Ilma

Hello everyone,

I am looking for a private teacher for my daughter (who is a gymnast) to master multiple pirouettes including fouette. We are located in North-East London. If you are interested or know someone who might be interested please send me a PM. Thanks!

Thanks everyone again and Happy New Year!

Thanks again, everyone, this is very encouraging to know that there is a possibility to combine gymnastics and dance and we are not too late to start ballet classes again.

Do I understand correclty that whatever style we choose in future, the ballet classes are still essential for any style and even if we do for a start a lesson per week it is still worse doing? 

My girls definitely do not want to give up gymnastics, but it is getting progressively more difficult with years and also gymnastics-end-of-career age is very young... So I started to think of an alternative for the future..

A question to all - what age did you or you children started to dance and was it many hours per week from the very beginning?

And another one - do all  ISTD and IDTA  school follow the same curriculum in ballet re ages and grades and program?

llma, do your children compete at gymnastics? Perhaps you could ask other parents for information.

 

Have you asked their gymnastics teacher for advice?

Yes, they do compete and we have plenty of medals at home

Their gymnastics teacher recommends ballet classes to master the posture and pirouettes but as I said I don't think 45 minutes per week group lesson at local ballet school is enough and I doubt that those of you who do ballet professionally ever did it only once a week for 45 minutes

That is why I was thinking of a private ballet teacher. However, recently I started to think of retraining them from gymnasts to dancers but as I can see from spannerandpony and many others' replies it is not straightforward and may be even too late having wrong groups of muscles developed....

Hi

 

I think you may be looking for something similar to what I have been wanting for my daughter for a while. It now exists and is not to far from yourself. Here is the link: 

www.thewriocreative.webs.com

Thanks, it looks interesting indeed. The most interesting part though from age 12 only but I will look into it.

Having looked at a couple of the clips you mentioned, to me it looks much more like what is called disco freestyle in the UK (with a certain amount of contemporary style too).

 

Perhaps you could ask on the Dance.net forum? There are lots of people on there who might be able to help you find a dance school which offers the freestyle training you are looking for

 

Contemporary classes might be harder to find though, as generally they are only for dancers in their early teens upwards.

 

Best of luck!

Thanks - will try there as well

Unfortunately you can't learn "high level" ballet skills until the basics are in place - no different to gymnastics. They may have to return to "tapping and clapping". Maybe a different dance school to the one you tried earlier. You won't find schools like the programme Dance Moms in the UK. Modern dance is also quite slow initially and doesn't really resemble dancing until higher grades. There is no shortcut.

Thanks, yes I do understand - basics is important. However we spent 2 (or 3 ?) years in our local ballet school and we had no progress and I don't think it is possible to learn even posture and basics in 45 minutes per week. By now their posture and balance is much improved but it took 5 years of gymnastics (rhythmic) 10 to 15 hours per week. Am I naive to think that having this amount of training they still will not be able to "shortcut" some basics? I don't see how they can benefit from 45 min lessons of basics

Remind me..... How old are your children?

8 and 10. Do you have something in mind?

IDTA do a wide range of dance styles - a look at their explanations of styles offered and studio locations may help you.  Also ISTD offer more than ballet and might help you find a teacher/dance school.

Thanks for this, searching...

There is freestyle dance which is quite big in the UK but I wouldn't say it involves a high level of ballet technique - it's more tricks & gymnastics/flexibility to music.

Thanks, I will try to google freestyle dance, it maybe similar to what I was looking for. Do you know any schools that teach free style? We need it though to be really hard and challenging as my gilrls  got instantly bored at the local "ballet" for children, which doesn't even include any stretching, just tapping and clapping.

Merry Christmas Ilma! It's far more of an American thing than British but maybe someone can help. Have you looked at aerobic gymnastics?

Yes, I have looked at aerobic, it's not exactly what we are looking for (((. Maybe some ballet schools do have more of modern dance?

Dear all,

First of all - Merry Christmas to everyone and lots of success for the New Year!

Could you please help with finding a good modern dance school in North-East London? 

My daughters are gymnasts and I am trying to find the dancing style combining high level ballet skills and acrobatic elements but haven't succeeded so far.

On youtube there are videos from USA, Australia, Canada of this kind of dance (like the ones of Sophia Lucia, Autumn Miller, etc) but none of them from UK

Thanks a lot in advance!

Thank you all!

I think it is called a 'turnboard'.  They are very popular in the States not so much over here.  I thought about buying one as it was featured in 'first position' but decided against it as I thought DD would break something!!  

 

Private ballet lessons are like fairy dust where we live but you could try RAD HQ.

Thanks a lot, yes, this is the the thing. However, I am also unsure whether it is safe to use for children and whether it would make a big difference fort them

Good luck - I hope you have better luck than I did when we were trying to do the reverse- trying to find a gymnastics teacher to help dd achieve simple tricks like cartwheels to enhance her dancing.

 

No one was interested - our local clubs didn't even reply to my messages.

If you are in London I could probably recommend you some clubs, I even know some outside London by now

Dear all,

Let me introduce myself, I am new to the forum. I have two daughters who are doing gymnastics and need to do more ballet training, particularly pirouettes.

I wanted to ask two things - firstly, I wanted to find a teacher for my girls to learn how to do multiple pirouettes, privately, preferably at our place in North-East London. If someone knows someone or could take it up could you please send me a private message?

The other question - I wanted to buy this wooden thing that you could stand on and turn to practise your pirouettes - could you please help me with how it is called? I would also appreciate if you could give your opinion whether it helps or not in training multiple turns?