taxi4ballet

I wouldn't do anything at all without speaking to her ballet teacher first. 

The sort of flexibility required for gymnastics and some other dance styles is not necessary for ballet, and can actually be a hindrance.

Beside a section of roadworks on the M25 is a very worrying sign:

WARNING

ROADWORKS

DELAYS UNTIL SUMMER 2025

I mean - I know they get long traffic jams on that road, but surely not that long...?

I must admit that the Step Sisters' costumes did give me a slight 'Elton John at his finest' vibe...😂

19 hours ago, Linnzi5 said:

It didn’t put them on until all of the curtain calls were over. A few people did leave as soon as the performance was over, but not many.

Thans for that, and for the others who replied. I think in that case, I might contact the cinema, and ask them whether they can refrain from raising the house lights so quickly. We've seen live streams there before, and I don't remember them doing it before, so maybe it was an over-enthusiastic member of staff.

I'm not a ballet expert by any stretch of the imagination (my daughter is the dancer), but I think what the performance last night did for me was to give me much more of an insight into the Ashton choreographic style.

For those who also saw the live stream in the cinema - at what point did the cinema put the house lights up? Ours put them on at the very moment the curtain fell, so people were getting up and leaving all through the curtain calls. Is that usual in the cinema, or was ours a bit too enthusiastic? 

I'm seeing the live stream on Wednesday and am looking forward to it very much, not having seen this particular ballet before.

When it comes to toiletries, some places don't like you to use aerosols, so roll-on or stick antiperspirant is better, as is the spritz type hairspray.

That's so sad. He'd recently been playing Miss Hannigan in Annie, and I always enjoyed his programmes about rescue dogs. I shall remember the acidic Lily Savage fondly too.

Can I suggest he tries English Youth Ballet, if they are coming anywhere near you? They are always needing boys, and it is a great performance opportunity.

On 23/03/2023 at 11:45, Kerfuffle said:

Yes, I agree. Although surely chances are you know after one audition how you feel usually ? I certainly wouldn’t bother looking further if my top choice was already in the bag ! 

The thing is though, that although most of the schools spread out the preliminary rounds, they tend to hold their final (or funding) auditions very close together, so you may not have heard whether you are successful at one before you go to the next. 

40 minutes ago, RubyM said:

My issue was more with the children and parents attending auditions at a particular school while telling everyone that they don't like the school and wouldn't accept a place even if offered. That's very different than exploring your options when you're undecided. 

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.

21 hours ago, RubyM said:

I would suggest doing your homework first and then only applying to schools that you actually want to get into.

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.

7 hours ago, Kate_N said:

Let's face it, the referendum was "hard to take" and subsequent government policies have been "hard to take." I suppose people can examine their own consciences about how they voted ...

 

EU countries are only doing what is to be expected, as UK citizens are no longer EU citizens, and we face pretty much the same restrictions as any other non-EU foreign nationals.

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.

31 minutes ago, Peony said:

There are a number of successful youth dance companies such as EYB, NYB, LCB. I think for many they would be a once in a lifetime thing as when you tot up the cost of the experience, plus tickets, dance wear, transport etc you’re probably not getting a lot of change from 1k. 

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. 

On 25/02/2023 at 23:30, Ballet_novice said:

The world has 8 bn people. We in Uk has 67 million people. If the school look for global talent to really be the best school worldwide then it is not surprising that Uk national end up being a small percentage of the total as would be for many other nationalities.

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.

8 hours ago, LexBallet said:

That’s interesting.

Does that then mean a self-financing student has greater chance of getting a place? 

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.

3 hours ago, art_enthusiast said:

 

I wish critics would refrain from making derogatory comments that seem to be age related - "past lustre sadly dimmed"?!

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). 

37 minutes ago, Angela Essex said:

Unfortunately where I was the film stopped midway through tita & pedro’s pdd in act 1 scene 5 and rewound to earlier in that act but when it got to the pdd again it cut to the interval so didn’t see all of the act 1 scene 5 pdd and the whole of act 1 scene 6 was missed out completely. The cinema manager told us it was nothing to do with the cinema and that everyone everywhere watching would be having the same issue as the fault was with the broadcast from roh itself. Not sure if that is true though so I’d be interested to know if anyone else experienced similar this evening.

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?