theThirdMan

I just wanted to share this Instagram link for the Vienna State Ballet's recent tour of Japan that has a number of photos taken during rehearsals and the actual performances, I'm sure you will find them quite enlightening: https://www.instagram.com/wienerstaatsballettofficial/

If you missed it, it is available on their facebook page, if you follow the link: https://www.facebook.com/WienerStaatsballett/

On October 4th the Vienna State Ballet will show you some first impressions from their upcoming premiere "Balanchine | Liang | Proietto" (November 1st) in the context of this year´s #worldballetday. From 13.30 to 14.00 (CET) we'll stream live from the ballet studio of the Wiener Staatsoper a rehearsal of Daniel Proietto´s ballet "Blanc". Hopefully it will be viewable from the UK. Further details on this facebook link: https://www.facebook.com/WienerStaatsballett/photos/a.516355318421634.1073741827.154993347891168/1146136695443490/?type=3&theater

Was not just talking about being asked, some also left on their own accord because of injury.

I've been reading through some of the post on this topic and do have experience with my own ds, but the majority of the comments and thoughts are from parents. I feel that it would be good if parents of children that have been through the whole process could be encouraged to post their own feelings and thoughts on how they now feel, the positives and negatives it would give a different insight and may help others make appropriate decisions. One area that always concerned me was the number of children that started vocational school and for one reason or another had to leave their training at various points in their young lives (even at 15 or 16), which then made it difficult to go back into main stream education,

I found this link worked fine for me to watch it again and just rechecked and its still ok http://concert.arte.tv/de/le-corsaire-von-manuel-legris-der-wiener-staatsoper

Yep, nothing like an April fool (me), should be Le Corsaire, don't think I can correct that now?

Looks like it is available on catch-up now, which is good: http://concert.arte.tv/de/le-corsaire-von-manuel-legris-der-wiener-staatsoper

This might be a bit late to post for some, but there is a free live video stream today of La Corsaire from the Vienna State Ballet, This is a new ballet for the VSB choreographed by Manuel Legris, the start time is 6pm BST with a 30 minute intro beforehand. To view the stream you need to create an account and buy a ticket, although for this performance its free (you don't need to provide any payment info for this performance). https://www.staatsoperlive.com/en/live/288/le-corsaire-2016-04-02/#tab_0 There is also a free opera stream which is not live but can be viewed at any time.

It just shows you how different we all are, I like the new ITV logo, and the way its been incorporated into their advertising is quite clever. If you take it out of context its clear what the logo relates too. I see that ENB have also developed a new font set to spell out ENB for use in context and that the logo is actually orange and red, but on the computer screen its difficult to see the subtle use of the two colours (maybe I'm just colour blind).

I don't seem to be able to edit my post #7, but 'gbyte' should read 'mbyte' (i.e. megabyte), sorry, getting carried away watching the snooker (and the snow)!

Certainly seems strange that nearly a third of the screen 'real estate' (the top of the website that is) is basically empty, given the use of widescreen screen devices including tablets and smart devices these days, they are loosing a lot of impact space. The use of half gbyte images (sorry for the tech bit) on the front page might be fine for users on fast broadband, but many users are still on slower broadband and mobile data packages which effects page load times, so some optimisation may also be required.

With regard to the ENB website, it still looks like it has a way to go, and has not been tested across different browsers. I tend to use firefox, unfortunately the layout is not scaling properly and the text on various pages is a mismatch of font sizes.

If you met Graham Fletcher and saw what he has achieved locally in Leicester and how he has inspired so many children you would understand 'gushy', recently he won a community award for his local efforts: http://www.harboroughmail.co.uk/news/local-news/graham-is-an-inspiration-1-2567481

This is a very stressfull time for all concerned! It is really good to see from the postings that children who were accessed out were able to turn this into a positive experience, not only must they have been very talented but had the inner strength to keep on going and significant support from parents. But I known from personal experience of children that have left vocational school for various reasons (including injury) that have unfortunately drifted into various lesser ways of life. So its very important to understand at the start of any journey through vocational school that loosing their place may happen. One of the strengths of the children is usually their focus, the majority of the time this is good as they strive for that future ballet career, but I do think it is healthy to try and have other interests that they can fall back onto if the unfortunate thing happens. This was something that I encouraged my DS to do in case things went wrong, but fortunately they didn't. Nurturing other interests now makes sense anyway, as dancers careers are shorted lived, so there will come a point when they will need to move onto other things in the future.

This should be a worthwhile experience for anyone that has not been taught by Graham Fletcher before. Graham is a really dedicated teacher who has inspired many young people including my DS who is now dancing with the Vienna State Ballet. What he achieved with Dance Activate (originally part of Leicester/Leicestershire Council run Arts in Education) is amazing, having numerous children accepted into the Royal Ballet School/Elmhurst and their various Associate classes, during one year there were three of his students from Leicester accepted into White Lodge. Under Graham's guidence other children have taken other routes like Jassa Ahlwalia. Jassa started with Graham at the same time as my DS and was in the same year in Primary School, and has been presenting 'Art Attack' on the Disney Channel, you can read more about Jassa's story here: http://www.jassaahlu...a.com/biography

...just as a follow-up to my post above, this is the link to Graham Fletcher's web-site so that you can see what he is trying to achieve within the community, there is a local summer school this year that might be of interest to some: http://www.danceactivate.co.uk

My DS started dancing at his local primary school when he was 8, where he attended a rhythmical gymnastics club. At the time Leicester/Leicestershire Education Authority used to operate 'Arts in Education' from an ex local authority school in Leicester which had been running from the early fifties. At this facility children where invited to participate in outside school time activities including dance, drama, choir and musical instrument training (I believe this was the only such facility operated by a local education authority in the country, but with the financial constraints it was closed last year). Anyway, when my DS was 9, Arts in Education employed a new ballet teacher, Graham Fletcher, who is an ex Royal Ballet Principal dancer. To encourage children to dance Graham attended local primary schools and invited children with specific dance potential to attend his 'Dance Activate' evening and weekend classes at the Arts in Education school. It was during one of his visits to see a rhythmical gymnastics class that he invited my DS to attend Dance Activate. My DS progressed to Graham's dedicated ballet classes where he was encouraged to apply for RBS junior associates and subsequently he gained a place at the RBS, finally graduating from the Upper School and a contract with a European ballet company. Although the local authority facility has closed, Graham has continued his work in Leicester via his own community interest company (I can post a link to his web site if that is ok).

Maybe I have been musing out loud a bit, but just wanted to inject some thoughts. I noted about doing dance and self promotion (my specifics on this related to a posting with regard to the Bolshoi Ballet Academy some time back), I also noted how good it would be if we could get dancers themselves to post (but this is prob just too difficult and is where conerns on self promotion may come in). But given what appears to be the two distinct groups (parents in doing dance and ballet lovers in the news and whats happening) maybe this could have been a way to bring these groups closer together. In addition, given that the students of the parents from doing dance ultimately graduate and move on, it seems such a shame to loose their take on the ballet world, and given that a good percentage of our UK born and trained dancers take up contracts outside of the UK, there must be a large proportion of parents going abroad to watch ballet in general. A new non UK specific to post news items about our own successes (William Moore and Alex Jones at Stuttgart being good examples, rather than just difficulties we see with Sergei Polunin) and obviously there are major companies outside the UK which would be of interest without cluttering the existing news and what's happening. Maybe there isn't a major demand in this thread for a non UK category, but it would be a shame to kill off new shoots before they have even started to sprout. If there was to be such a category I would go with a simple 'Ballet Abroad'.

...I'm not sure that there was a general consensus not to split out different geographical areas (assuming this refers to non UK), infact alison made the point 'or whether splitting them would encourage more content', which I think it would, just based on the current thread in news covering 'Germany, Austria and Switzerland'

Interesting that Fiona didn't mention doing dance which is an active category, but (generalising I know) has parents seeking advice on schools, auditions and injuries. There is some 'self promotion' in here which I found interesting (good to know/see how students are progressing) and was not always sure why this is frowned upon. But maybe this does show a divide between ballet goes and actual parents/dancers. I know this maybe difficult to achieve (or maybe it does happen already and I didn't realise), but it would be good to have some actual dancers posting especially when looking for advice and how performances have gone from their perspective. This in itself might pull things closer together.

I know that I'm fairly new on balletco, but have followed for a number of years. I saw that feedback was asked for, so thought it only fair to give some of my thoughts. As can be seen, there are many different ways on how the forum can be structured and run, but at the start of a process its obviously good to get things as broadly right as possible, as it gets more difficult to change later on. For myself, I do feel that we could have some additional splits that would cover ballet outside the UK, we had a new topic in news for 'Germany, Austria, Switzerland' which seemed to cover a number of 'news' items in its own right. There are also similar threads in 'what's happening', covering other countries. What might be a useful exercise would be to look at all the topics that have been posted in this new forum and see how well they fit into the current proposals. From the spread of topics it may then be easier to see what gaps (if any) we have.

Just to add some further info to this thread, there are also a number of RBS trained dancers who are flying the flag in this part of the world. At Stuttgart Ballet, there are two UK brothers, one recently has been made a Principal. While at the Vienna State Ballet there are three dancers who trained at RBS, two specifically from the UK. Since Manuel Legris became the ballet director in 2010 the company appears to have found a new direction, I myself had the pleasure of attending two performances last year at the Opera House.