Kate_N

Speaking from a ballet history perspective, I think we might wonder about the recentness of this phenomenon. people like to say that bodies were not so thin 50 or a 100 years ago, but nutrition etc were not so good, and people overall were generally smaller (my father at 6 feet in height was considered very tall in his 20s in the 1950s - he would be seen as 'normal' nowadays).

Just a thought & a wondering ...

1 hour ago, Tulip said:

looking that child up and down, whispering that that child made a mistake and was too slow to pick up, she’s only there because she is skinny etc etc.

Yes, Tulip, I've seen that too, over many, many years ... and not just in ballet, but in other elite sports (family member years ago on the squad from which selection for the national Olympic skating team was made, for example). I think it happens in every elite activity where there is pressure of age, a very very narrow funnel from the broad recreational pool of participants into the elite echelons.

It seems to me that some of the underlying - maybe completely unconscious - feeling/thinking in this sort of discussion (and I've seen discussions like this for years - it's not a recent thing!) is that there are a lot of young people desperately chasing something that is very very hard to get. 

12 hours ago, DD Driver said:

Some of the students admitted into vocational schools are not gifted dancers. 

This is quite an extreme statement to make. Unless you're an expert ballet teacher,  I'm not sure how anyone can know this, really. We don't see their auditions, not their daily classes & training. 

Surely part of the problem is that it's in these years that human bodies change enormously? Puberty is the point at which the adult body is formed via the specific actions of sex hormones to enable reproduction (we're mammals after all) - so girls ' increased oestrogen & progesterone promote the body's storing of fat to enable ovulation, while boys' high production of testosterone increases bone density, lung capacity, height, and muscle development. These things don't go away, and can fluctuate but by 21 or so the adult body settles down (sort of) - which is why working dancers mostly have that wonderful combination of strength and leanness. So for girls whose bodies store "too much" fat or boys who don't grow to an "acceptable" height there are issues.  (Note I put those words in scare quote marks)

But .... there are harsh truths to face. We know that for the rigours of any elite athletic endeavour, the body needs to be suited. No matter how much someone might love dancing classical ballet, if they don't have the biomechanical facility (eg adequate natural turnout) they run the risk of becoming injured. Not a problem for a recreational dancer, but a real problem for a professional. This is the same for ballet as it is for high jumping, or running, or shotput or whatever.

I wonder if part of the issue here (in my personal observation anyway) is that there's an emotional investment, particularly around the way our culture perpetuates the images of "ballerinas" and pink sparkly stuff to little girls (while telling little boys ballet is for girls - it's mad!). So there's often a "dream" which sometimes just isn't achievable in terms of dancing Swan Lake on the Covent Garden stage ... I do think (and I can imagine this might be an unpopular opinion) that some of the criticisms of ballet & the ballet establishment in this thread are because of the sadness of these sorts of dreams not being realised for teen girls. 

I work with older students, many of whom have similar dreams or ambitions as star performers. I have the sad knowledge that 90% of them - although clearly talented - do not have the extraordinary talent needed for success in the theatre. I think there are parallels here ...

I like the one I saw earlier of FaceBook, with a Dr Who Cyborg-style character wearing a tutu, suggesting that "Cyber could retrain as a ballet dancer.'

Yeah, she could ...

Also should have added Hurrah for @Pups_mum's news - it must be such a relief that - although your son is ill with a nasty virus - it is not COVID. It's really horrible being ill with anything at the moment.

1 hour ago, akh said:

This was a degree in Media Studies and not at either Oxford or Cambridge

My point is that the hours you quoted are pretty standard for a BA at Oxbridge (and lectures are generally not compulsory) but I rarely hear anyone citing the face to face teaching hours at Oxford or Cambridge as "bad" value for money ... I've long noticed an intellectual snobbery about this, where Oxbridge practices are seen as gold standard, but the same practices elsewhere are criticised (the tendency to mock Media Studies as a "Mickey Mouse" subject, for example), together with a tendency to misunderstand the role of face to face teaching in the humanities. In research seminar modules, my students need to spend at least a day a week (if not longer) reading set texts, and at least another day a week reading around the topic of each week's seminar. I suppose I could book a big lecture theatre, and we could all sit in it for 8 hours, reading the texts, and this would count as face to face hours?

Yes, good luck @Bluebird22 Tough times - I hope you keep cheerful and successful!

5 hours ago, akh said:

But we had a friends daughter who was at University prior to the Virus and only received 4 lectures a week and 1 tutorial! Was this good value ?

That's pretty typical of a BA at Oxford or Cambridge. Are those degrees "good value"?

20 hours ago, drdance said:

My adult ballet class only ever seem to be able to get black dancewear and the class looks like a funeral gathering!

I'm a "street size" large 10 (for H&M clothes, don't know if they do vanity sizing ...) but really a 12, and have sometimes been 14 or 16. Even at my heaviest, I found the website Dance Direct a good place for leotards - and the brand "Plume" does a range that is priced well, and their Large or XL in fairly basic designs (long sleeved scoop neck, high back, for example) come in colours other than black - although admittedly dark blue, maroon/claret ... They have built in bra "shelves" which are fine for me, but for those who need more bust support than I do, may not be enough. But most of them you could wear a bra underneath. They're built for adult female bodies with waists and hips, so I find the width across the back of the hips & buttocks is good (that's my bugbear - the cut at the back not being generous enough!) and they cut in for the waist.  Plume does a nice cotton/lycra mix, as well as the nylon/lycra/spandex mix.

10 hours ago, Vonrothbart said:

Does anyone think upper school students should get a reduction in their fees, due to this horrible virus. I suppose the schools still have to balance the books to keep their heads above water, but are the students getting a fair deal? I can see both sides, but what are your thoughts?

Hmmmm, how party political are we allowed to get here?

If we had a coherent, visible, legible, and properly science-led strategy (see Germany, where my family member who works in professional dance was working safely throughout lockdown, and they launched their new season a few weeks ago) from our national Government, a lot of these subsidiary questions would be able to be answered more satisfactorily.

I can't speak for vocational dance, but at my university, we are teaching studio practical classes in person, properly 2m socially distanced and masked. My university has spent upwards of £8 million over the summer on COVID-19 security, including setting up (at university cost) our own rapid response testing system. I'm personally teaching online at the moment, because the seminar modules I teach are better done without masks and distancing - I think the students will receive as good (if not better) an experience online. But I expect to be teaching in the studio (with modified & adapted material - no aerobic activity, no group activity - I'll be using the Laban kinesphere a lot!) in January, for a studio practice module. Converting my teaching to online teaching took over a lot of my research/book writing time (part of my actual job) over the summer, and my teaching hours have tripled, because I'm teaching my modules in very small groups to maximise quality of the online collaborative learning experience. Meanwhile, I've given up most of my out of house activities, so that I stay as healthy as possible, so I'm OK to teach in January. I'm not going back to my live ballet studio, and I do go to the gym twice a week, but not to group classes. I don't see friends or travel - I'm not allowed to for work (which makes my work difficult at times, but archives and libraries are mostly closed), and I've made the personal decision that the beach and the moors will be there next year. Although without a garden, I pine for trees and fresh air, but, well, this too will pass ... 

If fees are reduced, this needs to be a government decision. Universities have not been given extra funding - we have been offered short-term loans. University tuition fees barely cover the costs of most undergrad courses - the arts typically subsidise the sciences, but even arts degrees are only just covered by the current tuition fee.

For private schools, this is going to be a decision balanced between commercial & safety considerations. But I think we need to remember, that if we want these schools and other institutions to survive, we may need to find ways to cope with the situation. It's all very well to demand one's consumer rights, but what if by doing so, we put the very thing we want, out of business? I think we all need to think long-term and sustainably. Do you want your ballet studio to be there when we find our ways out of this? 

I found Nica Burns on Radio 4's Broadcasting House yesterday quite inspirational. She said that she looked at making people redundant, and it would cost £1.5 million - and she said she thought it would be better to use that money keeping people employed. She's looking at just keeping things going. 

We have to hope that this is temporary. It must be very difficult for young people for whom 1 year is 5% of their life, rather than the 1.6% of mine. And for those in demanding physical training, the feeling of opportunities slipping past must sometimes lead to despair and panic. But it will pass, we will learn to live with the virus, and I have faith in those (university) scientists in helping us to live with the virus. 

Anyway, rant over 

46 minutes ago, LinMM said:

First years usually head to Uni this weekend but most don’t start until first weekend in October!! 

Not everywhere. At my place, I've just completed my first week of teaching. Scottish universities often start in mid-September. And we could have looked across the Atlantic to see what happened in late August/early September when American colleges re-opened.

1 hour ago, oncnp said:

Agreed though transmission, especially from asymptomatic individuals,  could cause problems.

This is the point. My university town is experiencing a spike - a doubling in numbers of cases (albeit from a VERY low base). The cases are all attributable to university students, who were asymptomatic but brought the virus with them. My university is in a commercial partnership to test staff & students with symptoms, and the students are self-isolating.

But it shows how useless current national policy is around living with this virus: all students should have had to be tested before moving to university. And so on ... 

I'm teaching online because I'm just not prepared to take the risk to have my job lead to my illness, long-term effects, or death. And I don't trust our national government policies to keep me and my colleagues safe (and alive). They're a shambles.

Wow, @Pups_mum that is fantastic advice for life! not just dance (altho' dance is life 😍 ). Reading your post has really set me up for the start of the working week! 

2 hours ago, SissonneDoublee said:

I would be wary of a school that offers ballet but doesn’t do graded examinations, as there is a high chance their teachers are not qualified by any exam board. Unqualified teachers have no requirement for teacher training, no need to keep up any professional development and far less accountability.

My local studio doesn't do exams or grades as a deliberate policy, and the Director is the reverse of unqualified - she has far higher qualifications (both in her training, her professional experience as a dancer and her post-graduate degree & ongoing CPD) than the nearest studio which does send students for graded exams! So this is not always true.

I'd second the excellent advice about talking to your DD's current teacher - put it as a dilemma, and ask her advice. That would be a courteous and also sensible approach. 

Quote

My daughter has expressed wanting to go to Bird College as that’s where the older students go, I would just like that to be possible for her.

And just to say ... just because the older students go to a particular college, doesn't mean it's the only option. I'm sure you know that! It might be worth doing some reading in this forum about the range of vocational dance schools around. 

You're well-located fr some excellent training in the Oxford-Swindon area. Swindon Dance is the local dance agency (not a "talent agency" but a publicly funded organisation which is run to give young people access to good training. It's not very ballet-focused, but it might be good for your DD to experience other forms of dance. I know of several children of friends who've gone on to excellent vocational training from Swindon Dance.

https://www.swindondance.org.uk/

What do you mean by "a future in dance"? It might be worth thinking about that.

As many posts on this forum discuss, there is more to working in dance than getting a contract with a major national ballet company. And dance training brings many benefits beyond dance expertise specifically. 

Year 6 is aged 10 or 11, is that right? Pre-puberty. Girls' bodies change a lot in the next 3-4 years. Potential becomes actual achievement by around 15 or 16, and so on. I'm sure the teachers here can say more about that with more expertise than I have - I'm just speaking from my own & family experience of training (2 professional dancers in the family). 

My observation of undergrads I teach is that a lot of them don't have enough of a creative life outside of their studies, because they didn't have much enrichment in extra-curricular activities outside of school. Those who do, tend to do better in all other aspects of their lives. I see this in young people who've reached a level of competence in a difficult technical skill: ballet, playing a musical instrument (not just strumming a guitar casually), playing a sport to a high level, and so on. Your daughter is gainfully active in something beyond the usual shallow stuff of commercial popular culture - and that is a marvellous thing. 

Wonderful to hear, Tulip - both aspects of your daughter's determination & work ethic! She'll prosper whatever she chooses to do. And Liverpool is a wonderful university & city.

4 hours ago, NeverTooOld said:

One thing I would encourage people to think about is transferable skills.

This is sooooooo true! I teach a BA degree, and people get bogged down in their subject knowledge - what they are, rather than what they can do. I try to emphasise the skills they acquire. And putting on a show - working in any aspect of performance - requires people to collaborate, in high intensity circumstances, to produce a very high quality product by an unmoveable deadline (no "Dog ate my homework" when the curtain goes up!)

Theatre productions (ballet, dance, musical theatre, drama) bring together teams of people who may not have any control over those they work with; each person has a specific role but is also responsible for contributing to the overall aesthetic achievement. If you look at the underlying dynamics & structure of the theatrical workplace, it is very like a lot of team working on project-based assignments that we find in the business world. The skills that are then slotted into that structure are often very different, but no more so than the difference between a team of engineers, and a team of medicos.

About 20 years ago I set up and ran an MA in Women's Studies. We ran it for part-time students mostly teaching in the evenings (teaching to 9pm, and then a 2 hour commute home was fun!) who were women returning to study & employment after establishing their families. We did several sessions on how to convert bearing & raising children, and organising a family & household, into concrete and demonstrable skills for their CVs. It was fascinating to teach, and I learnt a lot (rather more about the still-enduring inequalities & discriminations against women that my optimistic self liked to hear, but still). 

I was up in Borrowdale last week (it's the most perfect place in the world) - climbed High Spy via Tongue Gill from Rosthwaite, so walked near to Jonny Wood. Then did the ridge walk from High Spy to Cat Bells & down into Keswick. Up on the ridge (bits of which were like the M6 with very badly equipped walkers) I counted THREE black bags with dog poo. 

Just left on the side of the footpath.

What are people thinking??? My thoughts were unprintable, but involved closing the Lake District to ignorant day trippers & people who walk their dogs off the lead in fields with stock in them.

But what should we do about such ignorant filthy people? I considered whether I should have picked up the poo bags and carried them with me down the fell to deposit in a bin in Keswick - except I didn't have an extra plastic bag in my day pack - just my water, my OS map, and my Wainwright.

Ugh it was nasty.

1 hour ago, LinMM said:

They are only minimally protective unless you are wearing a hospital standard one to be honest but if it makes people feel safer so be it. 

The thing that I think a lot of people don't understand (or think through fully) is that wearing masks isn't to protect the wearer from other people, but to protect other people from the wearer. 

If we all wear them, we all protect each other. 

So I tend to regard those who don't wear masks, with no obvious disability (like the young lads on the bus the other day, with their father, talking loudly into his phone) as devoid of care & respect for others. 

1 hour ago, Jan McNulty said:

However, I was in a local supermarket on Thursday (not the one I usually go to) and was shocked at the number of people who must have medical reasons for not wearing a mask so there will be a degree of scepticism over non-mask-wearing.

Yes, I'm afraid this is what I tend to think. The problem is that the number of people not wearing masks because they don't want to or they're "uncomfortable" has a bad effect for those people who genuinely cannot wear them. I also think that some people see mild discomfort together with some sort of medical reason (eg asthma) as reason enough.

Totally agree, Fiz. I'm asthmatic (enough to have always qualified for the flu jab) but had to wear a mask a couple of weeks ago for around 10 hours for a work thing I had to do - I use those disposable surgical masks and it's fine. I just find that the elastic around my ears, plus the ear pieces from my spectacles can sometimes push on my ears, but really, if it keeps others safe & shows respect for those around me, I'm not complaining.

3 hours ago, Meetmeatthebarre said:

Do you have any knowledge of the teaching style there?

Not really - I don't live in London, so have never taken those classes. A search of this forum would bring up quite a lot of first-hand information though. And really, if your friend wants to learn ballet in a safe and logical progression, with time to focus on details, a termly regular class would do that just as well as learning a syllabus would.

What I can say from first hand experience:

For the basic beginner who wants to learn excellent clean technique, Hannah Frost's open classes at Beginner level are ideal. They are not absolute beginner, but she teaches in a way that stops bad habits starting. I think if you went weekly to her classes at Danceworks, you'd get a really good technical grounding. She tends to do the same exercise for a couple of weeks, so you can get used to the choreography, and her sense of humour is just great. Danceworks re-opened today.

One of the people who teaches at City Lit (last time I looked at their prospectus) is Alexander Simkin (sp?). He is sometimes in an open class I do on Sundays with Nina Thilas-Mohs at Danceworks, and he is such a beautiful dancer to watch (and learn from watching!) in class. I haven't been taught by him, but watching him, I think anyone would be safe and learn great technique in his classes.

8 hours ago, Meetmeatthebarre said:

The motivations are a feeling of progress whilst acknowledging physical limitations, and which aren't being satisfied by open classes, with changing variations and limited time to focus on technique

Pre-lockdown, there was a regular RAD syllabus class for adult learners at Central School of Ballet on Sundays. However, I've heard from both teachers I've been doing class with via Zoom, who teach in the "Central Nights" programme, that Central School won't be re-starting that programme in the near future, as they need the evenings now for their extended full-time programme (it's happening everywhere - I'm scheduled to teach until 7pm at my university). But worth looking out for maybe in 2021.

If London-based is easiest for your friend, the other thing to look for would be the termly enrolment classes at City Lit and Morley College, and the RAD headquarters themselves. These offer regular progressive teaching, because students pay for a term's worth and so meet regularly and can work through a progression in learning. Which is all that the specific RAD, ISTD, BBO, or Cecchetti syllabi are!

45 minutes ago, Jan McNulty said:

He explained that they had got to know each other through tennis but it would not have been appropriate to have a relationship until she finished school.

And that's the right appropriate professional & ethical way to do it.

In ALL circumstances, the power imbalance between teacher & student outweighs any other consideration - even if they are the same age. The old "But she really loves me" doesn't cut it either. True love waits.

@annalieseythat is shocking. Thank you for raising this.

My university is updating their policy on staff-student relationships, are are advising staff that no relationship beyond appropriate professional care & warmth - even of friendship - is appropriate, at all levels, from undergraduate through to PhD. The policy gives further examples of what we should not do - such as employing our students to babysit or clean for us.

I really like this policy - it makes it very clear what a pedagogical relationship should be, and allows everyone to set boundaries. It doesn't mean we're automatons - we're all human, and we have feelings. But it is a staff responsibility to control those feelings, not act on them, and to dissuade students from attaching themselves to us in inappropriate ways.