Dance*is*life

Really - I never knew that! How interesting! The differences between UK and US English can be very confusing! I remember one day that an American friend asked me to bring a ready cooked chicken - we were planning to have a picnic with our kids - and she asked me to bring some potato chips as well. They didn't have any left, so I bought a large bag of crisps instead. When I apologised for that - she said but that's what I asked you for! It was then that I learnt that crisps are chips in US speak and chips are french fries!!!!!!

I taught a pair of identical twins some years ago and in my first year with them the only way I could tell them apart was by looking at their feet - their lovely mum had bought them ballet shoes in different shades - one had pink and one peach. My only problem was when they changed to character shoes

I wouldn't worry if she's not able to take the exam in time though. I believe that most if not all of the vocational schools have classes for students who wish to complete their RAD advanced exams. My student went to Elmhurst having taken Advanced 1 and he was prepared for Advanced 2 there.

No, at the moment you don't. There are a couple of sections that you have to pass as single sections - like pointe, for example. However, apart from this they have lumped some sections together - each of which is out of 10 - but,instead of having to get 4 out of 10 for each section, you only need 16 out of 40. What is different in Advanced 1 and 2 is that there is no mark for the barre. It's taken into consideration, but not marked as a separate section. So the first 4 sections you have to pass with at least 16 are 1) ports de bras, centre practise and pirouettes, 2) adage, 3) allegro 4) free enchainements. Pointe work is on its own so you have to get 4 out of 10. Music consists of 1) Timing and 2) Response to music - so you have to get 8 out of 20 there. Performance is on its own so you need 4 out of 10 to pass that. And then you have the dance which is marked out of 10 for technique and another 10 for music and performance, which means you have to get 8 out of 20 to pass that. This is for both Advanced 1 and 2, but of course as they are changing the syllabus, they may change the marking too.

My husband's parents bought a piano for his brother to play on when he was a boy. The piano stayed in their apartment, which after their deaths in the 1980s was rented out. Sadly his brother died also in 2000 without managing to move the piano into his own home, as he had no room. Our son did up the apartment in order to live in it himself and the piano was moved onto a small closed balcony, whilst the refurbishing was going on. It stood there in the dust, neglected and unplayed. Eventually it was moved into a store room at my husband's office and continued to stand there waiting to be brought back to life. No-one could bear to sell it and we all felt it aught to go to his brother's oldest son, but he didn't have room for it either. A year or two ago he finally moved with his young family into a large enough house and the piano was moved at last to where it belonged. After years of silence, it was tuned and mended, cleaned and polished and wonder of wonders it sang out again in perfect pitch, with a lovely tone. What was the icing on the cake, it turns out that the oldest grandson seems to have inherited his Grandpa's ear for music and he plays it every day. Don't worry if you have to store it for a while - I'm sure your piano too will sing again.....

I remember when I was first learning en dehors and en dedans, I turned them into on the horse and on the donkey - have no idea why that made it easier for me to remember which was inwards and which was outwards, but apparently it did!

What age and level would be suitable for this?

I just watched a slide show of the photos - they are exquisite. The photographer really knew how to capture the essence of ballet. What is most impressive is that there are almost no photos that show the students to a disadvantage - every dancer is perfectly placed, with pointed feet, lovely lines, elegant ports de bras - you can really see the high level of technique that was there. Not to mention that they all look soooo beautiful! Amazing!

Pas de Quatre - that's a brilliant idea. Perhaps they could do something with their senior students - it would give them experience and it would give the audiences around the country a chance to see a performance and perhaps learn something. Ballet For All was very educational and interesting. I'm actually surprised that they don't follow Central's lead and have a touring group of graduates.

Do you live near enough to take her once a week to the RAD HQ for syllabus classes rather than privates, which are really expensive? I have a student who moved to London and she learns at HQ and at other schools and no-one objects. It was the only way for her to get enough lessons. It can be very difficult if you are the only one who wants to take the exam at a particular level and the school really sounds most unhelpful. Have you got the DVD of the old Advanced 1 syllabus? It might help if she could practise with that. If you say she can do Advanced 2 pointe, then she should have no problem with Advanced 1 and I really feel very sorry for her and can quite understand why she's feeling so frustrated.

As I understand it your daughter took her Intermediate in 2011 and then started working on Advanced 1, but she also took Grade 7 in 2012 and is soon going to be working on Grade 8. Advanced 1 usually requires 2 years to work on it and probably needs a separate class on pointe work as well, in order to be strong enough for the quite extensive pointe section. This is very important, because if you fail the pointe section you fail the whole exam. In addition, as has been pointed out, they are changing the syllabus and it is going to be very different in content and style from the old syllabus. How long are her classes and how much time does she devote to pointe? Does she work in demi-pointe shoes and can she manage all the work in the shoes? The Advanced level exams are called Advanced because they are just that and students who take them need to be working intensively at that level. Perhaps they are holding your daughter back because they realised that she is not getting sufficient training to prepare her properly in time to take the old syllabus before the new one is compulsary?

I was going to mention that Onegin pas de deux too! The bit where Onegin grovels at Tatiana's feet is also goose-bumpy and the part just before she tears up the letter, when you see how torn she is between Onegin and her husband. It takes a consummate actress to portray her feelings there - rather like the sitting on the bed piece in R & J. If I can go off topic a little and move to films - I saw War Horse yesterday. The scene where Albert finds his horse at the dressing station gets me every time! As someone said anticipation adds to the goosebumps...........

I start teaching my students pointe in RAD IF level and even then it is verrrry slow - just a few exercises on pointe at the barre for a few minutes at the end of class. We add on more exercises throughout the year, but it is a very gradual process. All of the studentsat our school take twice a week 90 minute ballet classes from Grade 5 upwards and before that 75 minute classes at Grade 3 and 4 level. The work that is required in Grade 4 is not nearly enough to strengthen your legs, feet and back sufficiently for pointe - unless the teacher adds on exercises for that purpose. We, for example, finish with exam work in April and from then on I give non-syllabus classes which prepare them for the following year and/or for pointe. I can understand why your teacher doesn't want to put you up, if you're not going to be able to attend class regularly. You note that you take other ballet classes - I assume at a different school? Will they not put you on pointe there? You say that the girls in these classes will all be on pointe - can't you learn with them? How many hours a week do you take elsewhere and at what level? It's difficult to advise you when we don't have the full picture.

I think you have to sign up to see it online. There is an excerpt on their site - the ports de bras - it's very neo-classical and lyrical.

I went to a school which was more Russian "style" than RAD, but we had one class of RAD each week for the "Majors". I never expected to get more than a Pass and actually recorded it in my diary with wonder when a friend passed her Intermediate (now Adv. 1) with Commended! When I took my Advanced (now Advanced 2) I was at the RBS and everyone was expecting me to pass well, however the examiner was one of the toughest they had. One of the two girls supposed to be with me went home when she heard who the examiner was, the other girl was on her 7th try or something like that and the poor thing failed again (I actually thought she was quite good) and I got a Pass. Everyone was in shock that I just passed, but I was so relieved that I didn't care! The problem with the old system was that if you failed one section you failed the whole exam - even for Pre-Elementary (now IF). A teacher friend of mine had a really good girl who failed her Elementary. She was so mad at this injustice that she put her in the following year for both Elementary and Intermediate in the same session. She got Highly Commended for Elementary and I believe Pass + or Commended for Intermediate, which you were supposed to work on for two years after getting Elementary. Kids nowadays don't realise how easy they have it!!

If the studio is big and the students are disciplined and hard-working, then large numbers are manageable. I have had 20+ in a group and also 8/9 in one class - I have to say that I prefer something in the middle - 12 to 15 - so that I have three rows with 4 or 5 in a row. 37 is a huge amount of bodies and although, in the class at YBSS that I watched, I thought they all worked very well and they were divided up so that they had room, it did make it a bit impersonal. I know they want and need to take as many as they can, but there should be a limit of 30 I think.

We had to wear lace up or buckle up school shoes and I hated them - they were so heavy on my feet. So my mother bought me a pair of brown leather slip-on shoes with a look of mocassins about them. I adored them. The teacher of course told me off, but I managed to persuade her to allow me to wear them until I outgrew them. Sly little me then went out anad bought the same shoe in the next size, so I managed to keep wearing them. The funny thing is that nowadays my feet are always in lace-up clunky sports shoes!

It sounds a bit like the battered wife syndrome - the husband beats up his wife and she apologises to him - the teacher humiliates and insults the students and they feel that it must be their fault. Personally, I'd rather have my students work hard because they want to, than because I had browbeaten them into it.

I'm afraid I just missed the Bolshoi on my trip to the UK, , so have no comments on that, but someone mentioned a ballerina who could give lessons on how, in your thirties, you can portray a sixteen year old convincingly and it made me think of Ekaterina Maximova. I saw her as Tatiana in Cranko's Onegin when she was 50, and if I hadn't known she was 50 I would have thought that she was indeed a young girl. She was amazing and I have never forgotten that particular performance. It seems to me, reading between the lines of the criticisms above, that what is missing from the performances is that elusive thing - soul. There have been so many posts on the ballet boards about technique and pyrotechnics taking the place of artistry and acting from the soul - am I right in thinking that that was lacking in these Bolshoi performances, or am I misunderstading something?

Personally I think there might be a touch higher expectation when the examiners are in state of the art studios. I always feel that our studios are in a way too nice! We don't have entrance exams as we need every pupil we can get and whilst our timetable is as rich as we can make it, it is nowhere near like that of a pre-pro or vocational school. Quite honestly, I think if I were examining in our new, beautiful, large, light studio, wrongly or rightly, I would expect more from the students there than from a school with a small basement studio with a pillar in the middle of it! Having said that, however, many wonderful teachers have below par studios, but produce wonderful students and those students may well perform better in their home studio, which they're used to, than in a better studio that is unfamiliar to them.

Just got back home from a wonderful holiday in the UK and France. We drove up to Scotland via York and I left my hubby sightseeing whilst I went to watch class. I have heard such good things about the YBSS and was really excited about seeing it for myself at last. I studied at RBS upper school the same time as Marguerite Porter and was thrilled that she remembered me! She does look amazingly young and was charming! I saw her dance Juliet at a Covent Garden matinee once and she was exceptional. I was lucky enough to be able to watch the Master Class with Anthony Dowell as well and was sooo impressed. The beautiful tall boy is Scottish, by the way. And yes it was the boy from the RAD video there and definitely from Elmhurst - he was wearing their uniform. I thought they all did fantastically well - it is an extremely difficult solo - and lovely to see so many good boys. The next morning I was able to watch the barre part of the youngest group and then I moved to A1 for the rest of the class. I also popped in to see a bit of the A2 group afterwards as they were doing adage and pirouettes. There was such a high standard in all of the groups and the teachers were wonderful. I was so sorry not to be able to watch more. Anyone who had children there can be very proud of them. As a teacher I found it quite inspiring, picked up some useful hints for corrections and am determined to try and persuade some of my students to make the long journey to York next summer!

Was she allowed to drink in the exam? In countries with hot climates, water is allowed to be taken into the exam studio and the girls are given a chance to drink and rehydrate two or three times during the exam (depending on length). I would hope that on the occasional heatwaves in normally temperate climate countries, they would also allow that. Anyway, I hope she did well in spite of the heat - at least her muscles got warm quickly!

Perhaps the fact that he was "guesting" made them raise the prices? He probably demanded more money than if he'd been a permanent member of the company. In the late 1950s and 1960s when I was a frequent visitor to the "Garden", there were so many wonderful ballerinas, Fonteyn, Nerina, Park, Beriosova, Sibley, Seymour in the Royal that it really didn't matter whom I saw in the lead, although I had my preferences for the different ballets as each brought their own special quality to the roles. Also in the 50's and 60s you had the same luxury of a stable of stars at Festival Ballet (now ENB). My sister wasn't a great ballet fan, but she would come with us if we were going to see John Gilpin - he was so handsome!

I went to the other extreme once and have regretted it ever since! When Baryshnikov firsy joined the RB I wanted to go to the saturday matinee of some big ballet or other. Didn't matter to me particularly what - just to visit the Opera House with its red plush curtains and gold angels and see the RB was enough and matinee tickets were always cheaper. Well, when I got to the box office I was told that tickets were more expensive than usual because Baryshnikov was dancing. When I complained that matinees were supposed to be cheaper I was told that he was doing the public a favour by dancing at a matinee! Unfortunately, for some reason I had no idea who he was or what was all the fuss about. I was a fairly newly wed I believe and perhaps had other things on my mind! Anyway, I didn't want to spend so much money, so didn't go. When I eventually became a total Baryshnikov groupie because of his films, I kicked myself for missing out on a live performance!

Also, even if they do ask, you don't have to put the actual mark down if you don't want to. On summer school applications they ask for exam passed and mark, but you can just write Merit or Distinction without the mark. Actually though in your daughter's case, as she got such a high Merit, I would add it. However, the question about exams is more to find out what level the child is working at rather than to see how well she did in that exam, because they also know that exam results can't be relied upon to be indicative of the child's talent!