thewinelake

Mmmm. Well, DD's teacher used to have a pianist (by curious coincidence, it was the same one that played for the exam in the OP) and I really don't think she'd have had the wherewithall to buy her own piano, but maybe she did. However, I'm in full agreement that it's a luxury - and if you can afford it/have pianists in the area prepared to do it (I think some don't charge MU rates if they're just learning) then lucky students! So you ideally need not only a good pianist, but a strong one ;-)

I'd have thought many pianists would bring their own electric keyboard with them...

Yes, a professional violinist friend says that he lost out on a position in an orchestra thanks to a poor accompanist. He now takes his own with him - has anyone here done that for a ballet exam? ;-)

DD did her Advanced Foundation exam today. Apparently the pianist made life rather hard, with a slow adage and quite a few errors in the playing. I wonder why they don't just use a recording? Is it exactly so the examiner can see how well the dancer can cope with the unexpected?!

Great thread - brings back a few memories. Nobody's mentioned Alice in Wonderland - there are some great scenes in that - although more wizardry than dance. eg. Alice falling down the rabbit hole, but also the suit-shaped tutus are rather amusing...

Is it true that "most" students who attend the RBS summer schools end up at vocational dance schools?

It's not a public vote, so hopefully that's not so much of an issue That's what I thought. How many active Irish dancers are there compared to Southern Asian (in the UK)

I'd have thought that working in a company would make participation even more tricky. The 19 year old girl was the oldest of the five, right?

Is there a list of vocational ballet schools in the UK ranked in order of perceived prestige?* RBS students aren't allowed to enter Genée etiher, I guess. *Answering my own question, Google points me back here :

Just wondering what the panel made of last night's ballet final? I was really impressed. A tough decision, but no quibble with the judges' choice.

Some MUCH better photos from dress rehearsal here: http://photo.johanneshjorth.se/giselle/

It wasn't there in my day either! Here's a pic - note that they had no wings or curtains, but managed to tape a Harlequin-style floor on top of West Road's normal wood parquet.

Don't suppose anyone else here saw it? Really not a bad effort at all from a bunch of students. Some of the dancers are seriously good and the others put together a credible corps. Hard to believe that some of them hadn't danced before (obviously their moves were restricted to the basics). Given that the workload at Cambridge is high (on account of short terms), I'm struggling to work out how they could have had the required rehearsal time. One slightly annoying thing was that the recorded sound track was a bit distorted at times. I'd have hoped that a music venue such as West Road would have a decent audio system. If all their shows are of this standard, I would recommend them to anyone vaguely near to Cambridge (for future years, obviously).

Not quite sure where to ask this, but our school has recently done a show and would like some advice on how best to disseminate the footage to parents/family/friends. It could be just selling DVDs, or perhaps using a video sharing site in a non-public manner or even a drop-box download of a .IMG DVD file or .MOV files. One thing is that some of the backing tracks will probably have copyright issues (although no Disney or Andew Lloyd Webber!). What do other schools here do?

We once had a very lovely dinner in between acts of Aida - we even negotiated a deal on corkage and took along our own (very superior!) wines. I wonder if they'd still be on for that?

A lot of praise here for Ashley Shaw. How about Cordelia Braithwaite? Not quite in the same league?

Yes, me too! BTW - I think that their website has an issue, as the Fonteyn triple bill was indeed showing on the TV version of the channel.

Just looking on a freeview site that suggests that a channel called London Live is showing some Margot Fonteyn right now, and so does the London Live website itself, yet it's actually showing a Ray Winstone movie - not even close! Anyone know what's going on there?

Same here!

An interesting topic. I guess it would derail things to ask what the classics of the future would be? For me, Wheeldon's works, particularly Alice in Wonderland would have to be there.

Presumably you can download them with iPlayer anyway? Never quite sure on the legitimacy of keeping those recordings (eg. on DVD) compared to using a DVD recorder to record them from the live TV stream.

Goodness - hadn't appreciated how young it was! Maybe this sense of timeless classicity was there from birth! It's a good thing that has been created.

Can't remember that - what was being corrected? Maybe a way to "correct" lack of self-confidence? BTW, why didn't FH learn the steps from another soloist (or did she, in unseen moments)?

Oops! ;-))) Tittering away here...

While on a Frankie Hayworth love-in (must stop nearly writing Howerd!), we were discussing whether we would prefer to see FH as Clara or as SPF, and decided that Clara is in many ways the more significant part in that production....