Dance*is*life

I tell my pupils every year that it's not the exam marks that count but the process of training for the exam. The examiner sees them for a short time and has to mark them on what she sees at that time. Exam candidates can get quite stressed out and not do their best and sometimes the examiner herself will be in a bad mood for one reason or other. I had a student who got 52 for IF with a certain examiner. I was shocked and actually queried it, because it really didn't make sense. I even received the examiner's notes as part of the query and it still didn't seem justified. It turned out that all four in the exam (2 from me and 2 from another teacher) got in the low 50's. My students said that the other two girls were weak technically and also talked to each other in the exam - perhaps that upset the examiner. Two other of my students were in with two strong candidates and all the group did well. We will never know what really happened, but two years later the same examiner came back and examined again. This time my student took Intermediate and she gave her 78!!!! Some children are great in exams - others fall to pieces, but as I said at the beginning it's the work that they put into preparing for the exam which advances and strengthens their technique and presentation. Not all my students choose to take exams and there are those who improve regardless, but as a rule I see a far greater improvement in those who do take the exam. Also it does depend on which exam you're taking as to whether the mark is considered high or low. I have an amazing little boy who got 89 for both Grade 5 and IF. He came to me almost in tears because one of the big girls (presumably to take him down a peg) had said that if he got the same mark he hadn't improved at all! I had to explain to him that the marking for the grades and the vocational exams was very different and if he had managed to get the same high mark in IF as he got in Grade 5 that meant that he had improved a great deal.

I hope you went in to complain and dispute the final mark CeliB! By the way I will never forget when my son won a prize and got a mark of 100 for an English essay. His teacher wrote on it - I found it hard to read your writing, but I am sure that it is excellent. I, on the other hand, did read the essay, in spite of his minute handwriting, and it was a load of balderdash - perhaps it showed a high level of English, but it definitely made no sense. My theory was that the teacher couldn't understand it, so thought that it must be brilliant!

There was a lot of enthusiastic screaming going on in our house yesterday as hubby and two of our sons watched the match!!!! Yeh for Andy!

I find that kids that come to us from gymnastics find it very difficult to adjust to ballet training. They quite often remain with the extended ribcage and very stiff hands and arm movements, even after several years training. I would say that ballet is good for gymnasts, rather than the other way around.

I agree with Aileen. The repertoire of most, if not all, classical ballet companies definitely includes contemporary works nowadays. Dancers have to be very versatile to cope with it all. When I trained at RBS many moons ago we had no modern classes - nowadays it's part of the training of all the vocational schools.

Legseleven - your daughter and I sound as if we could be soulmates - I used to do beautiful temps leve in arabesque as I shot the ball into the net!

Grades Primary to Grade 7 (and I presume Grade 8 though we don't enter for that) use colours for identification. Pink, blue, white and yellow are used. We have flowers for the front of the leotard and ribbons tied round the bun in the same colour so that they can also be identified from the back. As I said for Vocationals they have numbers front and back and we have never used ribbons. As someone noted above they are fussy about the colours in vocationals and I think they prefer without. Anyway, it's up to your teacher and honestly we don't expect parents to know and remember everything, especially as rules change from time to time. I would far rather that a parent double-checked with me than made a mistake.

We only have the numbers on front and back for vocationals and no ribbon on the hair at all. I honestly don't think it's important if it's only an option. Anyway, if you're worried - ask the teacher - don't be embarrassed

I was totally hopeless at sport - hockey scared the life out of me (I couldn't afford my dancer's legs to get hit) I couldn't see the ball in tennis (vanity wouldn't allow me to wear glasses) my arms were too weak to allow me to hang on the wall barres or climb ropes (too used to making pretty ballet movements) etc etc etc. Anyway, one term we had class elections and because I was quite popular I got a lot of votes, but sadly not enough to become form captain - what I did become was deputy sports captain - oh dear..........

Errrr "along for the ride mum", that happened to me too, I'm embarrassed to say! A mother phoned me and said that she was x's mother. I had two students of that name and I was sure I was talking to the one who'd been giving me problems - otherwise why would the mother phone? It took me a while before I suddenly realised that in fact I was talking to the other one's mother! I had to do some quick thinking to adapt my remarks to fit the other student! Since then I have learnt not to be shy, but to ask which "x" we're talking about!

I was very good at shooting in netball - took all my shots with a beautiful temps leve in arabesque! And I still walk down stairs with turned out feet........

As a teacher, I too, like LinMM, go out of my way not to show favouritism. Unfortunately, I once took it to the other extreme - I remember that I was so afraid of showing too much favouritism to the most talented girl in the class, that I ended up ignoring her pretty much, when what I wanted to do was give her compliments all the time! I thought that if I did that the other girls would resent her. Of course over the years I have found that most girls accept that someone is special and don't resent him or her, as long as they, themselves, get enough feedback, attention and encouragement from me. Anyway, to get back to my "baby ballerina", eventually the poor girl was so upset that she came to ask me what she was doing wrong! I told her that it was in fact the opposite story. In the end, we worked out a little method, so that I could show my appreciation without bringing too much attention to her - I would smile and give her a "thumbs up" when she did something particularly well and that sorted that out! I have had parents come to me to tell me that their child feels neglected, when I have actually been giving them the same amount of attention as the others. There are definitely those who need more feedback than others, so I listen to the parents, reassure them and give a little bit more attention, whilst trying not to draw attention to the fact that I am doing so. I do appreciate that favouritism exists and that what you "sense" may well be true, but I just wanted you to understand that with the best will in the world, there can still be imagined slights and misunderstandings........

youngatheart - I totally agree with you! It's really daft that children who have grown up in the old syllabus, had to learn the new Grade 3 this year, but will have to go back to the old syllabus for Grade 4 next school year and then will have to switch again to the new Grade 5! We only have one exam session a year, where I live, so it's particularly annoying!

It depends on how long it will take her to be ready for the exam, aileen. I will be teaching the old Grade 5 for the last time from September, but our exams will be in the spring of 2014. By the following year 2015, the new syllabus will be compulsary.

Talking of pianists, as you were a while back, I wonder if anyone here remembers Cyril Addison who played so wonderfully for his brother Errol's classes????

The strange thing is that I have not kept in touch with anyone I trained together with at vocational school, but I have kept in touch with friends from the performing arts day school, that I attended before that, and I still feel really close to them when we meet up every so often. Facebook has enabled us to "find" several more allumni, who weren't in touch before and I am really excited about meeting up with a few whom I have not been in contact with for 50 years! I think that really what it boils down to is this - real friends will find a way to keep in touch and if someone is important to your daughter, she will do so. I really prefer e-mail to FB for communicating as I prefer its privacy. Could you perhaps let her have a gmail account or something?

Isn't there a way of mixing shellac up yourself from the solid ingredients? I can't remember now what and how, but that might be a solution.

As a teacher I do find IF very useful even if it's not compulsary, because it really prepares the student well for Intermediate. I think I mentioned in another post that I put students in this year for the new intermediate exam and they found the work very difficult because they came to it without having done IF. The graded exams Pre-primary to Grade 8 all include character work and free movement exercises (although in the new syllabi these are not in separate sections) and as someone mentioned there is no pointework. The marking is very different in the grade exams from the vocational exams - a much higher percentage of the marks go for classical ballet technique in the latter. If you are intending to make a career in ballet the vocationals are important exam levels, but even if ballet is not your speciality, they are useful in getting your classical technique up to standard, which in turn strengthens your modern dance technique. Different schools do seem to do the exams in different order. Perhaps your daughter could take IF as well as Grade 6 classes, Pointeshoes?

Ah no - I didn't notice that! Sorry! She sounds as if she is doing really well! And great that her school lets her shoot through the grades, as she is obviously capable of it.

The old system tended to put each step into a separate exercise - for example there would be an exercise for glissades, an exercise for pas de bourees, an exercise for pas de chats, which would basically consist of three or four of the main step plus a changement or pas de bouree to change feet. This was the case even in Intermediate - brisee, brisee, pas de chat pas de bouree is one example. So the students practised these very basic exercises until they could do them easily. Later of course you'd have enchainements using a variety of steps, but it was certainly easier for them to pick up the foundation steps. Another example is the IF and Inter adage sections. Previously you had three or four different adage exercises - one for fouette of adage, one for developpes, etc etc. Now you have one adage with everything in it and there are 10 marks for that one adage. Similar thing for the allegro enchainements. They are very complicated and before you can teach them, you have to teach the components separately, so whereas before the separate components were the finished exercise, now they're just a preparatory exercise, which the teacher has to think up. It's good, I think, because it is more interesting and varied for both teacher and student, but harder to execute. In the lower grades, they have introduced some quite difficult steps - for example sissone over de cote in Grade 3 and even a grand jete exercise. I don't teach those grades, so I don't remember exactly, but I am waiting rather in trepidition to see what we wil have to teach in Grade 4 and 5!!!

The new work in general is tricky for the teachers and students to get the hang of as it is soooo different from the old syllabi. We don't enter Grade 1 students in our school for exams, but for the first time in years we didn't enter Grade 2 and 3, because they simply weren't ready with the new work by the time our exam sessions came round. I imagine that the children who will be brought up on the new syllabus will find it less difficult when they get up to Grade 3, than those children who did the old Grades and suddenly have to contend with quite different technical demands. I saw that this year my Intermediates struggled with the new syllabus, because they had not learnt the new IF which would have prepared them better. I'm already introducing some of the Inter work to the class who will do it next year and they are not finding it so difficult, because they did learn the new IF. However, I have to say that as a teacher the first year of teaching new work is the hardest - I found it much easier to teach the new IF this year, because I had already taught it last year. It is quite daunting to deal with new syllabi, be it Grade 1 or Inter and it is very easy to make false assumptions the first time around. Your poor teacher who messed up with the character must feel mortified !!

emsloves2dance - the new minimum age for IF is 11. If your daughter is already 11 then she can take her IF in November. Grade 6 or 7 also have 11 as minumum age. My IF students range between 11 and 13 and then I spend a year preparing them for Inter and also teaching them Grade 7 (they take the Grade 7 exam that year). The following year they take Inter, when they are between 13 and 15. Occasionally a talented child will jump a year, so that they take Inter when they are 12. I have one student who passed Advanced 1 with Merit at 13. I would have preferred to hold her back a year, but it was either then or not at all, as I didn't have an Advanced group the following year. I'm not sure that it really matters what they do as long as they advance and widen their horizons with different styles and dance regularly.

Personally I would not encourage him. If in later life a male dancer is asked to dance on pointe for a speciality role that's something else, but I place an emphasis on boys' learning their own virtuosity steps and excelling in pirouettes and strong jumps and beats and eventually partnering. Pointe work is essentially a very feminine thing - female ballet dancers were put on pointe to make them appear more ethereal and otherworldly and their pointe work has to appear effortless and light, however difficult the steps. The boys I teach do the girls' pointe class in soft shoes and that strengthens their feet beautifully. I change anything that's too feminine - such as courus - and insist on a strongly masculine carriage of the arms. When they are the only boy in a girls' class, I find this particularly important - they have a different role from the girls in classical ballet and I have to teach them to fill that role. There are less gender differences in modern dance (and anyway no pointework)but ballet is something else.

Wishing you a speedy recovery - hope you'll be back on your feet soon.

I started thinking about Olympic categories for ballet - most fouettes/ longest balance/ most beats -and then I remembered Wayne Sleep on Record Breakers performing an entrechat douze - wonder if anyone has ever beaten that - as far as I know it's still in the Guiness Book of Records.