Dance*is*life

I think that if you want your daughter to enter festivals/comps, you would first have to approach her teacher, If she agrees to prepare her for some solos, she will need private lessons. I much prefer the whole competition scene in the UK - seems to me that the emphasis is far more on artistry and choreography than tricks and ballet is ballet - at least it still was when I last watched the All England Finals some years ago! I saw a group "ballet" dance once in a youtube video from some American comp and apart from the fact that they wore costumes that were some distant relative to tutus, there wasn't the slightest connection to ballet. It was gymnastics/acrobatics to a pop tune!

I am sure she'll get a better mark this year because she's taking Grade 7 - last year was IF, so she got a very low Merit. I thought you'd all enjoy the story - I will certainly keep you posted and will do my very best to ensure that she succeeds. I shall give her a big hug when I see her for class on Monday I have to say that I always liked the way she accepted her marks graciously - I have girls who nearly got Distinction for IF who are refusing to do the exam this year - they took it so hard that they missed out on a Distinction, even though I explained how much harder the marking is for IF. She just smiles and carries on!

Yes, Meadowblythe, I saw Pride and thought it was brilliant too. I have to say that British actors and actresses are THE best. Even when the subject is a bit kitchy, somehow they make the film real and touching, and a bit quirky, without its being at all kitchy. I loved The 100 Foot Journey with Om Puri and Helen Mirren also in 2014 and Philomena with the wonderful Judy Dench (whom I first saw live in Twelfth Night some 52 years ago!) was another good film. Philomena is a case in point, because the book is much more explicit and dark and the film glosses over the nasty bits and makes it more of a feel good movie, but Dame Judy pulls off her magic yet again and turns the film into something special. Notice that most of these films are based on true stories? I want to see Imitation Game too - it looks very good. My favourite film of all time would have to be The Glenn Miller Story - I've lost count of the number of times I have watched the DVD. Even writing about it here makes me want to go and watch it again - waiting for June Allyson to say "But that's it - that's the sound!"

As a ballet teacher of many years I thought I'd seen it all, but this evening I learned something that really made me stop and think differently about a pupil. This girl is one of the weaker ones in her class - every year she takes the exam, works quite hard for it, but always gets the lowest mark. Somehow it doesn't put her off and she carries on regardless, but this year she was late paying the fee and we closed the account without her. Her mother phoned the Dance Principal this evening and asked if there was any way she could still pay - apparently knowing that this year her mother couldn't afford to pay, somehow the girl had collected the money together herself and wanted to pay. Of course we contacted our local RAD coordinater and got permission to pay the money in separately - what else could we do? Really I am so impressed with her determination and very much hope that she'll do better than usual in the exam this year - because honestly she deserves it!

Have you tried ordering Bloch items through DanceDirect? They seem to be very efficient and their prices are supposed to be lower than in the shops.

It's not always easy for foreign students either. At my suggestion a male student of mine auditioned for and was accepted to Elmhurst. He was 16 1/2 when he went and he found it really, really hard to adjust to everything - the strict discipline and rules, the tough, demanding teachers, living apart from his family and home, even the weather! His mother and I would do joint skype calls with him, encouraging him and helping him survive the total upheaval in his life. He survived and turned into a super dancer - he's danced professionally for seven years and is now with the Estonian National Ballet - but it was a very, very tough two years. He couldn't afford to stay the third year. I managed to find him some funding, but it was not nearly enough. The grass is not always greener on the other side.........

Up till now our students have been brought up in the old syllabus, so as they are doing IF after the old Grade 5, most of the steps that have been introduced in the new work as a preparation for IF are new to them too, but it's not problematic. I teach them what they need to know in a basic preparatory sequence and only then do we learn the settings. Your daughter will probably learn IF in much the same way and she will have plenty of time to get ready. The new syllabi have a lot of choreographed exercises and as such I don't think that looking at the DVDs to see what she's missed will really help

Does the IDTA have exams as well? You could do both. I went to a school that did RAD Vocational exams and some Russian syllabus exams, but we also did lots of performances and a couple of competitions. I adored dancing on stage and agree that it's an important part of a dancer's development. It's important, however, to have serious training classes alongside separate classes for the competition or show dances, otherwise their technique is not going to be good enough. And you don't want to do a competition every week like on DanceMoms! Choose your comps carefully! Best of luck - have fun being creative!

I looked through several other clips and they are definitely of the Academy - some of the youngest ones are adorable and those little boys in the Conservatory piece are so gorgeously cute! There's also the pas from Diana and Acteon, which has the young ones in red draped tunics.

I was going to say that they look like students - there were too many wobbles! And somebody forgot what she was doing! But still beautiful work - what wouldn't I give to have a graduate class that looked like that!!!!

My goodness 100%!!! I didn't think that was possible! Amazing result!

Good idea - thanks Pas de Quatre!

We were told that the RAD is changing to numbers only for exams (no more pink, blue, white and yellow). If that is the case we will need to buy material numbers rather than print out paper ones as we have done in the past for Vocationals. Does anyone know where these can be ordered?

There were no summer schools when I was training and I cried every time the summer holiday came round at the thought of no ballet for nearly two months. I used to practise every day and took classes whenever I could, but it was a loooong holiday! One of the best summer schools for really advanced pre-professional vocational students is the Prague International Master Classes. It is truly amazing and worth every penny. In my opinion it's worthwhile saving up for and going that last summer before the final year at Vocational school.

Fantastic news! Especially after all she went through!

My husband booked us seats in a box for Les Mis years ago and it was a disaster. We were on the side, so right next to one of the main loudspeakers. In addition, the seats were individual ones, very old and with almost no padding, which meant that my behind suffered dreadfully sitting uncomfortably for the overlong first act. Naturally, I didn't enjoy the performance because of it. We eventually went again in order to take our sons, who wanted to see it, and this time booked regular seats in the middle of the circle and it was a totally different experience. I imagine those chairs have been replaced since then, but boxes are always on the side.

Betterankles - "The professionalism, commitment and concentration that they have learned by studying ballet towards a professional level regularly, enables them to utilise these (rather unusual these days!) assets, and do very well in other fields of life." How true that is! For a time, inbetween dancing jobs I used to work as a temp in various offices. I remember working in the local social services office and having to type up the social workers' handwritten reports. I found them so fascinating that I just sat and got through them at top speed, much to the chagrin of the other typists there! They told me in no uncertain terms to slow down, because I was jeopardising their jobs by working so quickly. I didn't know what to do with myself - I was used to always working full out - not marking!!!!

I am so thrilled ! We managed to get permission to buy five tutu skirts, so we bought the ones from Bloch and they are indeed gorgeous! Can't wait to see them on stage on my students! With a white leotard and perhaps some silver trim, they'll look like real tutus! Such an improvement on our old skimpy ones, with four short frills! Thank you, ladies, if it weren't for you, we would never have ordered them!

Good heavens I wasn't talking about doing away with academic education altogether! Just from 16 perhaps to pare it back considerably at the upper schools! I went to a grammer school until 13, when I moved to an arts school with education until 16 when I went to the Royal. We didn't do science or sport, at the arts day school, freeing those hours up for dance related subjects and I didn't take many GCSE's, as my grammer school headmistress predicted. However, I was miserable at the high school and adored my time at the arts school and I do feel the benefit of it to this day in my teaching approach. Obviously you have to get a good education, and I do regret missing out on the science subjects, but I later managed to get a First Class Honours degree through the RAD, so I ended up OK there. I personally feel that the most crucial time for a promising dancer is 16 to 18 and if that could be more concentrated on mainly dancing subjects I think it would help the students. That's all I meant!

I think it's important to get one's priorities straight. Someone who wants to make it as a dancer has to give up on something - as CeliB wrote "There are only so many hours in a day,aren't there?" Dancers don't have a very long career and there is so much competition today for every ballet company place, that it seems to me to be the right thing to concentrate first on being the best possible dancer you can be! We all know that to succeed in this toughest of vocations, you need to be single minded, dedicated and hardworking to the exclusion of everything else. If it's possible to go back to academic training later in life, after having a stage career, rather than trying to squeeze everything in beforehand, what's wrong with that? Universities take students at any age, indeed for a "mature" student, they don't even require A levels. etc. Many dancers retrain in a totally different field or in something related to dance. I have a dancer friend, who decided to become an arts therapist and studied for that in university when she was in her 50s. Li Cunxin (Mao's Last Dancer) became a very successful businessman in Australia, when he gave up dancing, and is now back in ballet as Artistic Director to the Queensland Ballet.

The book of the Book Thief was much better than the film, which was really watered down. Sometimes it's a problem seeing a film of a book. I prefer reading the book after seeing the film - that way it doesn't annoy me that they've changed the story line and I can imagine the characters as I saw them in the film! An author I have recently discovered and find excellent is JoJo Moyes. Brilliant writer - her best one I think is The Girl You Left Behind, but I have read three or four other of her books and all have been well written and enthralling.

I finally got my DT this morning and eagerly read the article. I agree with JOJo that, apart from the bit about lacking motivation, which he did say in an almost tentative manner, I found the article to be quite upbeat and positive. He said that 70% of the dancers in the company are UK trained students and that he would only take foreign students to the school if there was room and not at the expense of UK applicants, who met the school's standards, so that sounds alright. Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that UK dance students may not have reached a high enough standard by audition time at 16, whereas overseas students have. There does seem to be a difficulty in building up a full schedule of dance lessons if teenagers are only attending after school or saturday classes, rather than a full time arts school. I know that a student of mine who moved to London had real problems in finding enough classes to do even at Academy Headquarters - she never managed to make it up to the lessons she would have been doing had she stayed at our school. She transferred this year to Arts Ed full time and is so happy to finally get to dance more. I very much agree with his wanting to bring back more artistry and performing qualities. As he noted - globally we have gone through a period of extreme athleticism with a lack of communication to the audience. I think that's true too - I remember seeing the Basel Ballet in a piece set to Bach's Goldenberg Variations. The dancers were all brilliant, with perfect physique and feet and extremely flexible, but they were absolute clones of each other and I personally found it boring.

Swanprincess mentioned above about its being important not to get too stuck in one system of training and I do agree with her. At a certain point it is vital to expose students to different styles, but I think it needs to be when they are able to cope with the differences. Our students get a third weekly ballet class with a guest teacher, when they have passed their Inter Foundation. At the moment the teacher is a Russian male, former soloist (lucky them). He teaches very carefully and methodically, but his demands are still rather different from mine and the names of the exercises are different too. I always explain to them that it is fine - good correct technique is the same whatever - but if he asks for a step to be performed differently from me, that's also okay. I explain how important it is to be versatile, whilst making sure that they don't do ronde de jambe en l'air as high as he wants it for their RAD exam! Talking about going back to the basics when starting vocational school, reminded me of my first class at RBS. Of course, when I started I thought I knew how to dance, so I was rather taken aback when the teacher corrected my stance in a balance and I promptly fell flat on my face! The frustrating thing is that there is always more to learn and correct, we can always be better dancers. I can't imagine that pupils at vocational school are complacent about it - I would imagine that they are simply overjoyed to have been accepted in the first place.

Primrose: "I dont think there are many like that any more. That is not a teacher but a control freak bully." I do hope not Primrose - it wasn't that long ago unfortunately.

By the way I find it absurd that ballet teachers are not allowed to touch their students in the UK. How on earth can teachers correct properly and make them understand what we want? If we touch them naturally and in a matter of fact way, I can't see why it would upset students or cause problems. I feel that if I were to ask permission every time I touched a student, it would imply that I was intending to do something inapropriate, which obviously I'm not. I'm a very "hands on" teacher and can't imagine teaching any other way. A pupil of mine moved to London and she found it very difficult to adjust to the rather distant approach of her teacher at Academy Headquarters. The personal touch was missing and she felt very much on her own. You can keep a suitable distance without being distant.