Kate_N

I’m afraid I only recognise two: Greg Wise and the wonderful Robert Webb. If anyone saw Mr Webb’s Flashdance routine for Comic Relief a few years ago, you’ll remember him as a good mover. And he wrote his wonderful memoir, How Not to be a Boy. so for me, it’s Robert Webb for the Glitterball! But To me, Strictly is a winter programme, and I don’t want to think about the end of summer until October 😀

I love the way Nina T-M sometimes says "This will cost you" - when something might be tough or uncomfortable or hurt, but will result in better technique & easeful movement ... I think of this comment when my gym trainer makes me do 20 burpee box jump overs (I did this 5 times today, interspersed with the assault bike). This will cost me, but the gains!

I keep seeing this pop up on my Unread Posts feed, and thought I would tell you about an experiment/game a friend and I played. We used to go the races together - mostly jump racing - and I would randomly pick horses due to their literary, or theatrical names. I never bet more than £5, though! So we set up a spreadsheet over one whole jump race season, picking horses by the principle of their names. He's a geologist by trade, so his picks were all about rocks, and petrol & mining ... I chose arty names. And guess what? We ended the season pretty much on a par. So, you know, arty names do well!!

That's a releve, surely?

But it did go to the students: presumably as a bursary fund to help those students from families without significant resources, to help pay for the expenses of auditions etc. So there's another way of looking at it: the RBS is trying to enable those less well-off to attend expensive auditions (ie travel, audition videos etc). It's often bemoaned in this forum that children of less well-off families lose out because they can't be subbed for audition travel etc. So the RBS is trying to level the playing field a bit - isn't that a good thing?

Has anyone done any of the Danceworks classes via Zoom/online since they've offered that possibility? I do ballet classes at Pineapple via Zoom, and I'm very happy with the set up, quality, and feedback from teachers. I've also been live in the Pineapple studios & seen how big their screens are & so on. Is Danceworks a good set up? How did it feel as an online student? Edited to add: i'm not asking about the quality of the teachers but about the online experience. Btw just to say - once more- how amazing ballet teachers have been in adapting to this new way of teaching, and how even more amazing they are at keeping both in-person & online students in heir gaze. Brava/bravo!

Totally agree with you, and I too was passionate about being European, part of the EU, and the freedom of movement that enabled. The loss for young people is just awful. But we are where we are; it is what it is ... I think any action to be taken needs to accept that, first & foremost - and then think pragmatically about what can be done.

Good point @taxiforballet and I'd add that it is difficult sometimes, as a teacher, in any field, to keep encouraging someone to do what they love doing, but also to be honest with them about their abilities without dampening that love or ambition (or to the child's parent).

Be careful what you wish for. The "British jobs for British people" idea is what fuelled the success of the Leave the EU campaign.

That's lovely to hear!

Well, quite @Peanut68 !!

The experience & knowledge in this forum is great - if you wanted to give an indication of roughly your area (county, nearest large city or distance from a good dance centre such as Birmingham, Leeds or London) the wisdom of posters in here may be able to suggest likely studios. Of course though you may not wish to give any indication of where you are - totally understandable! You can also do a search of the BalletCoUK forum to see if your area comes up with any recommendations. Good luck in your decisions!

I would hope that anyone thinking of doing this did not vote for leaving the EU. It would be deeply hypocritical.

There's really nothing wrong with such studios. They are fantastic places for children to learn to love dance. My local studio is like this, and it provides a nurturing & non-competitive environment for any child to learn to dance, in a variety of styles. That is the studio's central ethos. Children all follow set curricula, so there is progression & development, but they don't do exams, and the philosophy is that dance is good for you & everyone can do it. But importantly, the studio owner is also very open and encouraging of the more serious students to go on to other schools which focus more centrally on ballet. One young teen pupil went through to vocational school recently, after moving on from this studio to one which focused on ballet at a higher level. Both the 'dance for enjoyment' and serious technical study-focused schools are important.

There are TWO NHS apps - just to confuse us all! There's the overall NHS app, which gives you quick access to repeat prescription ordering, your medical info, and the evidence & details of your COVID vaccination status. Then there's the Track & Trace app, which pings people, and the whole thing has never really worked because there's no joined up thinking to information about where you were in contact with a positive case, and so on.

Excellent article - thanks for the alert to it @Pas de Quatre Janice Turner is always interesting and in this column she nails it. Was talking Olympic swimming with my trainer in the gym the other day - his father was an Olympic possibility for swimming and I remember being at school with some top-flight swimmers. With my friends at school, what was obvious was the dedication of the whole family for swimming. and yes, it’s similar for ballet, for music, for anything which requires the very highest of achievements attainable only to a few. it’s why I am ambivalent about the kind of patriotic language at these times “We won a medal” “A medal for Great Britain” - yes, we support many athletes through public (tax payers) support and the National Lottery. but it’s the athletes and their families who do the hard yards!

absolutely @glowlight really good point (oh dear pun not intended)

Best thing is to ask your teachers, who see you in action in class. Ask for their expert advice on what you can do to develop mobility flexibility, and strength in your feet & ankles (in my experience, the ankles are almost more important than the feet). It doesn't really matter whether you can define your arch as "low" or "medium" - this is irrelevant to how you can actually use your feet.

I suppose my response is: it is what it is.Not much point in trying to definitively name your foot & ankle flexibility. All ballet learners have to work on ankle flexibility - this is where the arch & point come from. From your photo, you look like you need to think about lengthening out your toes, rather than crunching them to make it look like a pointed foot - you're curling your toes under rather than stretching them out. And as in all things ballet, a static pose is one thing, but the real facility is what you can use when in motion. It's mobility which is important.

Very exciting - congratulations to your DS!

Thanks for those reassurances. I did have a bit of residual bad conscience about deleting it, but going through exactly where I was on the day that supposedly I was close enough to someone to be infected, I knew it actually wasn't possible. Live alone, walked - was at a workplace which was almost empty and certainly socially distanced! And, @LinMM - yes, Serco. They have such a good record for managing data safely (not).

I've taken this app off my phone, after I forgot to turn it off while I was working somewhere where my phone was in a locker all day. I got pinged 7 days later for a specific day, when I can track my movements precisely. I know I was not near enough to anyone to have been infected (I take tests twice a week, and took two tests over the next 2 days when I got pinged). I was working somewhere for 4 hours, all socially distanced, all masked, walked there so didn't take public transport, and was at home for the other 20 hours of that day. So - because the pinging by the app is not legally enforceable, it's advisory - I made a judgement about isolating - as the message only came through with 1 more day of isolation, I got rid of the app. I was working at home that day anyway, so was effectively self-isolating for that last day. But I wasn't contacted either in person by a contact tracer, and the app didn't ping me until 9 days into the 10 for isolation, I thought it was pretty useless. On newish phones, the Bluetooth connection is so strong that you can be over 100 metres away from someone and be pinged. If you are passed by a bus, with someone who later reports positive infection, you can be pinged. I'm law-abiding - I still wear a mask in public, I WFH, I socially distance. But given the level of cronyism and ineffective government action over the track & trace app and the the general "contracts for families & mates" of this government, I have removed the app, without too much of a guilty conscience.

I think we need to be very careful about accepting gossip & hearsay. It makes me uncomfortable to treat speculation as if it were true. We also need to remember the cultural differences between the UK and the USA ("Two countries divide by a common language" G. B. Shaw): if you live in a culture which socialises you into believing that if you want something enough, you can achieve it, ballet (and similar athletic & artistic pursuits) can be a harsh taskmistress. Maybe private coaching (and this is speculation!) is a cultural adaptation in the US to dealing with balancing ambition against talent.

BalletBoost have sessions in Exeter, Devon, which is a good deal closer to Cornwall than Birmingham or London! But I don't know if they offer specific classes for boys.

Oh no - I remember seeing her with the Australian Ballet. And in my ballet class one term, we were working on an adapted version of the Kitri solo for which she was so famous. The music we used was of the arrangement conducted for her - it was fast! (faster than it would usually be played) - I remember my teacher saying that was because it was arranged for Lucette Aldous, and she was little and could jump (my teacher was also small and could jump like nobody's business!). This year is taking away so many ...