Janeparent

This is interesting about not having homework - it must be a new policy at Elmhurst as my DC was there until a year ago and they had homework most nights.

Hi. In case you’re still looking for suggestions, I suffered from PF and tried most of the above without success. Then someone told me that FitFlop brand shoes had helped them so I tried those and they helped me very much.

Yes, I think that’s right about the October one - but this online class seems to be for those thinking of auditioning for Junior Associates.

I think booking closes this Wednesday.

I saw this the other day on Facebook. Not sure how to post a link, but you could search for it:

I think the original question was referring to lower school academics as well as A levels though? My child’s year group at Elmhurst is as big as it would have been at our local state school, and much bigger than at our local independent school. The teaching is generally excellent, but it is a big class with a huge range of ability.

Just bear in mind that class sizes vary a lot - not all the year groups at Elmhurst are small.

I don’t think anybody would deny that there is a range of body types in contemporary dance - but this conversation is about classical ballet, not contemporary. Whilst many classical ballet companies nowadays incorporate elements of contemporary technique, on occasion, they are still fundamentally different art forms.

I think when he said that he was probably meaning just the student, boarding at the school, rather than their family - but I don’t know about visas.

I’m not sure about the visa situation. It might be worth contacting Elmhurst or Tring to see whether you’d be able to submit a video of your daughter dancing instead of the preliminary audition (you’d still have to travel over for finals though). Those schools are no good if you definitely want London though - although Tring has easy access to London. The girl you met at the intensive must have been an “associate” of RBS - they do Saturday classes, called associates, in London and at various other places around the country (you have to audition - there would have been a box to tick for that on your White Lodge application as you can audition for both in the one audition). With WL your daughter could come home in the evenings but you probably wouldn’t be able to fetch her most days actually from the school; I think the school has transport to bring day students (and staff, I think) out of Richmond Park - I think parents usually meet the mini-bus at Richmond station to fetch them.

It does sounds as though you’d want a full-time “vocational” school, as it would be difficult to get the amount of training hours she’s used to otherwise (it might also be possible to get similar hours at Masters of Ballet or Natalia Kremen, but those are both Russian style training, which she didn’t enjoy at the intensive). It is possible to be a day student at White Lodge, but it isn’t walkable (except possibly sometimes in the summer) as it’s within Richmond Park, which has gates that are locked at dusk - if the gates are locked there is school transport which you would have to meet at the gates, or the railway station. If you wanted somewhere near Notting Hill there is Young Dancers Academy (academics included) in Shepherd’s Bush, or their evening and weekend classes, which are called West London School of Dance (the day time “vocational” students also do some of the evening classes). And as another poster said, Central School of Ballet do have evening classes too. For other rigorous full-time training you’d be looking outside London (Elmhurst, Tring). Lots of decisions for you to make! All the best of luck with it all. One other thing to bear in mind is that if you wanted your daughter to audition for a start next September, the auditions are happening about now - so the deadlines for lots of the schools will be imminent.

In London, as well as Masters of Ballet Academy and Natalia Kremen’s school, which both have vocational level training outside of academic school hours, there is also Young Dancers Academy, which is a “vocational” school, in the sense that it is normally understood in the UK, ie. a full-time school with both ballet and academics. The other well-known UK vocational schools with strong ballet (other than The Royal Ballet School) are Elmhurst Ballet School (Birmingham) and Tring Park School for the Performing Arts. The latter three are mainly boarding schools with some day students; YDA is mainly a day school with, I believe, some options for accommodation. The other vocational schools in London, English National Ballet School, Central School of Ballet and so on, are for age 16+, so not available to you at the moment for full-time training.

Hi - I have no personal experience but I have heard very good things about Jo de Souza in Tring, and she has a lot of success with students gaining entry to vocational schools x