aileen

Yes, the RB have tapped into the Boy George and Ronson fan bases and combined that with the live stream and saturation press coverage (one day on the Guardian website there were about half a dozen articles on this programme). Very clever.

Alison, I'm also coming round to the idea that newbies are better off seeing plotless ballets with "good", preferably familiar, music so that they can just allow themselves to enjoy what they see and hear without worrying about whether they are understanding everything. That being said, the problem with a mixed programme is that there is generally at least one very obscure/ bit of an acquired taste type piece which could be off-putting.

So, ABT are losing two male principals this summer. I wonder who will replace them.

I seem to remember that BRB performed Petrouchka at Sadler's Wells about four years ago.

An interesting viewpoint from your ballet newbie, Rowan. I think that s/he might have enjoyed Rite for the same reason, even though it's a totally different ballet.

I'd love to see the full Train Bleu in the UK.

Spannerandpony, I agree with you. It's wise to be vigilant. Anjuli_Bai, I was recently shocked by the appearance of a dancer in a UK ballet company. Even by the standards of ballet dancers she seemed dreadfully thin.

Very interesting, Jane S.

JulieW, I don't have "expertise" in a professional capacity as such, but a young person (not a dancer but at boarding school) whose parents I know well is recovering from a serious eating disorder. I just wanted to make the point that a true eating disorder (or whatever you want to call it) is, as Kitschqueen says, way beyond just eating less, wanting to be thinner, competitive dieting etc.

I would say that, if a student can just be persuaded to gain weight by being told that s/he can't dance, s/he does not really have an eating disorder. A person with a true eating disorder cannot be reasoned with in this way. S/he has huge anxiety about eating and mealtimes become enormously fraught, prolonged affairs. A school could not deal with this and would have to send the student home for specialist care. The reason for weighing students in body-hugging clothes (leotards at Tring) is to prevent them from putting stones and other heavy objects in pockets, shoes etc which would give a false reading on the scales (this does happen). As for loyalty to friends, I would tell my DD or DS that s/he must tell someone if s/he is concerned; the mortality rate for eating disorders is frighteningly high.

Bangorballetboy, if only I was as knowledgeable as you!!

Nana Lily, I can't be bothered to post on this topic any more if you're just going to be rude. Why do the schools weigh the students if it's so obvious when they are losing weight? I don't know what point you were trying to make anyway? You just referred to someone else's article without saying anything else.

I hadn't known of this link between Nijinska and the RB. I had always assumed that there was a stronger link between the Ballets Russes and ENB through their founders who had been dancers with the Ballets Russes.

A person with the eating disorder known as Anorexia Athletica (where excessive exercising is involved in addition to calorie restriction) can go downhill really quickly; within a few weeks an already thin person can become dangerously ill. In my respectful opinion, termly measuring is too infrequent. Students should also be weighed in body-hugging clothes without pockets so that they cannot hide things or wear heavy clothes in order to deceive the person doing the weighing that s/he weighs more than s/he actually does (it's a fact that people suffering from an eating disorder go to extreme lengths to hide their problem).

Very interesting, Wulff.

Thanks, Bluebird. I don't suppose that it will ever be performed by ENB now that Wayne Eagling is going.

Jellybeans, I appreciate what you are saying but the student should know what track he/she will be on before he/she joins the school so that he/she can make an informed decision about whether it really is the right course for him/her. If it isn't then he/she can make other plans and free up his/her place for someone else.

An eating disorder is a serious mental illness. It is even more dangerous when the sufferer exercises excessively (as a ballet dancer or ballet student has the opportunity to do as part of his/her daily life) because weight loss is more rapid, leading frighteningly quickly to organ damage which is not always reversible. I thought that academic boarding schools routinely weighed girls at least and I'm surprised that vocational ballet schools don't do this as well, but perhaps they don't want to because the assumption would be that they were weighing the girls to make sure that they hadn't put on weight rather than the other way around. I think that it's really important to pick up eating disorders quickly because the lower the sufferer's weight falls the more mentally disordered s/he becomes and the harder it is for him/her to tackle the problem and regain the lost weight. I'm probably going to make myself unpopular for saying this but IMO a person who develops an eating disorder should not pursue a career in ballet. An person who has an eating disorder does not really recover from it but learns to manage it, and relapses frequently occur. A highly competitive environment in which there is so much focus on the body is probably the worst possible choice for a person who has suffered from an eating disorder.

Is Les Biches ever performed these days? I'd like to see it.

Before puberty many girls who do ballet are naturally thin (my daughter is one of them) as I suspect that the ones that are not tend to drop out early on (leotards are the most unforgiving garments). At and after puberty girls can start to gain weight even if they are not eating more than before; their bodies just become "chunkier" as they become young women. It must be so hard for these young women who then feel that they have to diet to achieve to body that others naturally have and which they thought that they would have because they had been thin when they were younger. These young women must be at particular risk of eating disorders.

Irmgard, Programme 2 has had very good reviews from the press. Clement Crisp gave it five stars!

Why doesn't Tring expand the ballet programme if there are so many students there that want to specialise in classical ballet? IMO, there is no point spending all that time and money on a course which the student feels is not right for him/her and which does not give him/her the best possible chance of succeeding in the incredibly competitive world of classical ballet. Students should be able to choose their "stream" even if this could detrimentally affect the School's graduation statistics.

I know that I have been raving about the recent Beyond Ballets Russes programmes at the Coliseum in another thread, but I do think that both programmes could have appealed to ballet newbies. There was such variety in each programme that there would surely have been something that a ballet newbie would have enjoyed. The music in both programmes considerably added to the enjoyment of the ballets. Rite is so arresting both visually and musically that I would be very surprised if anyone left the theatre without it having made a very strong impression on him/her. I defy anyone other than the most avid ballet-hater not to be charmed by Suite en Blanc. Whereas the latter epitomises the beauty and breathtaking difficulty of classical ballet Rite would I think challenge a newbie's preconceptions of what ballet is. I agree with Alison that judicious use of social media as well as articles, as opposed to just adverts, in newspapers, magazines etc could really help. It's no good just putting stuff on the companies websites; they are only looked at by existing supporters.

It seems to me that a small number of ENBS graduates go to ENB each year but never to the RB or BRB and, similarly, a small number of Elmhurst graduates go to BRB but never to the RB or ENB. Actually, the ENBS graduates who have gone to ENB in the last few years seem to be doing well at the company. Ksenia (graduated 2008) was the lead in Firebird at the Coli two weeks ago. Junor and Nancy (also 2008 graduates) Lauretta (2009) and Ken Sarasusi (2011) all had prominent roles in the recent Coli performances.

ZxDaveM, I'm glad to hear this.