drdance

So much in the East Midlands!

Ah ok, the 'muscle' just under your bum is actually the attachment point for lots of muscles, including the adductor and hamstrings so you could be firing up the adductors. Thinking logically about the action and location of the muscles involved, the amount of turnout being used will affect which ones dominate. The more the legs are turned out, the more the hamstrings will be the major muscles involved on closing a tendu, because if the legs are well turned out, the adductors will actually be facing the front. Can I ask why you are concerned about this? I do worry that lots of teachers/dancers get a bit hung up on 'the inner thigh', the actual muscles therein, as I said in the above paragraph, will depend on the amount of turnout being used. When standing parallel, the inner thigh muscles are the adductors, and the vastus medialis. In 180 degree turnout, these 'inner thigh muscles' will be the medial hamstrings (gracilis and semimembranosus).

Hi, there are some excellent schools in and around Leicester who can offer intensive, vocational level training and coaching. PM me if you want further information.

Thank you everyone, you've been very helpful. If anyone hears of any job vacancies at any of these places please think of me!

Hoglett thank you for this however I don't claim to be an expert, especially in hypermobility. All I can do is advise on the anatomy and physiology of joints and how dance training may impact this. I have a question regarding the OP - is the pain when stretching in the middle or along the muscle, or is it in the joint? If the muscles are tight then have you tried mobilising them using a tennis ball/lacrosse ball/massage ball or a foam roller? Rolling muscles before stretching was a bit of a lightbulb moment for some of the attendees of our summer course and made a huge difference to them. However if the pain is in the joints, then I would be more concerned, and seek advice from a physio or doctor.

You shouldn't be using the adductors on the tendu extension, but on the closing you should. Muscles can only pull not push.

Hi everyone, I'm looking to try to do more vocational teaching and I am about to do a letter/email/CV blast to as many schools and colleges as possible but I know there are lots of colleges I don't know about. Please could you all lovely people help me out with names of dance schools/colleges/training establishments in the UK where a dancer might study full time? I've looked at the CDET website but that only lists accredited ones (obviously) and I know there are more. I'm preferably looking to stay within an hour or so commute from the Midlands, although that doesn't rule out anything on the outskirts of London, especially to the West. Obviously if anyone knows of any places that are looking for staff, that would be even better! Thank you so much :-)

Where is it?! Sorry excuse my poor geography!

Happy world ballet day! Follow the live stream from http://worldballetday.com/

Hahaha if anyone wants to stand out at an open class these days the LAST thing they should wear is sparkly crop top and shorts combos!

I've just seen this wonderful article online - very interesting and helpful I think. http://pointeperfect.com/learn-your-foot-type-pointe-fitting/

See my post above, that should help!

Use NIDMS in London

Weakness in the lats, quite likely. Also, during teenage years as girls become more self aware they tend to lift their shoulders and bring them slightly forward which then can cause the shoulder blades to wing out a little. Try encouraging her to put her arms in bras bas then to 'roll' her shoulders up, backwards and down. Another tip that might help - have her stand with her arms out to the sides and imagine reaching her middle finger away, then have her slowly move her arms down to bras bas keeping the same feeling of breadth across her chest/back.

I totally agree with both of you! Some of the points in the original article, to me, are directly related to the archaic traditional ballet world, where dancers stand in straight lines, all with identical perfect hair, matching leotards and bright (glassy?) eyes and who listen attentively to the teacher before carrying out their every instruction without giving any of it a second thought. I'd much rather my dance students showed some individualism and intelligence than had perfect hair every lesson. And yawning?! Chances are the dancer isn't breathing properly if they're yawning in class. Or they're genuinely tired. Rather than berating them for not paying attention or not working hard enough perhaps teachers should consider adapting their class to get students breathing better or being more alert!?!?!

Venue TBC - Central Birmingham!

Just a note about bone health/ossification/growth plates - This is a long slow drawn out process lasting right into adulthood; some growth plates do not fuse until as late as age 21. It is not as though a child wakes up on their 11th birthday and their bones have suddenly matured 'enough' to start pointe work. Ossification of bone is a linear process and bone maturity varies from person to person. I've just come across a fascinating website which gives the ages of when the growth plates appear and when they finally fuse (indicating the end of growing). http://nothinbutapeanut.com/anatomy/osteology/ossification-centres/ if anyone is interested!

Just a note to say if you are intending on taking supplements, ensure it's the Vitamin D3 version (colecalciferol).I take a prescription version which comes in a little gel capsule but you can buy them over the counter. Check the amount with your GP or pharmacist though.

I know I'm in an almost-probably unique situation being a school teacher (science) as well as a dance teacher but in my experience in a secondary school as a teacher is that most teachers are simply not aware of the dedication that young dancers pursuing it as a career have, and the hours that they have to put in. Those of you parents who didn't dance - if your DC hadn't started dancing, would you really know what it entailed? If the situation was reversed would you be one of those people looking at that parent, wondering why they ferry their DC to so many classes, why their DC misses school for dancing, why their DC wants to be a dancer rather than "getting a normal job"????? While I genuinely do understand your frustration, you are a minority! Those who understand dance from the vocational aspect are only a very small slither of society, and the rest of the world really doesn't know about it, in the way that they know more about sport and music. This is possibly because more people have been exposed to sport and music, as up until recently both were compulsory on the school curriculum (unlike ballet!). Furthermore, sport and music in school are both taught by people who are specialist, and can do their chosen sport or music. Dance, if taught at all, is rarely taught by a dance specialist. Therefore, fewer people learn about dance, so as adults they just don't know what it entails. Of course this is wrong, dance should have a higher status in society, dance should get the same focus in schools as other subjects. But it doesn't. And that is not the fault of individual teachers. Most teachers really do care about their students and would love to get to know each and every one of them, including finding out their hobbies, career aspirations and talents. Sadly we don't have time. And it works both ways. There are LOADS of students at school who dance, that I don't know about. I found out about one of my year 8 students taking intermediate foundation by accident as I recognised the RAD letterhead when the letter was sitting on the desk in the attendance office. The majority just quietly get on with it, and we never know about it. Perhaps drama, PE or music teachers might know more but why would it come up in conversation with your science teacher?! (Similarly, there are few of my pupils in school that know about my alter-ego! Most don't believe me anyway!) Don't get me wrong, there are a couple who let the world know, end up dancing in liturgies (I work at a Catholic school so we have school worship that is not a mass) etc but they're invariably the ones with the poorer training who are competition dancers and who are convinced that they're better than their training is allowing them to be.

Please don't think that this is all down to teachers. These 'hobbies' are devalued by the government, who put pressure on School leaders, who then put pressure on the teachers. Most teachers are genuinely interested in the children in front of them.

I do think that those students who have many extracurricular activities and who pursue them to a high level tend to be better organised because they HAVE to be. There does come a time when you have to be concerned about burnout though - I encountered several situations during my teenage years when I was totally, 100% burnt out and had complete meltdowns.

Hahahahaha noooooooo taxi4ballet that's only in an ideal world! - These days schools are supposed to get every student to pass every GCSE at the highest grade possible, (otherwise their teachers won't pass their performance management review, or an Ofsted inspection might be triggered) therefore anything that interferes with that is a problem!

ParentTaxi I completely agree with you. The amount of lads I see in school who don't bother working because they're going to be a footballer astounds me. My previous head of department used to then tell these lads "in my 25 years of teaching do you know how many of my pupils have gone on to play professionally and earned a living from it?..... 0!" Dancing I think by secondary age is something slightly different, and by year 10/11 you usually have a good idea of who is going to be dancing seriously and who isn't. Having said that there is a poor girl at my school who is now in year 11, and was convinced that she wanted to go to ballet school even last year I think. Having seen her dance I am pretty confident that this won't happen, sadly. I don't know if she still wants to pursue it but I know she wasn't getting the quality of training needed.

Sending you hugs Ana. I think I know where you're at school and I'm not entirely sure what support is in place in terms of pastoral staff/help with anxiety, depression etc especially where injury/return to dance is involved. One transition I found really tricky when at vocational school was evenings as before going away I was always busy in the evenings at dancing! Once I started dancing during the day, I didn't know what to do with my evenings (weekends were even worse) and I wasn't great at making friends so I got quite down as it seemed like I didn't fit in and as though everyone else was happy and having fun. I got a job to keep myself busy at weekends! I hope you're feeling a bit brighter. If you ever want to talk, rant, offload, ask advice etc please do PM me. Xxx

When I was at sixth form college, armed with my straight A's and A*'s at GCSE, the staff (with the exception of my A-Level dance teacher) didn't quite understand that I didn't want to be a doctor, vet or lawyer but a dancer or dance teacher. They kept saying things like "but you're such a clever girl!" but I didn't care at that time. I had a few hours of wobble during UCAS applications where I realized I had the ability and predicted grades to potentially apply to study anatomy at Oxford but stuck to my dance applications. However, when my plans changed and my aspirations moved into dance medicine/science more, I was very grateful for my good academic grounding, even if 2 of my 3 A-levels were dance and music! As I've gotten older there is a part of me that wishes I'd listened to them more, applied for Oxford or another Russell Group university and studied something more prestigious like anatomy or medicine but ultimately you make your choices in a moment in time, based on what you're passionate about, and what makes sense at the time, not always based on money or future prospects!