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Was worried wehen someone said Cash's had gone out of business - but no, still there: http://jjcash.co.uk/ I sew these onto everything. Not doing the vocational school thing, but they survive everything non-vocational school and everyday wear can throw at them.

Oddly, I know an English child who is competing with a different country - one where her parents have been living for the last few years. Don't know anyone from this country.

Reading with interest .. as I (I suspect in common with many other 'first time' ballet mums) fell into it completely by accident.. DD started dancing at a little ballet school held in the village hall (though teacher linked to RAD and did RAD exams). Had we stayed in the village, I am sure that she would have had a happy few years skipping around, learning some ballet and maybe doing an exam or two. But we moved. DD wanted me to find her somewhere to 'do more dancing' (she was 4, coming up to school entry) and through a recommendation from a mum i met in the local park, I enrolled her at a dance school close to where we were living. Inadvertantly, I had selected a 'serious' dance school, where DD's 45 minutes of pre-primary ballet has by gradual degrees turned into 13 or so hours per week of different disciplies and a very high level of 'expected hard work and excellence'. I can see at festivals, and at things like the ISTD ballet awards, that DD appears 'well trained' - OK, I can't pick out the subtleties, but I can pick up that many girls from other schools have faults that she does not. Did I choose her dance school on that basis? No. I picked it because I was new to the town and could find it! One of its advantages for DD is tha it has a small group of teachers, who tend to specialise in different discplines, so she has different input from a variety of 'experts' in each dance genre rather than learning them all from the same person.

Thinking of the 3 juniors and 1 premier from DD's dance school dancing today :-) Hope everyone enjoys themselves!

We have 2 festivals danced in calendar years (in which DD, a Ddecember birthday, is always young) and 1 danced in school years (in which DD is obviously much older) each year. Until recently (she's 11) it made a BIG difference - she always walked away with a clutch of medals from the one in which she was older, and nothing from the other 2. However, the last few years have seen a much more even split - as dancing progress becomes less and less linked the chronological age, I suppose. At the moment, because she is unusually tall for her age and is starting to develop, she feels much less conspicuous in classses where she is the youngest - she will be taller than at least half the girls even in an 11-12 2-year group class, in which she will usually be the very younest girl competing.

Just sharing in yiour excitemet - this was DD just before Christmas. She is ALMOST blase about it now, but her pointe shopes would still be the fuirst things she rescued if the house caught fire!

4 of the 6 entered went through from their sections from DD's dance school (4 - of whom 3 went through - were in Juniors, other 2 - of whom 1 went through - not sure which class) so pride all round.

Not us - Modern Theatre not DD's area of strength as she's a ballet girl at heart. 6 members of her school will be there, though, and another 6 at Star tap

Yes, I remember that book! Posy does it in Ballet Shoes as well - she can only remember the 'new' vow they make at the end, about Petrova, as a series of steps.

I never get to see 'taught' classes or solo lessons, so I suppose what affected me so much was that it came from inside the girls, not in response to anything they were being taught or told. It was just a reherasal that they were running for themselves - i was only there as key-holder and 'Play' button presser.

Yesterday, DD and 3 friends were rehearsing trios and duets in preparation for an upcoming festival. Draughty church hall, sluightly resentful feeling beause there were lots of other things I needed to be doing, you will know the sort of thing. Then I watched them and was suddenly moved nearly to tears. They are 11 or just 12, and I have seen all 4 dancing in festivals since they were little. Their 'perfected' festival performances don't move me in the same way. But their solemnity, their earnestness, and the fact that the dances weren't quite right yet so you could see how hard they were working was genuinely touching. They did;'t need me, or any other adult, to tell me what to do to improve - they knew that from inside and between themselves, and they kept going until they did it as perfectly as they could. As soon as they finished dancing, they returned to being slightly daffy, giggly pre-teens. But when they were dancing, they were curiously adult in their professional focus. Is it just me???

DD is at an ISTD school (all the 'serious' ballet schools locally, for some reason, are ISTD for ballet as well as for MT and tap), so RAD not an option unfortunately. The Mristol and Welsh options seem to be for older students only, and BRB for younger ones.

Should have said - for 11 year old DD, going into Year 7 in Sept.

Related query - what would be the most accessible Associates programme (ballet focus) from Gloucesterish? Birmingham?

At DD's dance school, a preliminary list of candidates for all exams is put up on the board at the same time as the timetable for the next term (all exams are taken termly, though there will sometimes be no candidates for particular grades). It is often amended over the followng couple of weeks - sometimes a child can't make the extra class time or exam date, sometimes a child has been missed off or after consultation between parent and teacher may be added on or removed. It's not a 'big reveal' type moment. In general, we know quite a long time in advance. i know, for example, that DD is likely to take her next ballet grade at Christmas, possibly slightly earlier than the little group she has so far taken exams with, but if not quite ready she will take it next Easter in line with her expected' progress - a year for lower grades and 4, occasionally 5, terms for higher ones seems normal. I would expect a consultation with her teacher - head of the school - if she was to be delayed further, but not otherwise.

DD (ISTD school) started IF, as well as starting pointe work, after doing Grade 4, partly as an 'additional ballet lesson' each week in preparation for the ISTD awards. In her school, it is normal from Grade 3 to do 2 classes a week - the grade they are working on, and the grade above: so Grades 3+4, then take Grade 3 and do grade 4+5 classes, then take Grade 5 and do 5+6 classes, then 6 and IF classes after Grade 5. IF is treated as the exam after Grade 6, but all those doing Grade 6 will already have done IF since they passed grade 5 if you see what I mean. DD is in a slightly odd position, as she is being somewhat accelerated to 'catch up in ballet grade work' with a group of very able dancers who are all a year older and just under a grade ahead, though in practice in all 'non graded work' such as groups, duets, trios etc she is treated as their peer. So she does Grade 5, 6, IF and pointe classes. She was 11 just before Christmas.

Thanks Julie! I've been thinking about Flowedew's comment, and entirely agree that 10 year olds can be stronger dancers than 13 year olds. I do think it can be intimidating, though, for dancers who are confronted with VERY much older competitors in their grades, especially when a younger dancer is e.g. the only child from their dance school in that class. The thing DD commented on about the older ones, tbh, was not their age per se, but the length of time since they took the class grade. For her, the gap between taking the grade and competing was a couple of months, For some of the others, it was over 2 years - presumably 2 years in which they had carried on training, learned more etc etc. Good experience for her to face that - she's not going to 'be a dancer' as far as we can tell, but the mental toughness will come in handy in future job interviews, where she may well face those with much more experience than she has but will, with luck, have the courage to say 'but that doesn't mean I don't have a chance'!

Just joined. DD did this last weekend, went through to the final (her definition of total success) but wasn't placed. She has just turned 11, and took the relevant grade exam at Christmas. The maximum age for her grade was something like 14? Certainly when she and the others from her dance school were chatting with competitors from other dance schools she was amongst the youngest - though as a very tall and growing 11 year old, it is probably lucky that she dances a little ahead of her age!