Zacharovitti

Wow balletqueen! fantastic news and huge congratulations to your DD! We have been told only 3-4 children will go to finals for Y8 so you must be VERY proud of her! Good luck for finals!

Jade, so sorry for your DD, but happy she enjoyed the experience. It's so difficult to get in...I hope she will soon move on. Belljul, ZooZoo and all the others, thank you for posting your positive experiences! They are as precious as the negative ones: living overseas it is very difficult for us to have a clear feeling of how things are going on at RBS (and at Uk vocational schools in general), as we can't attend open days, events etc. and do not have any contact with parents having children there. So thank you so much!

Yes lindsay I apologize as my information were not up to date. The last news I had about him were that he was in a small company, but now I have seen he is at ABT studio company, that is a great achievement! I am very happy for him as he surely deserves it!

Exactly Taxi! That's what I was trying to say!

I definitely think the auditions are authentic. Do you think all the people involved from RBS like to spend days, including sundays, to see hundreds of children for nothing? You can argue that the whole process is a making money system: yes it might be but, as they ask you the audition fee at the very moment you send your application form, they could make a pre-selection on the photos you have to send, if they really don't want to look at every child. In that case they could receive all the audition fees and spend less days auditioning. I don't thinl this is the case. I believe they want to look at everyone, because they can spot in the middle of a moltitude someone that catch their attention for whatever reason. It could be for physique, facilities, a particular way of standing, looking, performing, smiling, moving, acting or whatever else. I think is totally useless to try to understand what they are looking for or how the whole process works, as maybe there is not a rule or a unique answer. The panel is not always the same and is made by human beings: they of course have to search for some necessary standards such as physique, facilities ecc., but for the rest.....it is a sort of falling in love with someone....you cannot explain why X and not Y.....and there are no rules on it.

This is a very interesting thread, as I have been thinking to this question since my DD decided to ride the rollercoaster. She is only 12 and I am full of doubts on what I should do with her: I want to support her passion until she has it, but on the other hand I am afraid to limit her future possibilities. I mean: after many years of vocational school, are the DC able to see and appreciate all the other routes life can offer them? Being isolated, even in a golden cage such as RBS, sharing their everyday life for many years with people (peers, teachers, parents) all oriented towards the same unique goal, does allow them to make actually an informed choice? Can a 14, 16, 18 years old girl that has spent her life between that walls be aware of what life could be outside her school and/or beyond dancing? The dancer 2dancersmum was referring to thought he wasn't good at anything else: how could he know it? Hope you understand what I mean

I have to agree with Irishballetmum re the audition: it was a great experience for my DD. She woke up a bit nervous and she was scared not to understand the teacher because of the language, but when we arrived the RBS staff was very friendly and welcoming and the fear disappeared. We didn't see any competitive behaviour during warm up and among the parents. She came out smiling and she said "I have done my best and I won't have anything to regret, whatever the outcome". It has been a pleasure to meet you Irishballetmum! Thank you for your lovely words about my DD. I am sure our daughters encouraged each other, as they were both the newbies coming from abroad! I wish everybody auditioning the best of luck

Thank you all for your support and for your kind words. Yes, I'm sure these are typical dance mum moments!! And yes, I feel guilty every day with my other children, because my DD life is very demanding also for them....I have 4 children, one older than her and two younger: almost every day my DD ballet lessons finish late in the evening and I am with her in the car while they are going to bed, with the elder brother that reads them a story instead of me!

Sorry! Forgot to say well done to your and Piccolo DDs! Now fingers crossed for them!

Happymum, don't worry to look like a drama queen........I have done better than you! My DD has her audition next sunday and we are flying to London on friday: in the last two nights I couldn't sleep, being sure that we are both going to die in a plane crash or terrorist attack and that I am going to leave alone my other children.....every morning I wake up thinking "maybe we shouldn't go, maybe it isn't worthwhile...."!!!!!

Oh! I hope everything will be fine tomorrow for you! Have a safe drive and good luck to your DD!

I have been reading this thread with great interest, living in a country that has always had the syndrom of "Uk (and almost the rest of Europeans) do it better". I am glad to see that issues are exactly the same. Some posters here were worried about UK training system being slower than in other countries: I wouldn't, as for what I know, it is the same at other serious vocational school (POB, Accademia alla Scala), where entering children are taken back to basics. Don't be impressed of what you watch on You tube! A few years ago, in my DDs ballet school, there was an exceptional very talented child, he was American, living in Italy for a while for his parents jobs; seeing his potential, parents decided he would have left academic school (he was 8 or 9 at that time) for home-schooling and he would have been trained privately by our ballet school director (a former POB etoile), many hours a day, every day. He partecipated to all the best competitions of the world, YAGP, Varna, Lausanne, and won everything. First prizes everywhere, special awards, scholarships in almost every big academy of the world......He refused a place at RBS, POB, ABT and many others as he was too advanced for his age and entering in the appropriate age group would have meant to go back. Then he went back to USA and, for what I know, he went on training privately. Now is working as professional dancer in a small company in the States. This to say that the expectations for this talented child were much more then this: everybody of us thought he would have been an etoile in a big company....He burned out. His advanced stage at young age, didn't allow him to enter in a big vocational school at the proper time. His phenomenal progress that wondered all of us when he was a little child (triple pirouettes at 6, etc), had a stop along the way. At 16, 17 he was no more the phenomen he was at 8. Others caught up. Re the issue of academics. In Italy we do not have any vocational school that provides for academics. That means that children have to manage between a very demanding academic school (this is one of the few fields we are very proud of: our school preparation is considered by US and UK universities to be one of the best, according to their reports), many ballet lessons (often in different ballet schools to provide a sufficient amount of hours of good training) and lots of school work to do at home. Every DC has to struggle with this life since they are very young, if they seriously want to become dancers. Nevertheless, the most of the parents (with rare exceptions in the lowest class), will never allow them to leave the school till the State Examination at the age of 18, corresponding to your A levels. That means that yes, they might be behind their international peers who have spent all their life only dancing, but I think they won't be in the long run, at least it will never happen to the exceptional talents: exceptional talents are not only the most talented in dancing, but people with a strong personality, an interior flame, that allows them to deal with everything and leads them to the top, whatever hard it might be. And I truly believe that part of this excellence is built with the "culture". I believe that an exceptional artist, including a dancer, needs to be a cultured person to develop that sensitivity and depth of feeling that allow him to be a real artist. Hours of pure ballet training, specific gymnastic for flexibility etc, can produce perfect tecnique and outstanding dancers, but artists are more then this. Perfect for corps de ballet, not etoiles. Nureyev, just to name a worldwide known artist, was a very cultured person: he read hundreds of books, he nurtured lots of interests beyond ballet, he could keep any conversation of any kind giving an interesting and informed contribution. He became a mith not only for his dancing qualities (that could even be considered not so exceptional nowdays!) but for the person he was, in the whole sense. Could a very talented ballet student dance "Romeo and Juliet" with no awareness of Shakespeare's importance and meaning in history and English literature? Yes he/she can study every step, watch every video of the former etoiles who danced it, remind every movement and expression....it will be a copy. He/she will be another perfect executor. He/she needs to "BE" Romeo/Juliet, he/she needs to feel them in a way that only a nurtured education allows. Maturity, awareness, personality, are reached with a long process of education, where every single academic subject gives its contribution, as well as a very good ballet training. I want to believe that, in the long run, dancers who have fed their physic with hard training, their mind with a well rounded education, their soul with passion, curiosity, capacity of "feeling" the world and human beings, will be the ones that could comunicate something different to the audience, that goes beyond the perfect tecnique. I want to believe in a future where reaching excellence in dance it is not translated in a rush to have chldren able to do 32 fouettes on pointe at 9 years old or a full variation at 13, but in an everyday grow of the dancer as an athlet, a special gifted human being, an artist. And I want to believe that these will be the ones who will go down to history. Re-reading this post, I'm aware there are a lot of grammar mistakes, but I hope something I said make sense!

Re medical certificate and insurance it's right. When we applied (january 2013) we made a lot of mistakes, due to our poor experience in the whole process. We knew of the summer school just ten days before the application closing date, so we managed to make an orrible "homemade" dvd video in one afternoon, with no preparation of exercises, music ecc. It was really awful! Today I would never send a dvd like tthat, so no surprise when we received the "no" letter! At that time we had to send the dvd by post (no you tube), I don't know if things have changed now. What I can suggest is to choose carefully the exercises that show better your DDs quality, prepare the video with no rush, even in different sessions, make sure the result is the best you could do and then send it! Then yes, we'll be in the same rbs audition day, we could meet up. It shouldn't difficult for all of you to find us: I think my DD and me will be the only Italian speaking there! Though we are both blond, blue-eyed, tall and very slim, so not the typical Italian body shape!!

My DD applied last year. As for medical certificate it is just a declaration of your DDs doctor that she has no phisical problem to practice. As for insurance, I asked them and was told that I had to send a few words on a simple paper where I agreed to subscribe an insurance ONLY in case of my DDs acceptance to the school. Hope it helps! Good luck!

My DD is auditioning in London for y8. Good luck happymum and anyone else auditioning in the next weeks!

Going back to the original topic: the RBS finally replied to my email. They said the audition will be on 18th at 11.30 a.m., with a short talk before it; everybody can leave after the class, as results will be send by email. Did anyone else received it? Flora11?

LinMM and Aileen thank you so much for your lovely messages!! I am very happy to receive this kind of advise as I know London more as a tourist than as an "insider", though I have spent 4 months of my life there when I was young......but it was more than 20 years ago!! I know Chelsea and Kensington have become unaffordable places! My friend's mother is from London, she married an Italian man 50 years ago and moved to Rome, but she still had her old mother living in their home in Kings Road till last year, when she died at the incredible age of 101 years!!! Now she knows what kind of fortune she has to own an apartment there, so she is trying to maintain it renting it to friends and relatives!.....so yes, I am very lucky! She loves Peter Jones too!! I hope to have enough time for everything, as my DD has never been in London before and she has a huge list of places she would like to visit....but we have just two days! (And an audition in between....!!)

Yes it is LinMM!

Billyelliott, thank you for your kind advise! Fortunately a friend of mine can rent me her mother's home for that weekend at a low price! It is in King's Road that it's not so far from Covent Garden with the tube, is it? So I definitely will stay 2 nights!

Yes Invisiblecircus, it's really a shame we don't have many options here in Italy! We are not applying anywhere else here because, as you probably know, the Accademia teatro alla Scala is not a boarding school and of course my 11 years old DD can't live by her own in Milan (we live in Rome)! As for Rome, she is attending a very good private ballet school, whose director is a former POB etoile; he is my aunt's husband so I believe in his advise and he himself suggested us to try abroad, as here the only chance for her would be the teatro dell'opera di Roma, but he doesn't trust too much in their training system...Re the teacher's training course at accademia teatro alla scala, I can't help you...I don't know if you are a former dancer, if so, it is enough to teach in a private school in Italy; if you are moving back to UK, maybe you know better than me if a certificate from the Scala is a "plus" in your country or not!

Invisiblecircus (I love your name!) thank you for your helpful advise and many congratulations for the new born! I emailed to the school two days ago but they didn't reply.... As I see you live in Milan, do you have a DD attending a ballet school there? Crepi il lupo!

That's a wonderful news! Maybe we could meet up and share our anxiety! We are not expecting that much, we know competition is fierce and places are very few, if not none. But I think it can be a good educational experience for DD, independently from results. At least, it is a fantastic opportunity for her to spend two days alone with her mum (I have 4 children and few time to dedicate exclusively to each of them) in London (it will be the first time for her)!!! Good luck to your DD too!

Oh godness!!! Thank you for telling flora11!

Thank you so much along for the ride mum....wow! Snowfall...I didn't think at this possibility at all! Thank you for reminding me...maybe I should book a hotel close to Richmond park?!

Hy everybody, I need your precious help please!! My DD applied for full time training audition at White Lodge for year 8. In the application form we asked for London venue, so I suppose the audition date will be the 18th of january, according to their website. Once I sent the application, I received a confirmation email saying that further information will be send two weeks prior the audition. As we are travelling from Italy, we need to book international flights and I'm afraid that a last minute booking can be much more expensive. So I would like to know from someone who auditioned in the past: do I have to arrive in London the day before? What about departure (from London)? When do auditions finish? Do I have to stay overnight on the 18th as well? Thanks for helping!....You all know that this will not be the first and last question, don't you?!!!