Lisa O`Brien

Many congratulations to your DD. That is fantastic news. [ And welcome to the Forum] !

Hope it's OK to post this. I've just seen from a Balletcoforum member's Facebook post that Oscar performed in the Bluebird Pas De Deux the other night. He's only been in the Corps a matter of months. Holy Moley !!!!

Hope your DD is feeling a little bit better today x

Many, many congratulations to your daughter, Julie. You must be so proud x

I agree with Pups_mum. It's quality over quantity; especially when you're learning basic classical ballet technique. Honestly, two hours of ballet lessons a week focusing on correct placements and technique would do far more for her. I heard several times on this forum that even at the Royal Ballet School in the first year they take all the students, however talented, right back to the very basics. Solid technique is the foundation for everything else in classical ballet. Whizzing through exams will not help one jot.

No mention of it including the software too. I doubt it. But if once you have paid for your course and you have access to it online for 12 months, is it essential to actually have your own anyway? Or is that a really stupid question? I don't even know if I will ever need them. I wanted the skills and knowledge to be able to write that on my CV. Do you think i'd need to buy my own copies eventually?

Oh he, he, thanks. I'm such a goof at these things !!

https://www.reed.co.uk/courses There are lots in different subjects. [ Some courses they offer seem quite mad and bizarre, but each to their own I guess ] !! EDIT. Sorry, I just clicked on my own link and it doesn't work. Drat. They are all to be found on the Reed website though so it should be easy enough.

Many thanks, SMabbutt !

Thank you Balletfan x

Thank you x

New Year, new me and all that. [ Happy New Year everyone on here too]. Want to do a couple of cheap, online courses offered by Reed, to build up my worthless CV. But I know nothing at all about all the different Microsoft packages. There is one they offer called Microsoft Office Essentials for £16, that takes a total of 67 hours to complete. It includes Access, Excel, Outlook, Power Point, Publisher and Word. If you want them to send you a hard copy of your certificate if you are successful after your online test, you pay an additional £39. You have up to 12 months to keep going back and accessing your work or redoing part of it if you wish. What do people think of this? Is it a waste of time, or a worthwhile set of qualifications to have? Should I be doing each one individually rather than all together like this? Would value people's opinions as I haven't got a clue !! Thanks.

Hello Jade and welcome to the Forum. It's a popular misconception that dancers wear tutus in class. The reality is, they don't. They wear leotards and tights, sometimes legwarmers at the start or shorts over their tights. If you watch the Royal Ballet Live as part of the World Ballet Day, the dancers are only wearing tutus later on when they are doing rehearsal. This is often during Pas De Deux rehearsals, so that the male can get used to the tutu and how far away from the female he will need to stand when partnering her, especially in supported turns.

So happy to have seen this version in English. Wonderful.

Wishing everyone on here a very peaceful and happy Christmas and New Year. [ I haven't been on this Forum much. Been a difficult year for me, mental health wise. But sending you all my love]. xx

Merry Christmas Yvonne ! Saw your latest You Tube video this morning. It's fab, as they all always are !!

Lovely.

The very best of luck to you, Nicola.

Hello Meadowblythe. Thanks for asking. How weird, but just as I was reading you email message, Sean messaged me from upstairs [ do other families do that ? LOL] telling me he has been offered a job as a Customer Service Adviser at Teleperformance. He and about 10 others had an interview only at 9.30 this morning, so they must be desperate, ha !! He will be working on the e.on contract, handling phone calls, emails and messages online from e.on's electricity and gas customers. He really wants to start at Uni in the first year at the same time as everyone else, not going into year two, where everyone else will have made friends the year previously. But he only has two years of Higher Education funding left after his HND, so will have to pay for the first year himself. Fortunately, he is entitled to his full maintenance loan from the first year. Also fortunately, tuition fees here are only £4,030 a year. My sister and her husband have said they will be able to give him at least a thousand pounds towards the tuition fees, which is really, really lovely of them. He also has about two and an half thousand in a bank account looked after by his grandmother. His father left this money to him when he died. I'm hoping and assuming the money is still there and his family haven't spent it !! From what i've heard about Teleperformance it will be an interesting experience, if nothing else. It's 40 hours a week, at £7.05 an hour. Totted up that might sound alright, but my £100 a week Housing Benefit will stop, and out of that money he'll have to pay the landlord . Apparently you're timed how long you take to have a pee, and if you are late you are screamed at in front of everyone. I told him to get his head down, do what he's told and work his hours. Put away as much as he can each month and then when he has around £4K, or maybe less if he can get money from other sources, to bail out and look for something else, or head off to uni either next year or the year after.

That's lovely news, scoobydoo. Congratulations to your DD.

Many congratulations to your daughter. I hope she loves it there and is very happy.

Oh my goodness Julie that's wonderful news !!

Before I went to Paris, I got a job as a dancer with a choreographer called Mohammed Boghdadi Junior and we were going to Italy for 6 months. He told me I was too classical and had no technique whatsoever, but that after 6 months with him I would become a superb jazz dancer. [ If that's what it was called]. Rehearsals were in or near Warrington every day. I didn't last the end of the first week. I was in a routine called Aquarius and there were what he called knee chenees [ don't think that's how it's spelled]. Anyway my knees were bruised to hell, and we had to spend all day going over and over them. I was in agony. By the fourth day he "had words " with me and told me he was concerned about the slow progress I was making. He told me I needed to up my game or I wouldn't be ready in time for going out to Italy [ can't even remember where in Italy we were going to be]. I went home and burst into tears. I was in so much pain I could't straighten my knees properly. They were a right state and we were not allowed to wear knee pads. How was I supposed to get through the rest of the rehearsals, let alone six months of dancing like this? I went to rehearsals the following morning and told him I was very sorry to be letting him down [ I hadn't signed a contract yet] but I was leaving with immediate effect. He seemed a bit put out, saying how much he wanted me to stay and everything would work out all right, and what a fantastic jazz dancer I was going to become eventually, but the pain I was in cancelled out everything else for me. So we shook hands and I walked out, massively, massively relieved. Often forget about that episode. A friend's mother, her daughter also danced, when I told them about it and showed them my knees, was horrified. She said why would I want to dance "grovelling round on the floor". LOL. She called the choreographer "Tin Pot Willy", which I thought was hysterical. [ He was actually really highly rated, apparently, which I found out later].

Oh sorry. I meant Navratilova !!

Sad news. RIP.