Kate_N

Happy birthday, and many congratulations! Sincere thanks to all who run this board - it's wonderful.

You'll find that by googling "Ballet Talk for Dancers" You need to be thirteen to post on BTFD. As for your other points. I'm not quite sure what you mean. If you're just a teenager - just 13 - then you have time to catch up. You need to find a good school that will give you solid careful training. Slow and steady. If you have the facility for ballet regular high quality training will help you realise your potential. As you're in the US, you may find that you can find a school where you'll be able to take a ballet technique class 5 to 6 days a week. Whatever your aims, you need to do the basic training.

It's important to know roughly how old you are. What is it you want to do with ballet? It's a beautiful art, and wonderful to learn, but difficult to make a living from. However, intensive study of ballet is never wasted - you learn a lot of other skills & knowledge along the way. But if you are blinkered about a goal which is hard for anyone to reach, and don't think widely & imaginatively about the aims & objectives f your desire for intense study of ballet, you will become a bit muddled, and run the risk of deep disappointment.

I think the dynamics of it is what to work on - work through your phrasing - think about where you breathe and how you can use that breath to extend and suspend some of those lovey arm & leg extensions.

Toi toi toi for Wednesday!

Just looking at it again - you look like you're a bit hyperextended in the legs? There's a tendency to push back into them, and I think this is tipping you very slightly off-balance backwards. The hyperextension also seems to make it look as though you're not straightening your legs in the extensions and lunges. And this might help - I noticed it especially in those two developpés to arabesque allongé you do early in the piece - you sort of throw them away - can you use your breath - breathe out to exteeeeeeend that position into a feeling of momentary suspension - and then dynamically recoil into the next move. Where you move in a low gallop across the floor just after that - in a low second plié, there needs to be more lightness & articulation of the feet. Have a look at the "Flying Low and Passing Through" work (available on YouTube) - it's inspiring in the way that technique works to send dancers to the floor and up again with speed and ligfhtness but always grounded with deep pliés and really lovely contact through the feet to the floor.

Like Petunia, I think there's some lovely movement in there, but you don't look fully engaged in it - you need to finish off your arm and leg movements. I'd also like to see a bit more groundedness into the floor, and then lightness when you move across the floor. I think this heaviness into the floor, contrasted with lightness and fluidity in the leaps and landings, is key to contemporary. Your movement/choreographic vocabulary reminded me a bit of some of Richard Alston's choreography - you might see if there's any video footage of Alston's work. Can you develop your extensions and jumps for a bit more sense of space moving up & along? Also, can you play with the dynamics - so there's a sense of different speeds - light & shade. As Petunia says, you're working with the music all the time - sometimes it's interesting to watch movement against the obvious movement of the music. Overall, I'd like to se more energy and sense of purpose. Is this an audition as a dancer or a choreographer? Although asking that, the child of a colleague of mine is at The Place, and the course involves a lot of self- and group-devised choreography. I've seen this person dance in a group of A -Level dancers just before they went to college, and their energy and force and utilised flexibility stood out for me. I think that's what I'd be looking for in your solo. And harsh as this may sound, there might be an issue about body shape if you're auditioning as a dancer - what's key here is how you create the illusion of extended limbs and lightness in the air, together with groundedness on the floor. I think it's that combination which is so hard in contemporary! And in ballet - a very wonderful teacher recently gave me the tip - to think of making my feet heavy, in my supporting leg/s at the barre and in the centre in adage. And I know from the feedback of the mirror, that I never quite get that sense of groundedness - I lack flexibility in my feet for a start. Toi toi toi

Oh that's great! I was back in Birmingham last week, and dropped into class at DanceXchange (waving to people here from that class!) and thought that I don't miss a lot about living in Birmingham, except the adult dance opportunities.

And en dehors has always been "out the door" for me! I am bumping this thread to say that I received an email announcing the ENB classes for the Winter term starting in January, plus information about workshops. I know a lot of us here already get these emails, but for new readers and so on - you can check on their website as well, and register there for a regular informational email. http://www.ballet.org.uk/classes/

You would do your friend's DD a favour by (gently) suggesting to your friend that she shouldn't be thinking about "quick" progress. Putting a child into a grade too high so that they "catch up" is a recipe for skimping on the basics and acquiring bad habits. Slow & steady ... she'll catch up eventually. Is there a confusion between graded exams and actual dance standards? Exams/grades are not the be all & end all of ballet - they are only set syllabi by organisations who bring together expertise to develop an age appropriate & progressive plan for teaching ballet. So if you did the training from the start, at age 11, a young girl would be ready for around about Pre-Elementary or Elementary - which I think is Intermediate Foundation now? But not if she hasn't done the basics properly! Please, try to tactfully stop her thinking about "progressing quickly" amd "catching up" - it may be quick, but it won't be real solid progress.

I don't know that one, but I'm currently watching bits of the BalletBoyz film, Young Men. Beautiful music & chroegraphy.

I hope someone picked this up from you - I wasn't able in the end to organise to go, and my Achilles tendon is still - shall we say "difficult" (I can stretch it, but pointing my foot or going up on demi-pointe is too painful!) Did anyone attend & can give us an account? It sounded really interesting.

Try buying cotton in future, and soak overnight in Napisan.

Toi toi toi And I hope you enjoy Petersburg. It's a very beautiful city (although some of my adventures there make me want to warn you to take a lot of care and be very street-smart - Russia's amazing but not a very safe country. But you just need to use more than usual precautions for keeping your valuables safe, and you'll be fine).

Oh thank you for this. Her lines are so beautiful in that photo. She looks like a lovely dancer, and interesting comments about the expertise and approach of her teacher.

Yes, it's tough on my knees. The workshop will be fine - I've studied contemporary for almost as many years as I've taken ballet classes (Graham technique & release technique). Although my expertise never seems to get past about intermediate level, and it takes me ages to pick up combinations (I'm a dunce student sometimes). It's whether my old body is up to a full day. I haven't done a full day workshop for about 10 years ...

Er yes, it is LinMM Well, we haven't spun around on our but we're learning a routine with what's called a "helicopter" in it - on both sides. I keep pleading for a contemporary style back or bum roll, but no ... helicopter it is.

Yes. That's about right!

I know this is a ballet discussion board, but can I just say - I'm 3 classes in to learning Street Dance. And it's harder than the most advanced ballet class I've ever taken (and I used to study the Cecchetti Advanced Syllabus!) It's fun, but I just cannot get the cool, relaxed style of the rest of the class & especially my lovely teacher. I feel like a dyspraxic puppy running to catch up!

But that is only a problem if you expect a university Dance degree to be the same as a conservatoire degree or diploma. I think that for you, anondancer, your fundamental issue is that you are tending to see your degree as second-best. It's not, it's just different, but if it isn't what you want, go out & audition for the conservatoires. If you don't get in, or get a call back again, then the hard fact is, you may have to reconsider how much you can pursue your original ambitions. But you have the knowledge that you are good enough to get into a very good Dance degree. And re independent work - our students are expected to do one formal timetabled 3 hour "self-directed" session per week (they are taught for 6 hours face to face in the same module, and this is half their workload), as well as other independent work. Those doing modules in choreography or making solo performance are expected to do this work independently, on their own.

Hours of face to face teaching aren't the only things your fees pay for. University buildings, lighting, heating, computers, library, chairs, tables, books in the library. Journal subscriptions - some electronic databases cost in the region of tens of thousands per year for subscriptions. Bursaries for poorer students; subsidies to Student Unions/Guilds. Counselling, disability, and medical services. Disability support for students. Insurance. Admissions costs (yes, Open Days & auditions cost money), advertising, student support, administrative staff. Subsidy of sporting & other recreational facilities. Science labs & materials; dance studios, changing rooms, loo paper. For someone 'reading' an English degree, they really are reading - two to three days a week if they do all the work set. I could go on ... Look at the annual tuition fee charged to non-EU students: that is closer to the real costs of keeping a university going. No tutor I know wants to keep students in a course who don't want to be there. They see you dance each day, and would be in an ideal position to advise you about the standard of your work in these first few weeks, and where your strengths & weaknesses are as a dancer with aspirations to work in the industry.

I love the work of all 3 choreographers, although I've seen less work by van Maanen than the other two. The professional dancer in my family works with an AD who is a friend of Mr Forsythe's so I've heard bits about the way he works. He likes dancers to push themselves and his response to them falling over is that that means they're really pushing themselves & testing their balance technique, and style. So on the basis of third-hand ballet gossip <oops > I think this gives us all full licence to fall over! In the spirit of Mr Forsythe, of course.

That's wonderful - you're already developing the resilience which will be essential in your career. Part of the making of a career, though, is to balance your ultimate goals with the small, everyday steps towards them. So if you're unhappy with your current training, you need to take action each day to improve your situation. So I suppose it's thinking through things like what you can do each day to enhance the likelihood of being more successful in conservatoire auditions. Strength training? Pilates? Extra classes? And so on. In tackling big projects, I use a basic project management technique. I work backwards from my main goal, and divide up my time and tasks appropriately, so I get something accomplished each day towards my goal. For me, it's large research projects and writing books. 80,000 words seems daunting, but not when you draft 500 words a day. So you could use that technique, but apply it to your physical training. A bit like those fitness apps that give you a schedule for building up to a long plank hold, or push ups, or running. Couch to 5k is brilliant for that, and has actually helped me with lots of other dance training ambitions.

I think you need to be prepared for the hard truth that - even for those undertaking conservatoire degrees at colleges such as The Place or Laban, for example - those graduates are unlikely to find full-time work in nationally-recognised contemporary companies (Richard Alston, Jasmin Vardimon, Rambert etc). Most of them will take on project-based work, supplemented by teaching, choreography, community-based dance work, and non-dance jobs to pay the rent. They'll also be travelling out of the UK for work - although post 2018 this will be so very much more difficult (I'd imagine politically very difficult in the years immediately post-Brexit). You might see what is at the moment "Plan B" for you, is actually quite useful, as other aspects of your degree - the contextual studies - will help you apply and land jobs via research & writing skills - particularly as even a contemporary dancer's career is relatively short. Most leave dance as dancers in mid-30s to 40-ish with still another 30-40 years of work ahead!

Yes, I've done several workshops there over the years. And observed company rehearsals in that studio. A beautiful space - but I can see why they're moving - it's very cramped.