taxi4ballet

It would be interesting to find out if they take account of foot size when looking at height. My dd is the same height as her friend, but is an inch shorter when they are on pointe as she has such small feet.

There is a delay it seems. Will pm you later when I get back home.

Hi all - if you get a letter from Tring addressed to your dd/ds, it may not be about the auditions. Open it yourselves.

Crushed eggshells are supposed to work too

As well as petrol, I seem to spend rather a lot on coffee, cake, magazines, paperbacks...

Fingers crossed for you all!

How frustrating... This seems to be quite common in all walks of life, doesn't it? At the age of 7 my dd complained about the teacher at her primary school, saying "some weeks she ignores me completely"! I spoke to the classroom assistant (a friend of mine) who said that only the gifted handful and the ones who misbehaved go any attention from this particular teacher. The ones in the middle were left to their own devices.

Thanks, she's really looking forward to it! Seniors at the original audition is 12+ , although they do very occasionally put a few 11-year-olds in that group too. I think it depends on their ballet grade. DD has only done the senior auditions, so we don't know what they are looking for in juniors, but the senior one is about grade 6 upwards (I think?). The auditions are a great experience, as I'm sure others on the forum will agree, and parents get to watch too. You get told whether or not you are in straight away, so there is no nail-biting wait for the postman.

They were put into 3 divisions, youngest, juniors & seniors. All had numbers, not the audition ones but alphabetical I think. Half-hour warm up and then about an hour and a half when they did different dances, and were shuffled back and forth between groups. Some changes due to height, experience on pointe etc and at the end were called out in groups and told what they were cast as (according to dd in the car on the way home, who was in seniors).

Slugs seem to have an obsession with petunias, do they taste of chocolate or something?

After all the talk about fees, we spend a fortune on petrol!

Sports day today - after EYB casting last night, dd worn out even before she got to school this morning! Glad it wasn't the other way round

Can you make an appointment with a different doctor, or ask for a referral?

It might work well with pointe shoes - we have a pair that dd wore once, and neither she or her teacher liked them. As long as the shoes are pretty much new it should be ok, I think. There are probably lots of expensive unused 'mistake' purchases lurking out there, just waiting to find the right feet.

My dd said that some of the ones new to pointe weren't given pointe parts, so well done to your dd Lemongirl! She also said that the girls who got solos were amazing!

Massive thanks and well done to Dance Gear Direct, the shoes have come in time!!!

Tulip, I only mentioned the work to explain that we have no way of increasing our income, however much we would like to!! I'm with you on the the school money - and I also think that it's a pity that vocational schools can't use the MDS money however they wish. If they have one funded place left and two children who qualify for half-funding, they can only give the place to one. They can't split it between the two of them and so the Government gets half the money back.

Whilst I am sure that people paying for a private education are always worried about whether their jobs are secure, some of us have an annual gross household income which is only just enough to live on, and doesn't come anywhere near the £25-30k fees. And yes, we do both work, and no, we can't work any harder. We have no option but to hope against hope that there might be a funded place somewhere, sometime.

I think that the audition process is much easier for those who already have the resources to pay for a private education. All they have to worry about is whether their child is good enough to be offered a place. For the rest of us, being offered a place is just the start...

Return of the living dead! We have found one tatty pair that have a couple of hours left in them (just about) so unless the postman comes up trumps in the morning they are gonna have to do. Thank heaven for small mercies

Broke them yesterday - casting with EYB tomorrow!

Me too - people look at you differently when you tell them you have MOD security clearance!

Looks like they are now clearly (quite rightly) paranoid about safety, although it seems a bit unreasonable for them to expect potential employees to pay for the training. I think it might well be an 'allowble expense' for income tax purposes though, so you should be able to get some of it back.

Don't throw them away! In an emergency they might be slightly less dead than the current pair...

DD managed to break her pointe shoes yesterday, and I've rung round every shop I can think of today without success - ordered a pair over the phone though, so here's hoping they come in the morning... Otherwise we'll have to go through all her old ones and pick out the least knackered!