afab

The museum is hugely interesting really... and small...

Unless you live abroad...

I'd love to know which ones... :-)

I can add to the Isn't-this-forum-wonderful chorus by saying that I belong to 2 similar forums, a French one and an American one, and they are nowhere as, in no particular order, informative, supportive, fun, warm, useful, funny, free... as this one. I love reading it every day!

Thank you everybody for making it what it is!

I agree that exams don't have much of a bearing on audition results, festivals. etc, BUT they are useful for summer schools etc. to be able to place the students in appropriate groups. 

Not even useful for summer schools really, I find, as our DDs have never sat an exam and have no problem going to summer schools and be placed in the right groups thanks to either stating the number of ballet years they've studied with the number of hours a week or else with a letter from their teacher stating what they can do...

As for SS with auditions, either a DVD or pictures seem to be enough...

Our DDs did it 2 years ago and it was on a first come, first serve basis... I don't think it has changed...

Sadly, it's a no for DD... :-(

Do dancers ever wear knickers?

I bought one at DanceDirect and it's very good...

They told me about 2 weeks after the deadline i.e. around the 10th of April...

Thank you Ribbons

Is it the same petition as the first one we signed a few weeks back?

Well done! Congratulations

Except ... Out of curiosity I just looked up Swiss schooling and found that their school year starts at the beginning or middle of August, and runs through to June.  So an August birthday there may be more equivalent to a September one in UK.

Not necessarily! In France, the school year starts in September like in the UK but the school age year goes from January to December. For example, DD2 who was born at the end of October is one of the youngest of her class but would be one of the eldest of the class in the UK...

I think we're actually all saying the same thing. It's just what we put behind words...

Potential for me is that thing that one can see even though the kid has no technique, like an uncut diamond... That's what school are looking for, according to me, and most teachers I've talked to, up to 12-13. But that doesn't mean one doesn't have to have potential at 16 to be admitted, it's just that potential only at that age is not enough. At 16, your body is more or less finished and there are things that are extremely difficult to change if you haven't trained young enough or if your training as not been top...

It won't be enough then to have a beautiful foot or to have a body's dancer or to be full of expression when you dance. Schools then want the full package, what thequays called the "finished product". They want the kids with a different potential, a trainability potential. They know that if the bases are strong and excellent, not simply good, one can build on top of them...

So, of course, in that sense potential is important and I agree with Julie & Julie...

But I don't agree a +16 school would take on a kid with the potential of an 11 years old that hasn't been developed or who has been badly or not enough taught.

Cecchetti for young dancers is residential at Tring Park School. The atmosphere is lovely and the kids very well looked after.

Yes in another era...

Or extremely gifted people...

But for the average, I'm not sure...

Yes I agree, the finish product with room to improve... but too late for potential I think... I'd say that even at 13 potential is not enough anymore, the technic has to be there which is why POB stop auditioning at 13 for example...

Edited to add that this applies to ballet not to everything...

I imagine you can do that... But I don't find it right to ask a question that some people can answer and some can't and besides height depends so much on different things. Who doesn't know siblings where one is significantly taller or thinner than the other one?

RBS even asked for parents' height... What do you do for adopted kids?

It actually is interesting about those charts because they are not strictly respected...

When DD1 auditioned for POB at 8 so 7 years ago, a kid was there much shorter and lighter than she should have been and the mum had a wrist Xray with her to her "bone age"... I don't know if she got in.

POB is also know for assessing out teenagers who, even though they got in at the "right" ratio, have become too tall or too short or too "chubby", "round", "muscular"... I don't know what to call it... In any case, they can't fit in the corps de ballet according to POB!

DD2 is auditioning for the 2nd time this year and even though she always is the smallest and the thinest of her group of dancer friends, she's at the maximum scale limit for POB! 200g and 2 cm more and she'd be too heavy and too tall!

"It was interesting to see that POB issued a table of height to weight ratio for their summer school ."

 

I cannot find this information on their website, only the table that applies to students up to age 13. Does anyone have a link or details to the table for summer school, which I imagine covered older students as well? It would be interesting to see what POB consider to be suitable!!

I don't think there was a table for the SS. There is one for applying for the year round school and as you said up to 13...

A quick update...

After trying to find a solution for DD to go to ABT Summer Intensive and as she's only 13 and we don't know anyone in Texas where her site was, we decided that even if we managed to get the money to send her, we couldn't afford to go with her so we declined... 

Pressing on the 'decline' button was somehow very hard for me as she was so happy to be selected!

Hopefully another door will open soon. She's still waiting for Elmhurst, POB and RBS...

I don't have much hope for POB but I didn't either for ABT and she got in...  So fingers crossed!

To me, you described how ballet is taught in France Anjuli_Bai... How interesting!

I'm really sorry to hear that Pointytoes... I can't offer any help but all the best of luck with everything that you have to figure out...