Kate_N

Oh - that's sad - I remember he used to come to very occasionally to one of the classes I used to do at DanceXchange (I think when particular teachers were teaching class), and he was always really quiet & lovely, and took his place alongside all us amateur adults.

I was watching on television, and in tears at that point. I do hope they release it in full, AND include the shots from back stage, when Ms Bussell collapsed in tears, and Monica Mason was there to hold her.

Oh, it's a small world, @Thecatsmother - Mr Payne is a wonderful teacher - so patient and helpful. I remember him once in an Advanced class very patiently breaking down fouettes for me. I can do them to the right, but my fouettes to the left are appalling. He stood in front of me with his hands supporting mine, while I got my balance and the whip all sorted out. And his petit allegro was fiendish but lovely. I miss his classes ..

Yes, @Peony that's the way I learned - I was lucky, my Cecchetti teacher was very experienced, danced professionally, then did her Cecchetti Diploma (higher than Adv 2, and really only suitable for those with professional training as far as I can see!) With her, it was almost bred in the bone as the tradition she'd trained in since she was 8. I did adult open (advanced level I think) classes at Birmingham DanceXchange for several years taught by the BRB soloist, Jonathan Payne, who is a lovely teacher, a great dancer and also a wonderful teacher of the Cecchetti style - similarly trained I think, from his childhood. As far as I can see and learn from those 2 teachers, it's about having a feel for the style and its nuances, as much as the strict adherence to a textbook.

I've done most of the Cecchetti syllabus up to & including Advanced level (before it was split into all the different levels as now) and this is the way we were asked to do petit battements - it trains the wrapped foot. The [old] Advanced syllabus is very beautiful to dance, with a lovely mix of very simple stuff, and quite difficult stuff (anyone for a pirouette from fifth, starting with a grand plié? But really, ballet is ballet is ballet - a properly trained dancer should be able to do whatever the choreographer (or teacher) asks for - arms kept in first or bras bas for the warmup/earlier exercises at the barre for example - that's not just a Cecchetti thing - I've had teachers ask for it in other styles & in open classes. IT keeps you focussed and also keeps you thinking of controlling your body within its kinesphere. As for contacting the Cecchetti Society: as far as I know, they are mostly volunteers or very busy - and will probably respond best through a registered teacher member. It's a membership organisation at its foundation.

I'm also in awe at other posters here who recognise all the dancers individually!

I loved that section. I noticed that the Bolshoi coverage was less thrilling this year - they moved between Akimov's class (worth the wHOLE of WBD in my view!) to Allash's women's class. That was really interesting - seeing how quickly & professionally and efficiently the women principals worked to do a shortish class. I particularly loved their seemingly endless petit allegro combinations. But the Akimov class seemed quite thin ... Then I had to go to w*rk (thinking of Larkin's "Toad"). So catching up now while working on a chapter about the Romantic ballet ... It's research! Yes, really

Oh OK! Someone else in the AB who looks like him!

A slightly different topic: I'm watching the Australian Ballet on catch up and there's a dancer who looks like DAvid Hallberg - I know he's guest artist with them - is he there now? If it is him, he can turn like a top!

I'm watching the Bolshoi live via the website, which takes you to YouTube. It's wonderful!

Do see it - it’s only an hour but an intense experience.

I think sometimes it can be quite difficult to learn if the "click" as you say, isn't there. And young people can get quite emotionally invested in having this connection or "click." Maybe part of the learning, is learning how to work with & learn from all sorts of people, is quite important. But it's a tough lesson at 14! (I'm thinking out loud because I'm trying to find a "fix" for my own student, who's quite distressed by the adjustment they're going through! But actually, I'm not sure there's a fix - it's all about growing up ...)

I don't know if this will help, but ... It is a pretty well-known (to teachers) phenomenon that changing schools will have this sort of response. I remember talking to young professional company dancers about their first jobs, and they all commented that they felt they worked less than in the final years of their full-time ballet training - theirs was an adjustment from the 8 hours of supervised TAUGHT work per day, 6 days a week, to the independent work of a company professional (company class, rehearsal, performance), where they had to take responsibility & initiative for extra coaching and sorting out & working on their own issues. Obviously, your DD is still in training, so can't be expected to have that level of independence, but - I was recently working with an student (18 years old) who is expressing similar kinds of distress about having worked so hard to get into my institution, but is now disappointed that they feel they're not working so hard or doing enough. They too, have come from a different country and culture. The student had equated 'stepping up' in terms of level of institution & education (ie from A Levels to degree) with doing more. I had to explain that it's not about doing more, it's about working differently, and with more breadth and depth. Which is more, but feels like less to the student at the moment. But it is a slow process, and will speed up, be sure of that! You might also want to try to have your daughter separate out her dissatisfaction with the training, from her exhaustion from the huge challenges of learning a new language and culture, living away from home, in enforced sociability with lots of non-family. All at the age of 14! It's a lot to take on. It's huge actually, and she must be extraordinarily dedicated & resilient to be managing. I'm sure you know - we all come to learn - that sometimes we project anxieties from the things we can't control (learning a new language etc) onto the things we can control - changing schools. Or we focus our general dissatisfaction on one thing that is not about us - ie the teaching. We think that if we change the one thing outside ourselves that we can change, then everything else will be fixed. But we still take ourselves with us. So I'd want to be sure with a child that it's actually not the training, but the whole framework within which the training is happening, if you see what I mean. I'm seeing this over & over at the moment as our first year students adjust to their new learning environment, together with their new living environment. And wouldn't moving to a German school have pretty much the same issues of language and culture? (I love speaking German, but it's a harder language to learn than French, in my experience ...) If you trust her teachers at her current school, you need to trust them. Of course, if you don't trust her teachers, then maybe a new school is what's needed.

Oh yes, this times a thousand. No "face acting" pleeeeeeeease! But a lot of teachers work on this in class - even in my regular adult ballet class my teacher comments on the blank or staring or scared/tense faces. She encourages us to keep our faces and upper bodies soft and fluid and open - this lack of tension is the basis for expressiveness.

Please, feel free- glad it was useful. And it's not "mine" I was taught it in my training and work ... so passing t on is part of the work.

Speaking as someone involved in the training of performers (although ones older than 13), I'd say that for the moment, it might be worth building on her current focus on port de bras and expressivity of the body as an organic whole. This sounds like a really wonderful learning moment for her (and an unexpected benefit after the frustration of injury, I hope!) The music is the huge help here - just filling the music will require a co-ordinated use of breath, nuance of movement, and tempo that will help with expression. The very worst thing is a focus on "face acting" and forced expression - I see this too much in my 18-20 year olds, and it's based on a very fundamental misconception about acting that might help your daughter in developing nuanced and subtle expression. Here it is for what it's worth: A lot of novice performers think performing is about expressing their feelings. It's not. It's about making their spectators feel something. I use this a lot in duologue/dialogue work, and improvisation - the task is not to show me your feelings, but to elicit feeling in the partner you're working with. Otherwise, all I get is a rather self-indulgent overflow of wrought up emotion - and I have a very low embarrassment threshold for this (it's a bit of a professional problem sometimes - but I've taught myself to smile & nod!). But at 13, I'd say developing musicality and whole body expression - and avoiding face acting - are sufficient goals. She needs to feel she is enough on stage, for other people to enjoy watching her (if that makes sense?). And that is hard for a 13 year old girl to feel ...

And thanks for merging my post with Jan's thread, Alison. I do see a lot of dance, but I don't always get the time to post about it here ... I first met Maliphant 20 years ago when he was artist-in-residence in a university department I was working in at the time. He was doing some of his early experiments with MichaelHull, which resulted in that extraordinary piece, Two, made for Dana Fouras. I saw an early version of that in our departmental theatre space. I know enough about the technicalities of lighting to know how difficult and experimental the work that Maliphant & Hull do together is. And Silent Lines is further experimenting with the interplay of light & bodies. But like Jan, I could have sat through the piece a second time straight away - although I doubt the dancers could have managed that! None of them stopped for pretty much the whole hour.

I saw Russell Maliphant's latest show last night - it's on a regional tour, from their base in East Anglia. I would urge anyone who can get to see one of the performances, to go!!!! https://russellmaliphantdancecompany.com/shows/2019/silentlines It's only an hour long, but it is one of the most intense hours I've experienced recently in the theatre, and I see a lot of performance. It is utterly beautiful and mesmerising, and such beautiful pure dance. NO storytelling - just an investigation into what bodies are capable of doing - and yet there are no cheap tricks. Maliphant's signature style - really beautiful use of spirals and extended arms, is matched with a video artist's projections onto the dancers' bodies, to make for quite a thrilling and moving experience, about what the human body can do, and is capable of. Not ballet as such, but Maliphant & Fouras both trained and danced with the Royal Ballet. And it's just gorgeous.

Birmingham is excellent for ballet training, but presumably not within the BOA. For someone who wants to do this full-time, it would be worth looking at various colleges of Further Education - Solihull had quite a good dance programme when I lived in Birmingham, but I don't know if this is still the case. What I know as the BTEC - but I think it's now called a National Diploma? Good results in this will be accepted for appropriate degree courses at universities (we take applicants with Distinctions at BTEC level and I teach at a research intensive elite university). But my point re overall aims stands - if it's teaching/choreography, then this ambition is probably best served by a good dance degree at a university. There will inevitably be more contemporary dance than ballet, but the degree courses I know (which is not all of them!) - at universities, not conservatoires - all have ballet as part of their curriculum.

Thank you for these links - wonderful programmes. Thank you! I'm wondering how the young Kirril will develop - he danced beautifully, in the exam, I thought, while clearly quite ill. And his truculence was both frustrating but heart-breaking. They are so young and work so hard, and have to be so driven.

I was coming in to post pretty much what @balletbeanhas posted. If your daughter is interested in a teaching and choreography career, then she should be aiming for a university dance degree, probably with some modules available in pedagogy and choreography. So one way of looking at your current conundrum might be to work backwards: * identify 5 university courses (that's how many choices in a UCAS application) which are of interest** * look at what their entry requirements are * see what post-16 choices best enable desired university course entry ** to choose appropriate university courses: The UCAS website is a good first start, as well as searching discussions here Then go to the specific degree programme website on the university's own website Try to get past the advertorial selling pages (we all have to do it - us academics don't like it) and get to the pages for current students Have a look at the broad structure of each degree programme The Departmental information will tell you approximately about time in the studio and time in seminars & contextual studies It's likely that university dance degrees will focus more on contemporary dance than ballet, but many will offer ballet as part of the studio training component of a degree It's likely that most dance degrees - other than the solidly vocational at conservatoires such as Central or Laban - will require 50% of the students time in seminar/theory/research based modules. HOWEVER, this sort of learning will be vital for anyone wanting t teach or choreograph. Choreographers need to have a wide knowledge of art, music, the history of dance & movement more generally. There should also be some sort of option offered in 'employability' style studies eg entrepreneurship, study of the creative industries etc. My strong advice for post-16 education is to keep up the academic studies, so that your daughter has the best chance of the widest possible choice of university dance degrees. Normally, I'd advise going strongly for the dance training as bodies can't wait. But if her long-term goal is to teach & choreograph, actually she'll need deep and broad learning and also analytical and critical thinking. This latter is paramount.

I should think Google is your friend here. And your child should be doing the research - not the parent.

Gretchen Ward Warren’s book is one of the best sources for this sot of thing. It’s very comprehensive: Classical Ballet Technique. Anti beautifully illustrated, with both clear line drawings and photographs.

Sometimes my students come up with this sort of research method, but a problem arises if there hasn't been specific training in interviewing and qualitative research. As you know, there are specific - and quite high level - skills involved. And those skills are not usually taught in a performing arts/dance degree - we're too busy covering discipline specific content and skills! At my place, this kind of research would also require ethical clearance, and quite a lot of secondary source reading in sociological research methods. Just tagging on to @Bluebird22's post - this is a more nuanced way of doing the kind of research the OP seems to want to do. My only problem with this - as a dissertation supervisor - is, as Bluebird says, that there's no body of primary source material to analyse.

These anecdotes are interesting, but can't be used in a university dissertation!