taxi4ballet

That strikes me as the sort of thing some people might say to put others off, so that their own dc stands a better chance of getting in.

Whilst I agree with doing your homework, and only applying to schools you would accept a place at, there is another viewpoint... Until your child starts the audition process, you (and they) will have no idea where they are in the hierarchy, even if they are an associate at a particular school already. There's no point in only applying for your dream school and one other and be offered a place at neither, when there could have been a possibility of a place elsewhere if you had only cast your net wider. You can be turned down flat by one school and accepted with open arms by another. If you restrict your search too much and don't get a coveted place, there will always be a 'What if...?' at the back of your mind forever more. There is also the question of funding. A funded place might be offered at one school and an unfunded place at another, and for those who need funding, that is a big consideration.

And are EU countries not taking any dancers from (for instance) Japan, Australia, Cuba, the USA either? Because if they are, and they are just making it awkward for British applicants, then something needs to be done about it by the dance powers-that-be. It seems to me that if EU companies are refusing to take British dancers, then perhaps British schools and companies should return the favour.

That's where regional ones could come in, and would give opportunities to more local kids who wouldn't stand a chance with NYB for instance. EYB do tour the country, but it is often several years between visits to some areas, and of course LCB is only any use if you live within travelling distance of London. NYB is very tricky to get in, and you have to be at a pretty high level, so recreational dancers wouldn't really be able to benefit from that at all.

It might be difficult for youth companies to attract dancers if the people associated with the company are dance teachers with links to a school. Other dance teachers who run dance schools in the catchment area could be wary of suggesting it to their own pupils in case they end up losing them.

The nationalities of auditionees doesn't follow that though, otherwise British applicants would only make up a tiny fraction of auditionees. The overwhelming majority of applicants are British, certainly for lower school, and to a lesser extent for upper school, so one would expect that the majority of successful applicants would reflect that. On the whole for Y7 intake, it does. Later on, not at all.

As far as I remember, although it may have changed more recently, they have a set number of MDS places available. Each year as people leave the school it frees up a number of those places, so it varies from year to year. Some years they have more places available, some years very few indeed.

Which dance style is she particularly interested in?

Another vote for Raymond Chai's adv/pro classes at Danceworks.

They make an offer of a place, either unfunded which you can accept if you can afford it, or you are invited to a funding audition. My dd was offered an unfunded place for Y10, which we were unable to take up. They had a particular shortage of MDS places that year, which are awarded differently to the Dada scheme. She then was offered a Dada place for upper school, but elected to take up a place elsewhere in the end.

Yes, and I dare say those same critics would be the first to point out the shortcomings of younger less experienced dancers in their first soloist roles.

Because it is means-tested, it all depends on the amount of funding each individual dancer is entitled to. There is one big pot of DaDa money and it is allocated according to entitlement until it runs out, so some years there may be more funded places available than others. At least that is how the scheme used to work when my dd was auditioning some years ago.

It wasn't the fault of the cinema, it was outside their control. I wouldn't want to complain to them anyway, as they are a small local independent cinema, and tickets for ROH screenings are cheaper there than at other cinemas within reach (and the atmosphere much nicer).

That's what we got as well - having not read the synopsis beforehand, I'd been wondering what it was that we missed! I went to speak to a member of the cinema staff in the interval, and he said that as far as he was aware it was an issue with the feed and not a problem in the cinema. I then overheard another staff member telling some other people that it was all over twitter, and that's how they found out it was a widespread issue.

It was fabulous, but did your cinema feed have a bit of a glitch in the matrix as well?

I don't know the answer to that one Beezie, but my feet are like that. Not that I'm a ballet dancer! I've never thought of it as the tibia having a slight twist, just that it is the way my feet are attached to my ankles. I do have to fight slight pronation.

With increased flexibility comes the need for extra strength, so hopefully her teacher will give her a lot of foot strengthening exercises to do.

I forced myself to watch it all the way through, but didn't like it much.

With very best wishes to you all, and many thanks for all your hard work.

Perhaps some schools don't like their students to enter these competitions because they might not be very successful, and that could affect the standing and prestige of the school.

Dry ice affects me in much the same way and I'm only in the audience! It makes me cough...

I don't know about post-covid times, but certainly when it was my dd's year to audition for upper school, there were definitely a number of people from overseas in her audition group, including someone from the USA - I got chatting to her mum while we waited for them to come out. In any case, if it is mostly students living in the UK who are auditioning in person, do they not deserve equal treatment and get the chance to be seen? Most British dancers do not get the opportunity to compete at YAGP or PdL, as even the full-time vocational schools rarely if ever enter them. And how are non-vocational students ever going to be able to find people to coach them to that level? The training set-up in many overseas countries is different from here, and it really seems to me that British-based students are getting the thin end of the wedge. I have no axe to grind about the present situation by the way, my dd is long out of the vocational training game.

Yes, it would take a lot of preparation to be involved in these competitions, but not everyone is in a position to be given that opportunity. Surely dancers travelling from all over the world to the auditions actually at the school really deserve equal consideration, and to have the AD present at their audition.

How do you lot ever get tickets for these? Whenever I find out about them, they are always completely sold out already.

That's not quite what I meant. What I was trying to say was that on more than one occasion, the RBS AD has been absent from the audtions for his own vocational school because he was attending the Prix instead, and that it is rather odd that the school doesn't rearrange the audition dates so he can actually be there instead of them clashing every year.