annaliesey

Probably a bit of a diversion, a friend of mine had a daughter at a dance school where the teacher used to take money for exams which never happened. She used to say that the exam board had no availability , but according to DDs teacher at the time she would send in 4 possible dates and be given one. The thing that most concerned more was the teacher taking money from trusting parents on their children's behalf and then no exams. My friend eventually got wise to it when she rang the board directly when some exams had actually happened, and no results received. The board had received no payment hence withholding the results, Thankfully my friend moved her daughter soon after. Don't know how people can do this, thankfully the school is now closed.

That's awful! How trusting we all are

The thing I'm not getting in all of this is where parents are parking their common sense when this sort of stuff happens.

 

If their child was being hit by a teacher in a maths class, or yelled at, intimidated, or ridiculed in front of the other children by the history teacher, that parent would be down at the school at the speed of light, demanding an explanation and a change of attitude if the school didn't want to be reported to the authorities. Why, all of a sudden, does this sort of behaviour become acceptable during a dance class? If it's bad teaching practice, it's bad teaching practice regardless of the subject being taught. A child is going to react badly to being physically or mentally hurt by a teacher and isn't going to do well at school - this doesn't somehow magically change when it's dance being taught rather than geography.

Hmmm I don't know where I parked my common sense quite honestly!

I've been over this in my head so many times and feel so guilty, I just don't know what I was thinking. 

All I will say is it was a build up of things before the penny finally dropped with me. Daft I know but I'm not to ashamed to admit it.  My dd had been dancing with this teacher since age 3 and I had never had any reason to suspect dubious practises. Yes she had a bit of a ballet m'am image going on sometimes with the kids. I honestly thought my dd and her had a little bit of a special bond, just from her being a student from a young age and they just seemed to get on in a really lovely way.  

When I collected her on the day that she had been hit hard enough to leave a mark and she was in tears she refused point blank to tell me what had happened until later in the evening at home when she had calmed down and could get her words out properly.  She was so desperately worried and was crying with her main concern being that I would react in a way that would "take her ballet away from her" and she made me promise that I wouldn't do that before she told me what happened.  I kept my promise but spoke (very angrily) with the teacher (also the principle) and made sure I stayed at the studio all the time and just got closer to her classes and what was being said and how the classes were being run and everyone's behaviour. The teacher basically just said she was sorry and that she had not meant to smack her as hard as she had. She looked embarrassed and I believed that it was a moment of madness that was out of character and that after 8 years with her it was just one mistake. However as I got closer to things I realised the extent of the other behaviour that I regarded as bullying ... threatening consequences, name calling, putting her down and singling her out not just dance stuff but personal stuff like who she fancied for a boyfriend and comments on her make up, ridiculing lots of children, favouritsm and inconsistent treatment, belittling. The worst part was making her feel that she was stupid. That's left the biggest mark!  And, then there was the whole over-stretching / over-training, no-pain-no-gain mentality that came with the growing profile of the competition team and people wanting to make it onto the team and just a real hunger for tricks, flexibility and acrobatics on the part of the kids, parents and teachers. 

I just snapped one day the following term when I witnessed an incident where my dd was made to feel that she had made a stupid mistake over something when she hadn't, excluded from a group, threatened with consequences in front of her peers in an embarrassing and belittling way and I just reflected back on everything. It escalated into a row with the principle and we left and never looked back. My dd was initially heartbroken to leave her friends and the competition team, but she actually wanted to leave and "get better training and be treated normally by a nice teachers". 

I had said to her previously (when the main smacking incident happened) about other teachers in the area, other options for competition work such as independent entries, and she must have been thinking about this as ultimately it was her decision for her to say to me "can I leave please and go to X teacher". She just wanted to know that if I took her away her there were other choices for her to continue with her ballet and dance. Luckily she had already had some lessons with this other teacher and dance school and was quite in love with the idea of dancing with her instead. 

I honestly think I am not the only parent who would have parked their common sense somewhere strange for a while given the background and circumstances. It's surprising how you can find yourself in a situation and not really know how you got there and what to do about it!

Please anyone reading this post, just take my advice and talk with your dancing children about the stuff that goes on in classes that you might otherwise not get to hear about. It's only by asking questions sometimes that these things come out. Otherwise there's a tendency for lots of kids and parents to go along with things and keep quiet thinking "this is the dance world". 

I couldn't agree more. The ISTD and RAD (and I'm sure other organisations do too as I have lectured for a BBO school and BTDA college) now require teachers to STUDY anatomy and safe dance practice but I don't know if there is anything in their code of practice regarding unsafe practice. The RAD run a safe dance teaching CPD course I think, too.

But there such big gaps with parents thinking the RAD professional membership means their children are properly safeguarded. I haven't looked at ISTD so much but from what I understand the RAD do not require teachers to submit a copy of their safeguarding policy to them. I've been asking around and it seems quite a lot of RAD teachers don't have safeguarding policies in place.

When I read through the RAD safeguarding policies from their website a) I didn't know if it related to their in house faculty only or whether it referred to professional members and it had rules for things such as students not travelling with teachers without appropriate insurance but had little by way of the anti no pain no gain ethos that I remember.

I'd like to see things included more specifically with regards to overtraining, types of physical and emotional abuse, best practise such as allowing parents to view or access classes, private lessons with another adult present with DBS, and some other good practises as at least then a parent can familiarise themselves with it if they wished

I'm just sitting here thinking that this kind of topic has come up quite a bit on this forum. I wonder if we can put our heads together and come up with some kind of campaign either to build awareness, educate, lobby for RAD & ISTD and similar to have a whistleblowing opportunity or something like that. 

What was difficult for me was that RAD for example wanted a lot of personal information from me that in all honesty I wasn't prepared to give because I genuinely feared for consequences for myself and my child.

Another thing that occurs to me especially with the initial topic of this thread about being specific to exercise and stretching regimes is to get some of the professional bodies on board a lot more than they seem to be either by introducing a code of conduct or something like that.

Big hug to you Muddledmama, your dd is doing amazingly well at her new dance school and is indeed like a different child :-)

Thanks for keeping me sane all these past few months xxx 

...and because they do get good exam and competition results ...

Sorry but I had to pick up on this.

Firstly who says their exam results are good? Do they publish all their results for all children? Is there info complete and factual? Does it take into account the amount of hours or private lessons? And, exam success in itself doesn't foster creativity or confidence. 

Same goes for competitions. It's all subjective on the part of adjudicators and at the end of the day they still have to get into college or vocational school and there's a real risk they won't make it that far if they are injured or their spirit is crushed. 

The head of a leading dance casting agency who teaches at Pineapple said to me just last week that he was concerned about the levels some children were dancing at. His point was about them being in their careers for the long term and not being burned out before they had even started. 

I do agree that exams and competitions can both be good measures of success but not exclusively and not with the amount of pressure, bitching, manipulation etc that all goes with it. I wish more parents would put this in context of the the whole picture. 

Myself and my partner are conflicted at times re the teaching style of some schools. We dont want our daughter being taught unsafe practice and age innapropriate dances but we dont have a huge range of schools to choose from in terms of travel etc. The school she attended previously is one of the best around in terms of teaching standard but their practice is not unlike the poster that you mentioned Dr Dance. We felt that we couldnt continue to let our daughter be screamed at, ridiculed and effectively bullied how ever good the standard of teaching. I am still in touch with a few parents there and they are well aware of this behaviour but they choose to ignore it, defend it or tolerate it all in the name of good standards. If you complain or challenge you are seen as being a difficult parent and then ultimately it is then taken out on your child. The bullying behaviour of the other children is ignored and again any complaint and you are labelled as jealous because they are better dancers than your child. It can be quite nasty in the world of dance.  I love the fact that my daughter dances and want her to continue but in all honesty I am very dissapointed in the dance world. Someone please cheer me up lol and tell me that it isnt all like that and that there are good schools out there.

Oh gosh I could have written this myself word for word except for the bit about "the school she attended previously is one of the best around". At the time I thought it was from professional memberships RAD, ISTD etc but it was only when we started to go to other places and make a wider group of friends in the dance world that actually they weren't one of the best, we just thought they were. 

I completely get you when you say about other parents being defensive. I was screamed at by a couple of parents down the phone not that long ago because the school was investigated for smacking, the dance teacher called a meeting with some parents, who then put 2+2 together and assumed it was me (actually it was a different parent that reported) but I had also disclosed partial info to an organisation that were duty bound to take out of my hands.. The dance teacher admitted the smacking it to social services but said it was only once and not hard and that I and another parent were just an ex-parents causing trouble. I still haven't disclosed full facts as the case was automatically closed after social services phone call to the dance teacher.  Anyway, the point I'm making is that there are other parents still at the dance school who are well aware of the smacking and are OK with it. The reason for screaming at me was to make it known to me that I should back off from ruining this persons livelihood and upsetting the status quo for their children. 

Bit rubbish really but I did back off ages ago. I just saddens me when you read a headline, social media quip or comment, or see a poster being shared with an accompanying remark such as "parents be warned" you just think of the environment they must be in. 

As you say joyofdance anything another parent says is just defended with the jealousy, or taken out on the dancing child.

But despite all this I would try and cheer you up by saying it's not nasty in the dance world. Those nasty people from my experiences make up probably less than 5% of the dancing people I come into contact with. I would actually say the more mature the dancing child becomes (age/serious/wider network etc) the more they come across some absolutely lovely supportive dancing friends, parents, teachers and choreographers   

chin up xxx

Drdance please PM me a link and I for one will happily phone RAD and ISTD as I'm sick to death of this bull**** no-pain-no-gain ethos.

My DD and friends used to do a stretch class and literally cry puddles of tears in pain seeing who could get the biggest puddle ... Not something I knew about for quite a while. All of this from an unqualified teacher's boot camp / military style workout.

Some of you will remember my 'smacking' thread and I'm still so cross at all of that period of time and its consequences.

I just had a massive rant on fb myself yesterday about some parent-bashing posters that are popular for dance teachers to share

Our kids work so hard, they really don't need this rubbish

[Edited by Mod - inserted ****]

You can do so much with home made soups too. Especially if you look out for vegetables that are in the reduced shelf where the sell by date is soon/same day. You can cook, add a tin of chopped tomatoes, some other frozen veg then blend in a blender and freeze into portions.

If you have some space you could even think about growing your own vegetables such as carrots

Good luck

 

..... She hates hairspray, so I don't use that except for exams / shows, though she will tolerate a bit of spray-in conditioner which makes it a bit less wispy.

DD not too keen on hairspray for ballet buns as it just makes her hair go hard but somehow bits still escape.

She prefers hair wax and wets her hands then rubs a dollop into her hands and smoothes it in and it does seem to work better than hairspray

She also sprays deodorant around her forehead and neck to stop her sweating in those areas

For the perfect cinnamon bun: put the hair in a nice high, right smooth ponytail. Split the hair in the ponytail into two. Twist one piece and as you twist, start wrapping it round the hair elastic holding your ponytail. As you wrap, pin it down tight and flat. Keep going until that piece is all pinned in. Repeat with the second piece of hair but obviously now wrapping around the first. It should create a flat, spiral effect bun. Add a bun net and hopefully it should look good!

!

I'm laughing at this because my DD does a version of this but calls it a "dog poo bun"

Sorry to hear the feedback was delivered the way it was seems odd that it was so contrasting to what you had heard from dance school though. But in any event, tact and sensitivity costs nothing

my DD at age 10 sobbed after auditions for Tring classical course as the girls she knew who got offered places alongside the people she watched on the day, she seemed to recognise herself that her body wasn't like theirs in various ways. She just knew without anyone saying anything. I couldn't relate to it as saw, with my untrained eye, that other people (who I thought had similar body type to her) would have had places if funding wasn't an issue.

She was pretty sad when she realised this but two years later she is still loving her ballet more than ever and just wants to be the best she can be.

She's had a big growth spurt since then and her body looks very different now although still quite slim/athletic rather than slim/long and wirey (if that makes sense)

There a good thread on here that's just recently been bumped called "where does it all lead?" And for me the responses on that thread helped us enormously put into context of vocational ballet schools being just one route to employment

Good luck and hope you can get some specifics as has been suggested

12 month suspended sentence not much of a deterrent to others though

Thanks for the feedback, I'm guessing the level of classes is similar for Pineapple?

We haven't done Danceworks so can't comment there but all the 'elementary' at Pineapple has been fine for 11/12yo working at grades 4+ or intermediate foundation / intermediate.

We were there one time when a 9yo was in there and his mum said he had only gone into RAD grade 3 and not in the vocational grades yet. She asked the tutor (Adam Pudney) if he could join in and he was allowed and they even lowered a barre especially! I know several girls that do those classes on Saturdays in between the tumbling classes that are on that are only working at grade 3/4 and IF

But the best thing really is to go and watch a class beforehand if you can and ask the tutor. Even if they don't do the ballet there are some other child friendly classes on ie; Lil J's commercial street class is popular

Sascis good luck and enjoy the journey

Ignore the Mumma-drama (there's always some that have to be "the best" and it never helps to get caught up in this haha)

Quite often people pick a school because the class is local / convenient / has parking or whatever but even from an early age I would encourage you to pay attention to the qualifications and professional experience and the teaching styles and as Primrose says, if it's not right, then move on maybe listen out for conversations of how happy the older dancers are.

Just a tip about this age and classes after school .. Sometimes it helps to go straight to class after school so they don't come home and then get nervous or tired or distracted. My DD at this age loved her ballet but if we went home first sometimes it would be a struggle to get her out of the house on time as she would be playing with polly pockets and want to do it all with no concept of time (she's the same now at 12 but distracted by make up or her phone haha)

Have fun

In vocational school your daily class is with your academic year group, regardless if you are an early bloomer who has already gone through the awkward growth spurt stage or a late developer who only started ballet a few years previously.

 

I've got mixed feelings about it. My dd is one of the oldest in her year but is also one of the later developers. I often feel she would fit in more technique wise with the year below & indeed she is mostly with the year below for the two RAD classes per week that are vertically streamed. This is a double edged sword. She got The hint highest mark I think in that group for her recent exam which gave he confidence but it has been hard seeing most of the rest of her year group in the higher grade.

Is your DD able to overlap her graded RAD classes? This is something my DD has been doing recently with G4&5 and her teacher seems to think it's really helping

I think you misunderstand analiesy. For one thing we arnt just talking about height we are talking overall physical development & I don't think hairBelles means local schools.

 

Local dance schools in fact are mostly streamed in that all the grade 1s, 2,s 5,s etc take class together. There is often a mixture of ages in each grade within a certain parameter of course, no one wants a teen in primary ballet. You move up into the next grade when you are ready & you are likely to be in a higher grade if you've been doing ballet for several years than if you've just started.

 

.

Ok thanks for clarifying I've seen girls put in classes above their peer group without any ballet experience purely because "they have had a growth spurt" or seem to be mentally more mature and to be honest it upsets people as it just slowed so many others down

Just going off topic, I think the everyday ballet in particular the school my dd attended should be streamed to take in account of physical and mental development it would also stop some unfavourable comparisons between the year groups .

Do you mean local dance school ballet? If so I'm afraid I would not want this as i feel that some teachers would use this to play favourites and play games.

My DD is short for her age but danced rings around some taller girls her age and older. We've left that dance school now but I know for certain that my DD would have been discriminated against big time.

it would not have been fair to her or others for other taller girls to get special treatment and be invited into classes ahead of her simply because they are taller. In our case they took less classes, were less hard working, slowed others down, and just generally didn't have much commitment about them. Why should that be rewarded? Sorry but for 'every day ballet' I pay a fee for training and tuition which is the same as what everyone else pays and I expect the same service

I agree with your sweeping statement Kate_N but that's purely based on my personal experience of comps and festivals. I'm sure other experiences might be different and there probably is some great contemporary out there but unfortunately the style I've seen so far has been pretty much with a point scoring emphasis rather than purely with art in mind. It usually tends to lean towards lyrical or modern too.

I really enjoyed watching bbc's young dancer of the year last year with the contemporary contenders as it gave an insight into the choreography and movement.

My DD has also learned more about communicating with audience and performing from comps but I personally I think that's completely different to some of the contemporary development areas, things like working in parallel, use of breath, even eye line, etc .. In fact, she actually had to reverse some of the performance stuff she had learned from doing comps and go back to basics. That's the stuff she's really learned most valuably this year.

The last piece I watched that she was in was about caves so not doom and gloom but just quirky. I'd too like to see more of this than the dark and heavy stuff

Awww what a shame for her

Yeah the whole ribbon thing was a bit confusing. Apparently dd's teacher said she thought she may need them but would check and come back to us. This conversation was with directly between DD and teacher and both promptly forgot!

3 other girls in the exam session made sure they had ribbons then right at the last min teacher phoned to say DD prob would want them so she wouldn't look like odd one out in the session but she wouldn't be penalised if she didn't have them.

But her canvass flats did look a bit scruffy as in not very new and clean looking. I just thought ribbons with them would look very odd. I've never seen anyone wear ribbons with canvass shoes

I guess it's worth knowing the right answer for anyone else caught out by this

Teacher doesn't think she will get marked down for wrong side as says they are looking at pirouettes .. Is she just being kind and optimistic?

For festivals and smaller comps it's usually around £5-7 per dancer per entry but spectators pay extra so that bumps things up

Costumes probably around £20-£70 on average (excluding any tutus)

Starpower, Destination Dance are more at around £30 per entry but you get video critiques with SP

Thank you all ???? When you're feeling like you're gonna have a stressy time there's always balletco friends

Unfortunately she had a complete brain fart moment and did an exercise completely on the other side. It was the pirouettes one and after taking one step she realised immediately but carried on with a smile regardless (oops)

Apart from that she seemed quite happy

Well we got here, got ribbons on and she's gone in!

Bus wasn't that bad, the only tricky bit was finding bus stop G at Victoria and I loved using the maps to follow my bus on gprs how times change hehe

Thanks so much everyone

Yes it's interfoundation exam

She definitely wants to not be the odd one out today and has pleaded with me to get her split sole satin, even as early birthday pressie, just to look nice for today. She usually dances in a school hall so I anticipate the average life of new satin shoes before big toe makes an appearance to be approximately 4 classes if I'm lucky

Ok might get tube to Victoria although I'm happier with tube changes. It's a bit physiological really as I think when you are underground you don't question where you are going and just follow the stops.

But overground there's the temptation to look about and start questioning haha