Picturesinthefirelight

I would say an As in What letter is that on the sign? It is an R.

I've only ever heard the following Are Ay Dee (RAD) Eye Ess Tee Dee (ISTD) Rahda (RADA) Lippa (LIPA) Are Cee Em (RCM) Lambda (LAMDA)

My dd always had to use the VO5 gel as hairspray was banned in various places due to asthma and/or sensitive fire alarms!

Is there a link for this (& will it go via Stoke). Twice I’ve had to take the car to Manchester recently when going to a show there because there is no train that leaves after the finish time.

Gosh, 10 is incredibly young. Does his teacher know he's walking about in them?

Because the positioning of the ribbons is individual to each dancer’s foot?

One school my ds went to offered textiles as an option but up until year 10 it was a 6 week course. They did more food tech and Design Tech. Some schools dont don’t offer it at all.

Sometimes its not even just about the training. For example this week ds has been doing a week of dance/musical theatre workshpos wioth his theatre group where they are bringing in ouitside teachers from various shows/fdance companies. Dd will be taking part in Saturdays workshop simply because its being run by a musical theatre performer she admires and based around a show she loves. It's a fun summer holiday thing to do. Both kids in the past have taken part in things simply becasue they liked the people/friends etc.

If you are at full time vocational school then you have to seek permission to do workshops etc elsewhere. It stands to reason that they are training you for the profession and they need to ensure you don’t receive training that will counteract what they are doing or overtrain. It never occurred to me to seek permission from local dance schools. Both my children did/do classes, workshops and shows at multiple places to fit in with our schedule etc. The only thing we never did was duplicate exam classes. Eg dd did RAD ballet, tap & modern at one school but did non exam jazz and musical theatre & summer schools elsewhere.

I am so sorry to hear this.

My dd auditioned 6 years ago now sober experience is probably out of date especially as there have been retirements and staffchanges since then. The ballet class was fairly simple. She was borderline back then & advised to work on her technique but it was her sense of performance that tipped the boundary for her on being accepted. Her feet were checked but I can’t remember what else. Singing is compulsory but the dance is the main thing. They know that many don’t have experience and children have been known to just sing happy birthday.

Don’t Elmhurst offer it.? Not as external students would be allowed in their classes of course. But it surprised me about you saying about them going to Centrepoint. Hammond regularly enter students for Adv 1 & 2, sometimes the exams are held at the school, sometimes they travel to Manchester.

There is absolutely no closure What did happen was back in 2011 a local day prep school called Merton House closed suddenly without notice and Hammond took on those children and opened a fee paying prep school which ran for several years. Over time numbers dwindled and so the prep has been closed as there wasn’t the demand. They did try to have it as a feeder school but I just don’t think there was the demand for children to specialise and board before year 7 and of course no MDS until year 7. The prep school has always been very small. In lower school there there is a big emphasis on classical ballet but the children also study tap & modern. I think they start contemporary around year 9/10, just 1 or 2 lessons a week compared to daily ballet class. Following the retirement of the principal the new principal undertook a consultation & A new Director of Performance has just been appointed (the post went to an existing member of staff & there has been some other re-structuring with several promotions etc.

A DBS check is a bit like an MOT. It’s only as up to date as the day it was done so best practice is that they should be re-done every 2-3 years unless you subscribe to the update service.

The Birmingham clinic is still running.

But doctors, pilots and paramedics are not trained at local schools where provision is subject to all manner of vagaries with regards to what subjects are offered, in what combination and where students may need to move from a small 6th form to a larger college to access the right subjects. We are not talking about dance training colleges we are talking about recreational local dance schools.

Dd has been on residential summer schools where going to friends dorms during lunch and break times has been strictly forbidden and others where it has been allowed or encouraged but yes, that is something to consider.

It may not have been related directly to Sen but to use a points system in this way is highly discriminatory to many children with an spld without taking into account the extra processing time some may require and to furthermore use the system in the divisive way you describe further exacerbates the discrimination. I’d be hopping mad. (I’d never heard of information processing speed until it was mentioned on my ds’s Ed Psych report so I’m no expert but the way it was explained was that it takes some people a little longer to access the stored information/knowledge from the brain to action it. ) Teachers are supposed to be professional & treat all students fairly and not take things beyond their control out of them.

I'm really sorry to hear this. My dd was a lot older when she had a poor experience of a summer school (she had previously been to lots of others and had been a full time day student at vocational school for 4 years before that, so was able to handle it much better and at least we were able to cross it off her Upper school audition list. Am I correct in thinking that your dc has an SEN? The answering questions quickly bit touches a nerve as although dd has a lightning fast processing speed, ds has slow Speed of Informatin Processing (he gets extra time in exams including for the viva section of music & dance exams) and I wonder if this particular teacher has a poor understanding of the various issues some children face.

My daughter definately wants to work in the EU and she is very worried so if its a possibility for you, I'd say go for it.

Whilst I agree that RAD teachers generally do know all the ins and outs of the pathway through the grades, what may be available at one school may be very different than what is available at another school due to various factors such as number of students, timetabling, etc and that may colour how a teacher explains things. So a student at a small school where the teacher has opted to only follow the numerical grades with maybe Inter Foundation for the few who are more advanced may need to move schools to one where the vocational grades are routinely offered to all suitable students. Or a student whose ballet school has decided not to do numerical grades after grade 5 and only do vocational grades (like the vocational schools do) becasue they have a lot of students who aspire to full time training age 16 may prefer to move to another school if they don't want to do or are unsuitable for pointework.

Very strange to have watched the show today without my dd in it (& she felt the same when she watched earlier in the week) highlights for me were Year 10 ballet, senior ballet, Aretha Franklin, Jesus on the cross & another number by the same choreographer (I didn’t have a programme so excuse the wooliness).

There is a school who is proud of the writing on their wall & who boast on Facebook about summer school participants vomiting due to the intensity of their classes.

The main change that has affected dd this year is that they split the courses early (after Easter) so whereas previously the 1st years did both the full musical and the dance show this year they have only done one or the other. The majority of classes have been separate since the split. Ballet and jazz is streamed into A & B and tap is streamed across all four years. I dont think contemporary was streamed. My dd chose the MT course and prior to splitting was in B ballet and A jazz. On the dance course ballet featured quite heavily (too heavily for her really but she has less now she is on the MT strand) with contemporary, jazz, tap singing and there were some drama classes but not that many. Most of the people in A ballet were around Adv 1/2 but they are not syllabus classes. Dd was in B Ballet, she had passed Intermediate in Year 9 but her pointework was not strong enough to take Adv 1. You can attend optional, free syllabus early/late classes in all three genres. There was an MT ensemble/repertoire class and the obligatory supporting studies which used to be called Integrated Profssional Studies but is now caslled something like Employability Skills, Professional Practice, Research & Reflection.

Anything specific you'd like to know?