Kate_N

Respectfully, but no! You really need a teacher there in the room  to watch you and correct mistakes. Ingrained bad habits in ballet are very hard to change. 

I've just spent a lovely Sunday morning doing a Progressing Ballet Technique workshop - a gentle introduction to the first level of exercises of this programme. My teacher has done the full training, and is starting to teach us the programme. 

I found it really interesting - the beginning level we did was not too strenuous, so I was able to work on form & breathing. The exercises working on attitude devant, and also from second to arabesque via a little promenade, were the most challenging, which tells me something about the access I have to my core strength (I have a strong back & core for all the lying down stuff!) and how I need to keep working on engagement of core in extended positions.

My teacher is going to do a 45 minute class before our main weekly ballet class, which will be great.

Like Pilates, it was gentle, and we were encouraged to work within our body's structure, but the additional stuff using ballet positions and turnout was really helpful. I also realised that I find a lot of the exercises easier in turn out than parallel.

Highly recommend, if you live anywhere near a fully trained teacher of the programme.

The child of a friend of mine is at London Contemporary at the Place. They were offered Laban & Rambert as well, but liked the curriculum & teaching at LCD. 

I think you probably have to go to some open days, have a look, have a look at the curriculum, and speak to the lecturers. You can do a lot of research on the curriculum & teaching methods & philosophy via each college's website.

I've now organised myself to go - if anyone here is thinking of attending, please say hello at the coffee/biscuits afterwards.

I recommend the Celtic Hotel to people. I'm staying there next week when I go up to London to hear Monica Mason speak to the Society for Theatre Research. It's a very safe quiet comfortable B&B in Bloomsbury. Very reasonably priced as I always have a single with no en suite -- it's around £60 with breakfast.

But Southwark is easy - there's a big Tube station there, and the area is far more populated & safe than even 10 years ago. I think you'll be fine. If it's a nice evening, it'd be a lovely walk from Covent Garden through the City to St Paul's, across the Millennium Bridge to the hotel. 

Thanks everyone. I went to the small ballet shop connected to my local studio and ended up with some very modern  pull-on jazz shoes with spilt sole and a sort of neoprene section around the arch. They make my rather wide & not very arched feet look great & I can whizz round in turns. 

Anna, thanks for this. It's really helpful. I last did jazz before the trainer style shoes were invented! I think I"m going to have to get myself to a good dance shop when I'm in London next week, and try some out to see which I prefer.

I really endorse what Pups_Mum says. At the moment you are driven by a dream and a passion. And I think that being brought up in the theatre (as I was) is a wonderful childhood - as everyone says, you learn all sorts of wonderful skills. When my peers were simply going home & watching television, my siblings and I were always at class or rehearsal. The theatre and performing (dance, drama, singing) gave us all really productive recreational time. Although I'm not a performer, my childhood & teenage years, and university years spent in the theatre & dance studio - my life beyond my work! - have enabled me to do the work I do now. And earn an excellent living 

But ...

I have 3 successful, earned-their-living-at-it performers in my family, including 2 ballet professionals - although 1 dancer quickly moved from dance to acting to earn a living - and I've seen up close just how very talented you need to be. And even then, there are no guarantees. The soloist dancer in my family started relatively late, but went to the national training school (one of the best in the world) because of amazing feet, long limbs, small head - having the typical ballet body, and almost daily training from the age of 12. 

So your parents may be trying to protect you by ensuring that you have an all-round education. Personally, I think that if you do have a skerrick of the fundamentals, then your brain can wait, your body won't. And a good performing arts education will be a good all round arts & humanities education. But I think it's really important that you have a serious talk with your ballet teacher, and you use your own judgement when you're at auditions and so on. At 14, auditioners will still be looking at potential, but by 16, they'll be wanting to see good training and its application. The foundation of all your wonderings is: Do you have the basic raw materials? That is the tough harsh question.

Your frustration is obviously that your parents don't seem to see that in order to be at the highest level (they seem to want you to achieve at the highest level in everything) you need more training. They seem quite invested in "the best" or status as a mark of quality or achievement - your comment about your expensive piano teacher suggests it's important to them for you to be training in the "best" way. So can you follow this reasoning through, and suggest to them that limiting your training is a "false economy." So in order to give you a chance to prove yourself, extra classes might be the deal?

However, if you read the posts of another member here, Anonymous_Dancer, who is studying a dance degree after 18, you'll see that there are all sorts of possibilities beyond the RBS, and beyond just ballet.

Harwel's advice is excellent. It is tough, but is there a realistic chance that a vocational school (not just the RBS) will offer you a place? What Associates schemes have you auditioned for, or been accepted to? What other indicators of 'raw' or trained ability have you tried to assess? 

Can you say that only one class a week is a false economy, as you can't make progress with only one class a week. Can you compare it to training for a sport, or learning a musical instrument? that in order to get fit you need to do run  a bit each day; in order to become a fluent musician, you need to practice scales each day.

It's called muscle memory or proprioception.

An academic comparison: To learn a language, you learn more with frequent, regular daily practice. You learn even more quickly if you're immersed in that language (vocational school). 

Brains can mature & develop your whole life: your body is only able to do the learning it needs to do while you are young.

To show your parents that you are serious about the need for regular practice, can you devise your own ballet training regime, so you do some at-home practice daily? I mean, don't make it up yourself! Ask your teacher for some simple exercises you can do each day for around 45 minutes, which will strengthen and develop your ballet muscle memory. Such as: 3 x sets of 10 rises in parallel. On both feet, then a set on each single leg (do them as if facing the barre: hang on to a convenient table or the like). Floor exercises with a Pilates ball; foot strengthening exercises. Things you can do that maybe aren't a full class, but help you develop & strengthen in reparation for class.

Show them your determination, even in the face of 1 class a week.

The teachers who post here may have experience in reassuring parents that it isn't necessarily an "either/or" situation for young people like you.

I hope this is OK, even though it's not strictly about ballet! My local studio has just started a new class - a fast, old school, proper jazz ballet class (none of your Jazzercise!) I haven't done old school jazz ballet for about 25 years, but my first class was terrific fun & the teacher was lovely about me just following along (it's where good basic ballet technique is invaluable). She also threw a bit of Graham technique in there with high releases and spirals - wonderful.

Anyway ... not only have I nt done proper jazz ballet for a long time, but my old jazz ballet shoes have gone the way of all flesh.

And looking online, there is far more choice than ever before. 

So I'm looking for people's experiences with types of jazz shoes. I rather like the look of the trainer-style jazz ballet shoe - split sol, but lots of support, and I could use it in my street dance class as well (oh yes, I have taken up street dance. It is far far harder than any Advanced syllabus ballet class I've ever taken).

But the Capezio split-sole trainers are pricey and I wondered whether something softer might be better. The only dance shop near me (in my local studio actually) is open mostly for the children's ballet clothes & shoes, so I don't really have a range I can try on. 

What have been other dancers' experiences?

I think that if you just get on with things, and show you're serious and there to learn, it'll soon be normalised. Although I think I'd have stared if a new person walked into class and said what you said:

 "I bet you don't see many boys in here" and got a load of stares, oops!

 

But you were nervous, naturally, and we all say clumsy things when we're nervous. So just keep going back, say Hello & smile. This is where polite "manners" we use with near-strangers are invaluable - we can just go into automatic mode, to smoothe over potentially awkward situations.

Have fun - it's great that you've found a sympathetic and mentoring teacher!

Commiserations, it's hard to get over nerves.

You have to think about the many many ballet students who audition from all over the world. If you don't get in, it won't be personal and it won't be because you are not an excellent dancer. There are many excellent dancers who aren't accepted. It just means the RBS is not a good fit for you, not that you are a failure.

And use this as an opportunity to think through situations in which you get nervous - I think sports psychologists call it "visualisation"? you get used to stressful situations by rehearsing them beforehand, so that when you're actually in there, you have ways of relaxing and being in the moment, rather than being nervous. I find focusing on my breathing helps.

My teacher was discussing it with me before she went to do her final bit of training last week - she's thinking of running some focused workshops, but also including some of the conditioning exercises in our normal beginners class. Best of both worlds!

For a really careful picky technical teacher, but caring and encouraging, I'd recommend Hannah Frost at Danceworks in central London. She also does a Friday night class at Central School. She's great. She doesn't let anything get past her, gives helpful hands on corrections, and is endlessly positive & encouraging (with a great sense of humour). I find her beginners classes are really great for getting me centred & tuned up. 

If you're a bit more of an advanced beginner, Adam Pudney at Danceworks is great! And Renato Paroni, Sunday afternoon at Central School is a master teacher. 

They're all drop in, but if you're working 9 to 5, they might be a bit tricky, as they all start at around 4:30pm (except the Sunday class). 

I'm quite excited - just have to share. My teacher down here in the deepest West Country (where there's precious little high quality adult ballet training) has just completed the Progressive Ballet Technique course at the RAD and is planning weekend workshops to teach it at my home studio. It's going to be great to add another skill set! My teacher offers really high quality teaching, and gets complete beginners dancing in a relaxed but technically correct environment. She runs the studio mostly for children, but I really appreciate her dedication to improving the dance teaching for all of us! 

From an adult student's perspective:

You don't need to be teaching a syllabus, but unless you have a really solid track record of professional dancing work, then as a teacher, the attraction you might offer could be indeed that you have trained to the highest level in a specific syllabus. Then you have a qualification that assures your pupils (clients? customers?) that you have training in a sound system of introducing ballet technique in a logical and progressive manner. Because, really, that's what any ballet syllabus aims to do. The RAD, BBO, ISTD syllabi are not a magic formulae - they're the result of a load of experts sitting down and working out (over many years) the order and rate in which to teach the technique and develop the artistry. (I wish there were a similar 3 year progressive syllabus for adult beginners, but that's another story).

As an adult student, I find the best teachers are those who've been professional dancers themselves, and have then retrained as teachers. They have the insider's knowledge of the art form which I've never found in teachers who simply train up through a particular syllabus. I've done that myself, but I'd never call myself qualified enough to teach!

But in the absence of that, a solid qualification (not just having done RAD Intermediate) in a reputable syllabus would be an indication of the knowledge you've gained.

Jane will be in conversation with Monica Mason in the February lecture of the Society for Theatre Research lecture series. It's on 7th February, 2017 7:30pm at the Swedenbourg Hall in Bloomsbury (just off Bloomsbury Way. (Nearest Tubes Holborn or Russell Square).

The event is free, open to members & non-members - and they're generally a pretty friendly bunch (although I won't be there - it's too far from home on a week night when I have to teach). If you can't be there in person, the STR organises a livestream of each lecture on YouTube.

There's usually a relaxed atmosphere and the chance to meet the speaker informally over coffee and biscuits afterwards. It's always a good night - the STR brings together a broad range of performance experts and enthusiasts.

Full details here on the STR's website:

http://www.str.org.uk/events/lectures/index.html

I was entranced by this - the energy and tact of the choreographer, Stephen Elias, and the people of Barnsley. I'm very much looking forward to seeing Skipton dancing next week, and the finale in York. 

For this northerner in exile in the deep West Country, it's lovely seeing familiar places. And the power of dance as a way of people connecting and being themselves made me almost cry a couple of times in the first programme.

Wonderful stuff!

Oh sorry - it wasn't clear from your opening post.

In that case, I'd recommend Annette Nicholson - central Birmingham location. Ms Nicholson is a wonderful teacher & coach. She's a former BRB solist, and an all round wonderful artist.

The Place is drop in and the place (ha ha) I'd recommend for contemporary. Intermediate or Advanced sound about right.

http://www.theplace.org.uk/adult-dance-classes-spring-term

http://www.theplace.org.uk/participation?age%5B%5D=78&field_day_of_week_tid=All&level=All&style=95&field_class_type_tid=All

Oh and just to say - ballet teacher friends of mine say that they very rarely give many corrections to completely new students, as they don't want to scare them off. Ballet corrections can seem to be quite harsh if you're not used to being constantly corrected, so teachers generally leave it a bit before commenting on new students.

Ballet Talk for Dancers won't accept registration from email addresses supplied by AOL, or Gmail. It's to do with board security & spam, as well as US law. Here's the policy 

WE REQUIRE YOU TO REGISTER WITH YOUR REAL EMAIL ADDRESS. Hotmail, bigfoot, yahoo, all other free email service email addresses WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED.

We have had people registering with someone else's name as a hotmail address, or making up a name that has turned out to belong to someone else, or taking out an email address to register but never check that mailbox. We need an accurate address where we can trace you if, for legal reasons, we are required to do so. We also need to be able to get in touch with you if there is a problem with a post.

By "real email address," we mean the address that is part of your connection to the internet: aol, mindspring, msn, earthlink, etc. If you are using the internet, you are connecting to it, and the email address associated with that account is the one that we need. If you are posting on a computer that belongs to another family member, you can get what is called an "alias" from the ISP (internet service provider) so that you can have your own email address.

 

So if you have an email address supplied by your internet supplier (eg Verizon or ATT) then that would work. But I think you can read BTfD without registering so you could look to see whether there are some pointers. The Adult Students forum should have something.

The other thing to do is find out what are the bigger, more professionally run studios for children in your area & see if they offer an adult or open community programme.

And NO!!! You are never too old to learn to dance! My current wonderful teacher runs ballet classes for children & a couple of adult classes each week. We had our first class of the term today & one new person turned up who'd never danced before. She came away having started to dance! 

Ms Nicholson is a wonderful teacher. I used to love her classes when she took them sometimes at DanceXchange.

Dormouse, your achievements were the subject of conversation at the Christmas dinner table amongst ballet professionals I know - in terms of awe and "I couldn't do that now!" of course. 

 I almost said "Oh, I know her!" and mentioned this thread, but thought they might think I was a bit bonkers, if I tried to explain that I "know" you here virtually!