RAD Summer school this year. Anyway, I approached the Head of Dance about the programme to find out what audition was like and she told me that she was looking for very high arches, slender torso and great flexibility of the hip and that basically it was all about physical requirements not about experience or ability. I later noticed in the show that the ballet dancers all had long, thin arms and legs and very slight torsos (perfect for that uniformity they want). My daughter also auditioned for JAs this year and didn't get a place. When her dance teacher (whose son and several of her other students are MAs) asked about why my daughter didn't place in JAs, she was told that she didn't have the required body structure, long limbs and neck etc. I was aware of this prior to her audition so it wasn't a total suprise. If her physique prohibits her from getting a ballet place at a dance school (she is slim and extremely powerful and toned but her torso is long) then do we just give up on the idea? I don't want to put her through an audition that is a forgone conclusion because of a part of her body not fitting with the current fashion (I appreciate she has to be flexible). She is a graceful dancer and loves contemporary, modern jazz and acro along with ballet. Her teacher wants her to audition for The Place, which she is keen to do, but even if she did get in then this would be in addition to secondary rather than be her main school. It seems unfair to me that her body mechanics can be great but the shape of her body means she can't access government funding for a dance place and perhaps not even be offered one. Should we just give up on Tring, and any of the other performing arts schools for that matter? She works so hard, it's hard to tell her it's all about body parts that can't be altered. There are many mindblowing dancers out there that don't fit into this ideal.
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