Dance*is*life

Gosh it's amazing that the All England is still going strong! I used to compete in it when I was a child - many, many, many moons ago! There used to be 2 semi-finals with 4 from each being sent through to the final in London. If someone didn't take up their place from the northern semis then the 5th place from the southern semis was taken and so on and so forth. Anyway, the first All-England I competed in, when I was 8 or 9, I came 8th in the National solo in the semis. The day before the finals, the organisers contacted me that no-one was coming from up north and that I was therefore eligible to compete. My dad was working, so my mum and I and the pianist went up to London on the bus with the costume in a bag on our laps. After we got off the bus, we suddenly realised that the pianist had left my music on the bus seat . Luckily she knew it off by heart and I went on to win the section! My next school also competed in the All-England and I continued dancing in it in solos, duets, groups and troupes until I went off to RBS at 16. Magical days and something I looked forward to all year........ So good luck to everyone and have fun!!!

The Bolshoi holds a summer course in Moscow just for International students (so presumably it's in English). One of my students auditioned and was accepted. She's going for two weeks in August. I'll be very interested in seeing how it turns out and the effect it has on her technique.

What I found interesting was the reviewer's comment that the ballet students she spoke to told her that they didn't read ballet books and she wondered if it was because they danced themselves, so didn't feel the need. I personally don't think this can be true - my little niece dances and she loves reading any book connected with ballet. What I do think is that in this age of computers and i-phones etc reading has become less popular and many children simply don't read books. I myself adored Noel Streatfeild books and I still have almost the whole series of Ballet for Drina books and the series about "The Wells", but I come from a different era. I shall have to ask my own students as I find this rather intriguing.......!

I find Gaynors really difficult to sew ribbons to. A student's kept coming off and normally if that happens in class, I whip out my needle and re-sew them so that they can continue to dance. I could not sew through the thick material and we ended up using a safety pin! Her Mum kept trying and they just kept falling off. In the end I think she took them to a seamstress who sewed them on with a machine, but you have to be very careful that you can still pull the drawstrings, which for some reason are on the side. I'm glad they've changed the design and fabric somewhat, perhaps that will help. In theory the elastics get sewn on either side of the achilles tendon on the heel, so as to stop the backs slipping off and the ribbons in the usual place (folding the back over to find the spot).

Rule Britannia - Britannia rules the waves!

When I was at RBS I consistantly came in the top three for the test class at the end of term. But when they took students from my class into the company, they didn't choose me. When I went to Barbara Fewster to query it, I was told that my head was too large and that was that. So I guess even talent and personality aren't enough - the physical proportions are important too. It's a cruel world and the Royal doesn't want flawed - they want perfect.

Yup he came second! I can't believe it - I was sure he won! Who beat Cliff???? And apparently Bryan Johnson sang Looking High High High not Kenneth (sorry not Ian) McKellar (who recorded it later I think) and he also came 2nd. Oh well - good thing there's an Internet to check these things! I looked it up some Spanish girl singer beat Cliff! Her song was called La La La and basically that's all she sang! Bah humbug!

Once upon a time the Eurovision was rather a special event that we all enjoyed watching. I remember that when I was dancing in a ballet company in Germany in 1967 and had no TV in my digs, I was so upset at missing the Eurovision that I knocked on my neighbour's door and begged her to let me watch! Ah such happy innocent days when Cliff won with the delightfully twee song Congratulations! Oh and not to forget Ian McKellar and Looking High High High!!!!!

Good heavens! 19th Something is definitely fishy in the voting..............

I suppose it's because the UK isn't really part of a voting block like all the former soviet countries or the scandinavian ones - they all seem to vote for each other...... But I do like Believe in Me - whilst it's not Total Eclipse it is a good song and worth listening to. Most of the songs were instantly forgettable.

I really, really liked Bonnie Tyler's song Believe in Me. Fingers crossed that she wins!!!!

I loved pink as a child - my bedroom had pink wallpaper and my bedspread was pink - I actually wore pink clothes into my twenties! Embarrassing, I know I tend to wear richer colours nowadays, but obviously I still have a dormant pink desire! And there's nothing quite so cute as a new born baby girl in tiny pink clothes, even if once she grows up and has the choice, she opts for black!

Just had to add this - after having tried 3 times for a dancing daughter and getting three boys (wonderful but non-dancing) and then getting two grandsons (gorgeous but probably also non-dancing), my daughter-in-law has just informed us that she is pregnant with a girl!!!!! No doubt with two big brothers she'll be a tomboy and won't want to dance, but I can finally satisfy my desperation to buy pink cute and sparkly fairies etc! Yeahhhhh! :)

That you'd be so addicted that even in your 60's you can't bear the thought of not being able to do class ever again, so you keep going, even though your body is falling to pieces, trying to ward off that terrible day just a while longer.............

The fees for the top schools are so high for foreigners, that if as LinMM said above they see it as a way out of comparative poverty, how on earth do they afford the fees in the first place?

I don't think that 9 year olds doing fouettes should be the bar that we aim at in training children, although I do agree that talented kids should be pushed more. However I am afraid that this will only happen when children have more intensive training at a younger age in the UK. Those that go to the junior vocational schools are fine, but the ones that go once a week for 45 minutes ballet are not going to get there however talented they are. In my opinion the problem is not so much the RAD syllabus (and the new ones are indeed pushing in more difficult steps and requiring less set work) but the fact that the students have too few hours of training a week to enable them to move more quickly up the grades or even jump a level en route. My mother took me away from a very good RAD school, because they expected me to stay at the same level until I was old enough to take the next exam (which I could do after a term's training). I went back to RAD a few years later and took the Major exams (now Vocational) but if there had not been that rigidity I don't suppose I would have left my first ballet school when I did.

Ah yes that would probably be the reason - he took it in the December session. I must say I was surprised that even at HQ there wasn't one Adv 2 boy to take the exam with him!

Just wanted to note that I had a former student who went to Elmhurst and took his Advanced 2 from there. Interestingly, they did send him down to London to take his exam - not to Birmingham. This was about 5 or 6 years ago, so perhaps the Birmingham Centre didn't exist then????? Unfortunately, in spite of taking his exam at HQ there were no other boys taking it with him. He passed with 82 and was eligible for the Genee that year, which was supposed to be in the UK. Of course that had to be the year that the Genee was cancelled through lack of funding and by the following year he had turned pro. He was very frustrated as I had dangled the carrot of the Genee in front of him when I wanted to encourage him to take his exams!

I hope it's OK to copy and post this from the comments on the above article. Please remove if it's not. I just thought that the writer (under the pseudonym of Green Knight) made a very valid point. If other top international companies hire mainly home-grown dancers, why can't the RB? "Additionally, the British White Lodgers have to compete for their places with increasing numbers of students brought in from abroad, a process many find stressful and demoralising." ... "Globalisation notwithstanding, the world's great classical dance companies – the Bolshoi Ballet, Mariinsky Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, New York City Ballet and others – draw almost exclusively from their own schools and home-grown students and, in consequence, maintain an individuality of style and tradition which the Royal Ballet, for all the brilliance of its imported stars, has lost. Commercially speaking, you underestimate the appeal of local talent at your peril. Darcey Bussell was a wonderful dancer but British audiences loved her first and foremost because she was a home-girl, one of their own."

One of the things missing from modern interpretations of Ashton's ballets for me is understatement and delicacy. Big and bold and over-the-top has eclipsed this. I watched Fille with Nadia Nerina a few weeks ago on youtube and the humour was so charming and understated and the acting in general was simply delightful. I rather felt sorry for poor silly Alain, rather than laughing uproariously at his antics, I smiled compassionately! Cinderella too - the original ugly sisters of Helpman and Ashton were real people rather than characatures from pantomime. For me this is what is missing. It's true that I don't like gymnastically high legs when they spoil the beauty of the lines, but I very much appreciate the advances in technique and do not bemoan the passing of the 60 degree arabesque etc. What I do find sad is this lack of quintessentially English understated quality, but perhaps I'm clinging on to something that doesn't really exist anymore?

I am presuming RAD - I doubt if there is a difference in marks between the centres, because every year there is a different examiner, so maybe one year a particular centre will have an examiner who gives higher marks and the next year not. In general they are supposed to mark alike as they have the same criteria, but of course personal preferences will always out. In principal my students generally get the marks they deserve, even if they don't always agree with that! And I have noticed too that the examiners do usually place the students in the same "batting order" that I would place them. Therefore, I think your decision should be made on the actual quality of the exam studio in each centre. Is the studio big enough? Does it have a good sprung floor that's not too slippery? Is there an extra studio for warming up? Is the person in charge pleasant? All this will help your daughter to do her best. My advice would be to look for a studio your daughter feels comfortable in. Of course, if there is a centre where your daughter can take a class or two before the exam, that would be a big help. Going in for an exam in a strange studio is hard - it does help to try it out beforehand.

Well here's an interesting point in a topsy turvy world. When I was at the RBS in the 60's you had to be British or Commonwealth to be accepted. White Lodge girls and boys were pretty much guaranteed a place in the upper school and they were normally only expected to do two years (the rest of us had to do 3) finishing in the Graduate Class. Company recruits were taken from Graduates and also a few from the top class below Grads - Theatre Class, which was usually where the good ones not from White Lodge were placed. The "foreigners" were only accepted into a special class for overseas students and the standard in the overseas class was lower than the rest of the school. So what on earth has happened in the last forty-five plus years? The EU for a start, I suppose, but also non-EU too. The school gives scholarships to outstanding students in the Prix de Lausanne and YAGP for example. I am wondering if in order to preserve their reputation as one of the best schools world-wide, they prefer taking super talented students from abroad whose training has been more intense than the average British dancer. Still that doesn't really explain why they now take so few from White Lodge.........

I thought this was supposed to be the non-dance section? But the policeman directing traffic is standing in a beautifully turned-out first position!!! Wonderful film - thanks so much for posting it.......

I have to say that I am surprised about the canvas split shoes for the younger kids as mentioned above. I would be very interested in seeing some proper medical research. I mean maybe I'm just repeating some old-fashioned mantra! I do justify my insistance on leather shoes though because they definitely last longer and stay in better shape than the canvas ones, which tend to go into holes and get filthy very quickly! (Yes I know you can wash them, but most kids wait so long before doing so that the dirt won't come out)

I actually won't allow my students to wear canvas split soles, because they don't give enough support or resistance for strengthening the foot, but I do allow them to wear leather split soles. They are a great compromise and I wear them myself for classes. Bloch do an excellent one in a nice coloured pink leather with a diamond shaped canvas insert under the instep. They definitely give a better look to the pointed foot than the full sole leather shoes, but still offer quite a lot of support.