Kate_N

Oh yes @LinMM - I did Mr Blommaert's Instagram classes during lockdown - he's an excellent teacher for clean strong technique & seems like a very supportive and positive mentor to his young students.

If you're in or near Birmingham, you might consult Annette Nicholson, an ex-Birmingham Royal Ballet soloist, and now a wonderful teacher. She offers, through her studio Nicholson Dance Studio, a dancer screening for those who are aiming for vocational school https://www.nicholsonschoolofdance.com/dancers-screenings I don't know the cost, but you'd get excellent feedback and honest advice. @drdance a member of this forum, might offer a similar assessment, also in the Midlands. MODs: I hope it's OK to link this. I have no interest (financial or otherwise) in this enterprise, although I used to do class fairly regularly with Ms Nicholson when she taught at DanceXchange in central Birmingham, so I have direct personal experience of her positive nurturing approach to dancers of all abilities.

👍 👍

Yes, this is what I find. Because of my age, I'm never going to get terribly much "better" in the showy ways - high extensions, more than double turns etc - but I can keep on learning more & more about ballet generally, and how it works in my body specifically, and I seek out teachers who can give me new ideas and techniques. But as a beginner @Angela Essex you may find that too many different teachers gets confusing!

Totally reiterate Anna's advice here. If you want to progress then you should try to do more than one 1 hour class per week. And I'd recommend group classes. You learn so much from watching other dancers, and hearing their corrections. Also second/third other posters' advice about other forms of training and conditioning. Can you do a Pilates mat class? or yoga, Progressing Ballet Technique (PBT), or any kind of gym training. There's long been a prejudice against gym training, including lifting weights for dancers (especially for girls and women) but more recent and more properly evidenced & tested sports science research suggests that strength training, as well as other agility and conditioning, is great for dancers, if done carefully & properly. If you do social media, you might look at TheBalletStrengthPro on Instagram who works with dancers from training to professional, in strength, plyometrics, and general athletic conditioning. Steady state cardio (ie jogging, cycling, cross-trainer) is OK but your body soon becomes used to it, and you don't get the benefit of mixing up your training.

THat's the key for parents, I should think.

Well, one answer is - Parents should read & consult this message board! But seriously, it is tricky. One would think that the teacher @drdancedescribes would be safe, but as she notes, these teachers can still have unhealthy practices. So many children do ballet & dance as one of their childhood activities, and most parents are not in or from the performing world, and don't have the specific knowledge to judge quality of training. But I'd imagine that most parents of child ballet/dance students would go to watching days or see their children in class somehow, or - as a child gets older & more articulate - talk to them about their teachers, their classes, and what the child is learning? Same as for academic school.

I suppose that making art that lasts and lasts is what might in rational terms, seem "wasteful." But actually, it's absolutely normal that some new work is made, seen, and isn't a "classic." This happens in all art forms. Think of all the operas sunk into oblivion; all the first novels which weren't followed up; all the sketches for paintings; al the new plays which never get a second production.

Can I offer a different perspective from a theatre historian? If you look at the many many playbills advertising ballet as part of the standard night out at the theatre in London from the 1830s onwards (I pick the 1830s because it's when Romantic ballet first takes hold in London) you'll see many many many names of ballets you don't recognise. And throughout the 20th century, it'll be the same. Lots and lots of ballets - one act, 3 act, whatever - are made. Not all of them become classics. There will be "duds" - "wastage" if that's how you want to see it. I personally prefer to regard this as the necessary process to get to the jewels - which often we only recognise in retrospect. This is the way with theatre, with art generally. Go to the Hermitage in St Petersburg - see the rows and rows of Rembrandt's paintings and sketches! So many, and not all of them "masterpieces." And one of our premier national companies should be doing contemporary work - by that I mean, ballets choreographed by live choreographers, whatever the style. Forsythe, Eks et al are leading international choreographers. The Royal Ballet should (I would say, must) work with the best of international live choreographers. That's the status of the company. In addition, dancers are artists. They need to dance and work with live and innovative choreographers, to feed their art and develop it. A career of only the 'white classics' would quickly become soul destroying (I think this was a regular complaint in some former Soviet companies?). Modern ballet dancers have different bodies, and live in a different world from that of the first performances of Giselle, or Swan Lake ... We need to recognise and value this.

Is the issue here that while your lower spine is flexible, your upper spine is not? It's quite normal to have different levels of flexibility in different bits of our bodies. I commiserate - I tend to let my pelvis tip into a lumbar arch - I have various prompts I try to remember to help me maintain a neutral pelvis such as thinking of my pelvis being heavy and dropping straight to the floor. Also thinking of lifting my sternum (breast bone) and opening my upper chest, rather than bending my back. Lifting up, rather than bending back. Hoping ballet teachers here see this and can suggest some proper exercises to help.

Thanks for this. I still remember on the old Ballet Co UK forum receiving a couple of nasty PMs from someone who disagreed with something I’d said in a forum, but who was too cowardly to say it in the open forum of Ballet.Co. I’m sorry to read that people are still doing this.

Indeed. It's a minefield - a huge star who's anti-vaccination, apparently being allowed into a country which has had extremely stringent regulations about entry & vaccination for the last 2 years. But there's money and prestige involved ... and Australia is a sport-mad nation.

Listening to BBC News, it’s clear there is a successful legal argument, but I’d like to know what it is!

@Peanut68Ballet Talk for Dancers have some information about this, plus first hand experiences of auditionees.

It’s just been announced that Djokovic has won his case to be allowed into Australia. I’m quite angry about this - my mother lives in Australia and is now very frail in her 80s. I don’t know if I’ll see her alive again, because of the difficulty of being allowed into Australia over the last couple of years. And an anti- vaccine person (my opinion of such people isn’t polite to mention here) gets his way …. Australians say they’re all for a “fair go” but this isn’t.

And that slow steady honing of perfect technique through very simple training in the early stages is very valued in British dancers around the world.

These classes sound fantastic (do you take lumpy old adults? 🤣 ) But seriously - "Technique Coaching and Polishing" "Hone your ballet technique" "Technique and Strength" If you just have "coaching" it may sound as though these are remedial classes for pupils to catch up, but actually you're aiming for the dance pupils who are already competent, but want to perfect their technique. There's a bit of a "tall poppy syndrome" about naming anything as élite nowadays, isn't there? So it's hard to communicate this, without putting people off. They sound fab classes.

I've done a couple of master classes with two soloists from the Estonian Ballet (one is a UK national) here in the UK. They were lovely teachers, and the class was much much more than your standard technique class. You'd get an interesting insight into Russian practices of ballet training & repertoire, I should think. And Tallinn is a lovely city - well, the old bits anyway (seek out the most amazing local chocolate café in the old town!) - there's also quite a lot of grey concrete Soviet high rise, sadly. And it's an hour or so ferry ride (regular service) to Helsinki, which is one of my favourite cities in the world in the summer.

MODS: I hope it's OK to recommend another ballet messageboard? It's a very good reliable one, but delete this message if it's not . @dancegrad you should read Ballet Talk for Dancers (google & you'll find it). There is a whole section on Summer Intensives, mostly US-based. They are generally for 4 or 5 weeks (as US summer vacations are longer and start earlier than UK summer holidays). Most of the top ones require an audition, which I think are already in full swing. Information about the SIs are arranged in alphabetical order, and there's a requirement that members of the message board (over 10,000) post only first hand information. So you get very reliable reports from dance students, or their parents! And in the Adult Ballet Students section of Ballet Talk for Dancers, you'll find a lot of information about several week-long summer intensives specifically designed for adult dancers, from Advanced Beginner to Advanced. The US "Advanced Beginner" is around the level of Intermediate here in the UK. The Adult dance intensives have tended to disappear in the COVID pandemic, though, so I don't know what's going to happen in 2022. The other way you could do it is to locate a US city you'd like to explore, and check out what adult ballet classes are around, and construct your own "intensive" for a week or so. I'd recommend looking at New York, and checking out teachers at Steps on Broadway, Broadway Dance Centre, and Peridance (the three studios I spend time at when I'm in NYC). Find the teachers whose way of teaching is giving you something new, and you can generally follow them around the city, and you'd get two or three excellent classes per day.

@dancegrad as I understand it from US colleagues, “Balanchine” is more of a style than a specific technique. It’s based on Balanchine’s choreographic preferences for very fast and often syncopated footwork, in the ballets he created for the New York City Ballet. Have a look at Isabella Boylston on Instagram to see her jump very fast! Balanchine’s original training was in Russia, at what is now the Vaganova Institute, so maybe seek out teachers who specifically offer Vaganova teaching? Also, the Balanchine style is generally seen as American, so also seek out American-trained teachers?

Totally agree, @MissEmilyPointe work should come as a “natural” extension of technical proficiency. Like a lot of things in ballet, it’s become a sort of talisman of age or a “right” after a certain length of time of study. Tail wagging the dog sort of thing ….

@CMcBalletthanks for linking us to the IADMS site - I keep forgetting how to get there. They have such good resources, from experts in both human physiology and dance, and that checklist is really helpful. It makes the point that there’s no set or blanket age for starting pointe, although it seems that 12 is the youngest age it should be considered. But more importantly, the checklist focuses on technical (as opposed to physiological) readiness - being able to hold turn out, alignment, strength, and basic flexibility etc. I wince when I see some children on pointe (and that’s before I have to look away from adults on pointe who shouldn’t be) - not able to straighten their knees or hold their turnout on Demi pointe, and worse on pointe. Delaying starting pointe really doesn’t hold a dancer back in technical terms - indeed it probably means that when a young girl does go up, she’s stronger and more capable and catches up quickly. Our US-based “sister site” has a really interesting series of pinned posts by truly expert teachers, “The facts of life about pointe” and they’re really clear that pointe isn’t for everyone. This might be a useful link to send to your friend, @Millicent It’s quite similar in spirit to the link to Lisa Howell, and the IADMS paper - so there seems to be a consensus, which might reassure your friend ( or make her anxious - eek) The author is an ex-professional soloist with American Ballet Theatre, and has just retired as a master teacher (I think she helps judge Youth America Grand Prix and other international competitions still) https://dancers.invisionzone.com/topic/7125-facts-of-life-about-pointe-work/ her third point is probably the kind of guideline/rule of thumb which would be useful for your friend: 3. In a properly graded school with teachers who know what they are doing, students who have the potential to progress to the pointe level will be encouraged into at least 3 one hour and a half classes a week by the time they reach the age of 10 or 11 and have had 2 to 4 years of training. Pointe work would begin for these students as they arrive at the age of 12 or older and have at least 3 years of training.

The Stadttheater I know best (in NRW) has steadfastly remained open (it serves two cities so there's extra pressure), although the ballets are special distanced choreographies, made over the last 18 months by the Direktor. They are hanging in there, although the person I know who's in management there says there are issues with some dancers refusing vaccinations, or mask-wearing, and also about UK-based dancers and singers going home in the New Year, given that there's a 14 day quarantine coming back to Germany from the UK. However, apparently the opera singers have thrived in the masked, distanced conditions - hardly any of the usual colds coughs etc over the last 18 months. Long may wearing masks and keeping away from people if you have any sort of cold last!

Happy birthday and HUGE thanks to the founders and moderators here. I first joined ballet.co.uk and found a lovely community. You’ve all sustained and nurtured that for us all. the internet is largely full of trash, but this is a wonderful friendly, hugely knowledgeable corner that is definitely not rubbish 😍

Totally agree with your posts, @CMcBallet - the emphasis on a graded exam syllabus is out of kilter with the actual profession. Most conservatoires use their own training methods. Although there are stylistic differences between national systems of training (Russian, British, and French) which you can see in dancers in class. The one I notice most is anyone trained in the formal Vaganova system (and this training got my pro dancer relative her first full time company place). We know that the Royal Ballet has a different style to, say, the Mariinsky. But all dancers should be able to do whatever choreographers ask for. (And at a much much much lower level, I know when I’ve taken class in America, I’m easily picked by teachers as “English trained.” ) For teachers without reasonable professional experience as performers, there is a tendency for various named syllabi to take over - tail wagging the dog, so to speak. And I suppose it’s a way of reassuring parents who know nothing about dance, that their children are progressing and are assessed to a set of fixed criteria at a national level. However, ballet training in the USA for example, focus on exams and set syllabi is far less common. But back to @Arielle’s question - if you have the time (and the cash!) it seems sensible to do both together. When I was in syllabus classes, it was quite normal to do vocational and graded classes side by side. Go for it! Each set of tasks will give you different skills. But no dance director in the performance bit of the profession will care about paper qualifications; you’ll be auditioning on the strength of your dancing. However, if you want to teach, it can be useful to have this inside knowledge of preparing for and taking these exams.