Kate_N

It is interesting some of the comments here about the "squashing" more of girls personalities.

 

This is really interesting. I think this is a reflection/mirroring of the general sexism of our culture, where girls & women have shown themselves equally as capable as boys/men in very many - all - areas of our society, but are still in the minority as higher earners, leaders of business, politics, and industry.

This is an ongoing & live issue in the creative industries, where there are regular enquiries - sponsored by a number of industry & private bodies - into the position of women. There is still a problem: women are very much still in the minority of leadership positions throughout the performing arts. There are fewer women artistic directors, theatre directors, choreographers, playwrights ... and so on.

Girls & women are socialised into particular behaviors & mentalities, as a boys & men. We ascribe qualities we call 'feminine' and 'masculine' to women and men - but guess which qualities are seen to be most advantageous in terms of position, income, and influence ... Women who lead are often seen as 'unfeminine' or bossy or aggressive. And so on.

The training in ballet emphasises a kind of 'performance' of an idealised femininity. Smile, look beautiful, look fragile, look pleasing to the spectator's eye - even though we all know the strength that is required to perform this ideal is anything but fragile!

Wonderful, wonderful! Congratulations.

I said to a new teacher yesterday I hoped to dance till I was 70, which is less than 15 years away. But maybe I can still dance when I'm 80! 

Off-topic: re Tim Hunt, there are other views, particularly around his views of 'science education' acting as a massive negative blow to the equality of women in science labs. At the level I work at, the loss of women in senior roles - because of attitudes such as Professor Hunt's publicly expressed views on the behaviour of women in labs - is a nation-wide (indeed, world-wide) problem. His public statement clearly contravened the spirit & principles of the Athena Swan charter, which UCL supports.

My apologies to the Moderators, but I couldn't let sherbert's statement stand unchallenged in this thread. I work in the HE sector, and I see at first-hand the difficulties women still face in achieving leadership roles, because of structural sexism & inequalities, but also because of attitudes about what is a "woman's place."

You may need to remove all the posts about Prof. Hunt et al. to another thread! 

If she's doing a BA (Hons) then she may want to do a further year as a Masters, but I think that she needs to have a good reason - a Masters degree is often the start of specialist research training. If she feels there's a need for contemporary training, then she could seek out extra-curricular classes, or do some intensive weeks at somewhere like The Place, or Laban. Those are in London, but I'm sure there are other places across the country - Northern Contemporary, for example.

But as far as I know, the Rambert School, for example, teaches a base of classical ballet - in my family member's company (principally ballet) they had dancers trained at Rambert. 

I'd be thinking "Classical ballet material for what?"

Probably only about 2% to 5% of those who start the study of ballet become professional ballet dancers. But that doesn't mean that the other 98% can't keep dancing! As others have said, there is a lot of other dancing work out there. But what about using the deep learning in dance to work as a PE teacher - the right sort who wants to encourage all children to learn about the joys of purposeful movement, not the type of PE teacher most of us suffered under. Who only noticed you if you were an ace netball player. (I'm not projecting, oh no no no!)

Or a fitness trainer? Or a specialist physiotherapist? Or a dance educator? Or an occupational health practitioner?

I'm still dancing in my mid-fifties. It is an art which keeps one young & moving. And on the "other" ballet message board, there are lots of members who discovered ballet as adults, and say they wish they had been allowed to study ballet as a child.

The other thing is for your daughter to explore other dance forms: commercial dance, modern/contemporary dance, physical theatre, and so on. 

Does anyone else think its odd that its advertised on a Belgian website when the course takes place in France? Different levels of regulation peut etre?

It's not unusual to live in one country and go to work in another ... And in this case, both are covered by EU regulations as well as national regulation.

I'm not clear about a few things in your post - are you in England/NI/Wales? Is your daughter doing a BA (Hons) in Dance/Performance?

A standard UK MA is 1 year, after an undergraduate Honours degree. An MFA (Master of Fine Arts) is generally 2 years. A little shorter than a year are postgraduate certificates and diplomas - generally a PG Diploma is the Master's course work, without the research dissertation.

If she is doing a Foundation degree, which is 2 years, and roughly equivalent to an undergraduate certificate/diploma, then it needs a further 2 years "top up" (generally at a university) to achieve the Honours degree. 

 if you click on the link, there is an option to share it on Facebook. Maybe you could post your warning with the link and make it public for people to share? 

That is an excellent suggestion. I've just followed Tog's link, and clicked on the Facebook icon, and it clicks through easily & invites me to comment. I think you could say something, Swanprincess, prefaced with the statement that your experience is first hand.

It's generally the hyperextended back in gymnastics, and the lack of sustained training of the action of turning out (turn out is not a state, but an action) which are the problem for ballet. 

Yes, Sherbert, you're absolutely right of course! 

The children's programme at Danceworks looks lovely. They have some of the best teachers in London teaching the children, lucky things! I was taking class there earlier this week, and there was a demonstration session for their International Summer School - from what I could see, there were lovely dancers of all ages from the tinies to the late teens & a very supportive atmosphere.

My comment is based on ideas about when serious training with a view to professional standards generally starts. Of course children can start to learn the basics of technique earlier, but it doesn't need to be as early as 5 or 6! But more importantly, starting to do graded, examined work, with taking exams at 6 or 7, doesn't mean that a child is a "better" dancer than a child who starts a couple of years later. This has been my family's experience (2 professional dancers in my family, neither of whom started serious training until 10/11 - one had never taken a ballet lesson before the age of 11, but is very naturally gifted).

I'll always remember talking to an exert in child development about this (it was at some work thing where researchers from different disciplines were mixed up). She was interested in my "hobby" and we got talking about children's dance training. Her view was very interesting - she said that right up to the age of 7 or 8, most children are not able to express themselves fully through words & language. So movement is often the way that they supplement words. She commented that when a parent talks about the way their child is "always dancing around the sitting room" it does not necessarily mean they are the next Margot Fonteyn, but that they are using movement to fill in the gaps of expression that words & language can't yet do for them. 

Personally, I find the focus on exams a bit misleading. I've seen dancers in open classes who have apparently passed Intermediate & Advanced exams who have some fairly basic faults, in my view. 

I'm in my mid-fifties and still dancing (had a lovely 2 classes back to back on Wednesday). That's the main thing - that children are given the tools to understand how their bodies work, so that through safe, careful & precise use of them, they can dance with freedom for lifelong enjoyment!

At 4, it's still pre-ballet. The study of simple basics in technique won't really start till she's around 8, and it doesn't start to get serious till about 10 or 11 - and even then it's still age appropriate.

So take it easy, as everyone says. Rise above the studio gossip; don't fuss about exams - the grades are not the be all & end all. The aim is to learn the techniques of ballet in a way that is appropriate for her body, and to learn to dance with freedom - in ballet, that freedom comes through technical precision, but the end result is to dance for joy!

Welcome, HeyimAshlyn. 

You say you're just about to start the study of ballet, so perhaps you don't realise how slow the training is - the "banana feet" of some dancers (the hyperflexed arch that features on lots of Instagram photos) take years to develop, if the dance student has the kind of feet which will develop this way. It will take a lot longer than a year, I'm afraid - most people who dance professionally have been in some form of ballet training since the age of 8 or 10.

But not all feet are made to develop this way. You can have very strong articulate feet without them being the stereotypical dancer's feet. In fact, strong but flatter feet are sometimes better for dancers in terms of strength in pointe work. 

The main thing is not think about the superficial "look" of your feet, but work on the articulation of each part of your foot. Some ways of doing this you'll learn in ballet class, and if you haven't had any ballet lessons yet, then you should not try them until you've been taught correctly. But there are things you can do on your own, which won't embed an incorrect "muscle memory." 

Take every opportunity to walk barefoot (around the house, or on sand on the beach, for example).

Try to spread out your toes and think about distributing your weight even across all 5 toes when you stand. Think about distributing weight between toes, toe pad, and heels.

You can practice some toe & foot agility: try picking up things with your toes - tea towels or clothing. Sounds crazy but it develops the small intrinsic muscles of your feet. 

Also, you can use a tennis ball or massage ball to roll under your arch along the length of your foot to warm up & release tightness in your arch. 

You'll learn other ones in ballet class, but you should be very careful about doing them on your own, because if you do them incorrectly, you'll develop the wrong muscles and muscle memory. And bad habits in ballet can take a long time to correct & re-learn.

It sounds just right - and great music. There's only so much angsty stuff any audience can take!

It would be useful, too, to hear how competitive (or otherwise) these summer schools are for entry. 

Gosh, I always thought the terms modern dance and contemporary dance were interchangeable!  

So did I. I thought that what we call 'contemporary' in the UK is called 'modern' in the US & Australia (other countries where I've lived & danced). 

Contemporary dance covers a lot of different styles & techniques: Graham, Horton, release technique, Cunningham, and so on. But the basic principles are common: working into the floor, working in parallel as well as turned out, a looser use of the back, torso, arms, a much lower centre of gravity, and very few distinctions between what men & women do.

There's a lot more theory to it, but learning the very specific combination of  freedom and control in contemporary wouldn't be a bad thing for a young dance student, I'd have thought. There's no need for an age-appropriate  basic contemporary class to introduce psychologically challenging themes or material. Crikey if my contemporary classes started to do that, you wouldn't see me for dust! I don't dance for psychotherapy! (although dance class has the side effect of improving my well-being  ).

The other thing I see in class with professional dancers in class, or my teachers, is that they really peel through the foot, both peeling the foot off the floor to go up, and working through from the toes to heels when landing. They have really really flexible feet. 

I'm coming to think that flexibility in the feet & ankles is actually more important that flexibility in extensions. So much comes from working the feet. 

I'm not a natural jumper, but when I really focus on peeling my feet off the floor, I get nods from my teachers.

  

Her natural standing position is first position, so that would be the most comfortable for her, I think, rather than feet facing forward and parallel.

Just a little point of caution here: it's really important that ballet students work in parallel position, knees under hips and middle of the foot aligned under the knee, to balance all the work in turn out.

I've been told by a physiotherapist that it's especially important when doing things like running & walking. Apparently, dancers can be injured from turning out too much in everyday life! 

Yes, fair cop - it is a sweeping statement!   But one which I'd argue is still mostly accurate. 

Competitions do give young students the opportunity to learn about performing to an audience, and can be valuable for learning stagecraft. But I think the demands of competitions as things in themselves, or on their own terms, are very different from theatrical concert dance (ballet or contemporary) in the industry. Even the competition ballet solo is quite an artificial thing, although there's a huge gain in learning the technique require for the standard solos (Kitri, named Fairies from Sleeping Beauty, and so on). 

That's why I think it's so very important for aspiring dancers to see as much dance as they can - to see the variety and creativity of our contemporary choreographers. 

But that's competition/Eistedfodd stuff, which is unfortunately so far from the real art form in performance that it's sad the general public see it as representative of dance in any form.

Have a look at the work of Mark Morris, anything done by Nederlands Dans, Christopher Bruce, Rambert, Martha Graham, Pina Bausch, Bill Forsythe ... any of the great modern choroegraphers, really. THAT is contemporary dance. Not the "lyrical" competition stuff. 

Buses are very very much improved nowadays. They announce the stops and you can cross reference with a map app which shows your location as you travel along the road.

Good luck to you both!

Congratulations! Oh to be 8 again - you've relived that experience 

The differences between RAD and Cecchetti are minor, and are about different syllabi for graded training & exams. There are some differences in terminology (names of the arm positions are different for example), and there's the lovely arm position a la the Eros statue in Piccadilly Circus, which I never see in other syllabi, in the Cecchetti set 2nd port de bras.

But I wouldn't get too hung up on the difference in an open ballet class. 

No, PGCEs (or indeed any specific qualification) are not required for appointment to a post in an independent school. And are not required in academies (which are State-funded). That said, the better independent schools often have very highly qualified teachers - with PHDs in their subjects - and can afford to bring in industry experts for creative & performing arts subjects. 

Caveat emptor, I suppose. Although not possible so much within the state-funded system ...