Dance*is*life

I don't know if this has ever happened to anyone. Two of my students suddenly realised that they were wearing leather ballet shoes - you mean animals were killed so that I could have leather ballet shoes??? - was their appalled reaction. I'd honestly never thought of it like that and didn't know how to answer them. In the end I told them that it was probably artificial leather like the furniture, but quite honestly I have no idea. I mean we've all stopped wearing fur coats, but what about "leather" handbags and shoes?

Thank you so much for letting us know what you decided on - it's so nice to hear the happy end of the story! With regard to the theory that dancers don't need to use their brains - when I left my grammar school to go to a full time performing arts day school, my headmistress remonstrated with me - " But you won't be able to go on to university from there - what will you do if you don't succeed as a dancer?" With all the naivety of a 12 year old, I informed her that I could always be a housewife!!!! As it happened I did get a degree through the RAD when I was 50! And I got it with First Class Honours. I was always rather sorry that it was too late to flaunt that in my Head's face! Oh and a recent survey found that dancing protects you more than any other activity from getting Alzheimer's - why? Simply because it uses more of the brain than anything!

It can sometimes be the shoes - I have an Intermediate student, who couldn't manage the centre pointe work - horrors! I told her to try on a different make of pointe shoe and hey presto - she got up easily! And funnily enough my students with Gaynors are afraid to wear them for the exam, because they find it hard to go through demi-pointe with them!

Yes Flit and Float - I agree with you - the run up to it travels and the actual jump goes high almost on the spot.

My just five year old grandson has "gone off" Frozen, which he adored, because someone told him it was for girls! Grrr! I let my sons play Mummies and Daddies with their teddy bears - even bought them a dolls pushchair and tea set. I took them to see ballet too. What's the result? They are absolutely amazingly caring fathers to their children (both girls and boys)and helpful husbands to their wives - why do people have to compartmentalise and label everything according to gender...... You can emphasize that street dance has to be strong and full of energy without implying that ballet dancers are "sissy"!

They are performing at the moment in Israel and I went yesterday to the 1pm performance. I didn't see Irina herself and her replacement although very good technically, didn't really have the swan arms, nor the emotion for Odette. Her Odile was better with excellent fouettes. I am afraid that the tempo was so slow in the second act that I kept dozing off! Why do the Russians "milk" every movement? I timed a youtube Russian Act 2 pas de deux and the ABT version with Angel Corrella and Gillian Murphey and the pas was about 2 minutes shorter! It makes the corps work look lacklustre too. My sister in law went to the matinee today and was very impressed, but she thinks she saw Kolesnikova herself. We both found the dancers {? might have been the same guy) who portrayed Siegfried to be very wooden, spent his time posing rather than emoting. I also felt that some of the choreography didn't do the glorious music justice - it seemed very minimal and static - again perhaps because it was all so slow. And I really do not like the Russian fourth act!!!!!! I saw the Kirov a few years ago and they were incredible! But even then the happy ending ruined it for me! This one had an awful lot of flapping of arms by the corps in the fourth act! I should add that the first act jester was excellent, as was the first act trio. I don't know who were the dancers as I didn't buy a programme.

It's a really advanced exercise - I am rather surprised that ISTD do them so early. What she has to think about is not to make it a round movement - ideally the legs should go straight up and down. Think of throwing the first leg up to the front facing the back corner and then twist to the front landing on that front leg, but bringing the other leg up into arabesque. The changeover is supposed to happen in the air as high as you can, but if you do the movement first without jumping it should help her understand what she's aiming for.

Grade 5 RAD???? Surely not? I thought that they were introduced in Advanced Foundation!

Oh Lemongirl - it goes without saying that I am still totally passionate about my hubby! We were in the same digs in Glasgow - me in panto as Good Fairy and he as a student at Strathclyde. I fell in love with him at first sight and decided there and then that I was going to marry him. He proposed after two weeks! Still my passion for ballet is so consuming that it's almost a family joke and it defines me in a way that nothing else does I think.

I do think it's important to be trained in a variety of dance genres and other performing arts in order to widen the job field. I know a lot of people think that if you go to vocational school at a younger age, you'll have more chance of succeeding, but realistically there are so few purely classical jobs, that it might be more beneficial to get an all round arts training followed by vocational school from 16. I know the vocational schools do all teach contemporary nowadays (it was not on the curriculum when I was at RBS) but it's still a very concentrated training. I find that so much of my non-dance performing arts training has proved to be really useful and I am very pleased that I didn't only concentrate on ballet in my formative years. Acting classes, for example, allowed me to prove my worth in character roles later on. It can be very frustrating to invest so much in training for a specific career and then not to succeed, but as someone said there's no guarantee in any field. My eldest son spent three years getting a law degree at King's College London, a further year getting qualified, followed by an apprenticeship in a top law firm. However, he wanted to come home and in order to be able to practise here, had to join a law firm as an apprentice again. I'm afraid to say that after all that, he went in for one day and decided that he didn't actually like being a lawyer and left! Eventually after getting an MA at Cambridge in another field, he's working in business, but finds himself using his lawyer skills all the time. Nothing in life is wasted.

I started dancing at 3 1/2 - my dream for as long as I can remember was to be a ballerina. I had an amazing childhood - dancing was and still is my passion, particularly ballet. I got into RBS upper school, had three years there and then I couldn't get into a company in the UK. I danced in Germany - yes as someone recommended that was the place to go, but I missed my family and quite honestly, I wasn't tough enough to push myself. I returned to England and worked in Pantos etc - I was always Good Fairy and Principal Dancer! But panto gave me two really important things in my life. I worked with a troupe of performing children in my first panto improving their performance and it was noticed by their school principal and so I got my first job teaching ballet at Italia Conti! And I discovered that, contrary to my previous plan that I would teach when I was too old to dance, I suited teaching and I loved it! So here I am nearly 50 years later, still teaching and believe it or not still dancing. I even had a second performing career as a character artiste, alongside the teaching! Oh and that second thing - I met my husband during my third panto! We've been married 42 years, and three children and 5 grandchildren later, I am still totally passionate about ballet. Sure I didn't become the ballerina I planned to be, but I am so grateful for the way my life turned out and don't regret a thing. There is no way of knowing if your dancing daughters and sons will have a successful career, but ballet is about so much more than just learning to dance. There's been a few threads about what we all gain from our training - work ethics, perserverance, etc etc - I don't want to repeat it all again. Still even if after all that training your child doesn't make it - either by choice or circumstances - don't regret anything. After all - Dance is Life!

I used to have several pairs going at once - hardest ones for pointe class, softest ones for group repertoire and then I would turn them into demi-pointes. Think of how much pointe they do a week - the above mentioned classes plus pas de deux, variations and just some pointe work at the end of class, so those who said 4 a month are pretty accurate! In my day shoes cost a guinee a pair - one pound one shilling - which was actually very expensive - you could get a 3 course meal for about 1 shilling and 6 pence! Hope your daughter has a wonderful time at vocational school!

A word of caution. Have you thought that she's a bit young at 10 to be starting pointe work? The cartilege in the feet is still soft at that age and it is advised not to start before 11 or even 12. If she has sway backs then it's even more difficult to control pointe work. How much pointe work will she be expected to do? How many hours of ballet does she take each week? When will she be 11? All this needs to be taken into consideration.

All the former dancers I know and any active teachers simply go to advanced adult ballet class. Most adult classes are a mix of standards and abilities. Everyone does what they are able to and no-one judges. He should hunt for those and see what he likes and where he feels comfortable.

What a lovely piece - thank you for posting it! Fascinating! Those slow, slow plies etc reminded me of a disastrous class that we had with a very beloved teacher. She was heavily pregnant and obviously feeling grotty, so she kept us on the barre the whole lesson working over and over again to correct minute details. However, we adored her so much, that none of us were cross with her - on the contrary we were full of sympathy for her, because we were sure that she must be feeling really bad to have been so mean to us!

I may well be wrong, but I believe there used to be a teaching qualification that was ARAD as well, but it meant you had passed your Advanced Teachers Certificate and not just the Advanced executant exam.

I was really lucky to get a grant of 50 pounds a year for pointe shoes from the LCC (as the GLC was called then). I needed a new pair of pointe shoes every week whilst I was at the RBS Upper School and they cost one guinee a pair. I won a scholarship for my 11+ which I didn't use as I moved to a private school on scholarship, and happily was able to reactivate it for my training at the Royal. My parents couldn't afford the cost of so many pointe shoes and so we wrote a begging letter to the council. To my great surprise they gave me the pointe shoe grant. I imagine they agreed because they were so surprised at the request - don't suppose they were often asked for money for pointe shoes!

One of the sweetest letters I ever received was from a little girl who came to see the panto I was in - I was the Good Fairy! Her mother put it in a regular envelope of course, but when I opened it there was a little pink toy town envelope inside and the child had written Dear Fairy - I thought you were best. Please send me a photo! Love, Jane aged 5. My one and only fan letter! Of course not only did I send her a photo, but I also wrote her a special story. Her mother wrote back to thank me and to tell me that she was absolutely thrilled at receiving an answer as she hadn't really expected one. I still have that letter in my treasure chest!

I had a student whose first - and last - pair of pointe shoes were Grishkos. Believe it or not she never bought another pair of shoes! I know they were very hard and "clonky" shoes , so perhaps they were unusually tough - she was very light on her feet, so a combination of both. In her final year she came to me and asked if she could do something on pointe, so I added her in to one of my classical dances as a soloist, with four others on pointe and a younger group as the corps. She insisted on wearing her old shoes, but they were really pretty "dead" by then! How she got through the dance on them I have no idea, but I have never forgotten that - a pair of shoes that lasted six years!!!!!

Gosh someone who actually wants to write a letter that needs a stamp! That must be quite rare nowadays methinks! I had a French penpal at school. I can still remember what she wrote to me - My father is a vineyard! I'm sure my French was equally interesting!

I am so happy for you that you managed to sort him out Peanut. And how wonderful that dance has helped so much! Our oldest grandchild was "diagnosed" with being on the autistic spectrum (!) when he was two and a half. We were a bit worried about his development, it's true, but felt that it was really too soon to label him. Anyway he had those one on one sessions for about a year or so - he quite enjoyed them though, because at his age he was just playing and either Mummy or Daddy were with him, so he got some special quality time with them too. In the beginning they wanted him to go to a special kindergarten, but we all refused and we also refused to have a therapist with him in regular kindergarten. It was clear to us after about three months that it was just late development and eventually my son and his wife managed to arrange another inspection and got him taken off the list! I am delighted to say that at 7 he is a happy, well adjusted little boy, a real social animal with loads of friends and he is on his way to being a Maths genius! He likes ballet too, but only as a spectator! Football and basketball are his real love!

What a wonderful story Ballet4boyz - thank you for sharing. You must be so proud of him! It's amazing how therapeutic ballet can be, isn't it? I've had students going through all sorts of things, but ballet is the escape valve that keeps them going.

That's wierd that it was only for those two years, because I seem to remember her as part of Festival Ballet and I was very young then, only about 7/8. I wonder if she also guested with them from time to time. Otherwise I don't know quite know why it would have stuck in my head!

Is it expensive? I have some talented kids who might be interested, obviously for next year now, but certainly cost would need to be taken into consideration.

I got my middle son dancing when he was 5 - we had great fun party-polka-ing together! A friend of mine had a special boys class and told me to send him along. He loved it. When we came to Israel he nagged me to let him continue, but I couldn't find a teacher I trusted who didn't teach on the same days as me and I didn't want to teach him. He moaned at me for years, poor lad, and I really felt guilty The good thing is that he still loves ballet and happily takes his sons to watch performances I have taught several boys over the years. One of them, who became a pro ballet dancer, was taken by his mother when he was about 6 to an open air concert and he just started dancing in the aisle! Whenever he heard music on the radio, he would dance around, so she decided to send him to classes. They made the rounds of all the schools in the area, but he rejected them all as not being "serious" enough, until finally she brought him to our school, which, I'm pleased to say, he approved of!