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!