Jump to content

goodtoes

Members
  • Posts

    38
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Reputation

16 Good

Recent Profile Visitors

421 profile views
  1. Also - thanks for the Floorbarre suggestions. I am told Pilates is very similar, and she is currently taking classes in this with her dance teacher.
  2. Moneypenny - I was considering that we might drive up to Warrington for an initial consultation, and take it from there.... Though it is a 3 1/2 hour drive so I couldn't do it on a weekly basis! Her current physio is great but honestly has no idea about dance (when E showed him a plie he seemed horrified... "but... your knees!") I just can't seem to find anyone locally who has that specialised knowledge. Even the people mentioned above (Julian Widdowson and Nick Cleverton) seem to work for NDIMs which I am told we can't access from Wales. So frustrating.
  3. I see Rupert Wiltshire does online coaching - that might work alongside her current physio... Rebecca
  4. Right - you are all confirming my feeling that we need to supervise this more closely than "oh, just give it time and it will all work out OK". We are in South Wales - Swansea. This means that we sadly can't access NDIMs as they don't accept referrals from Wales. I haven't been able to find a dance spec physio in South Wales at all. Bath is nearly 2 hours away, so not really achievable on a regular basis, although I suppose we might be able to arrange to go on an irregular basis if they wouldn't mind liasing with our regular (local) physio. If any of you know of anyone in the South Wales area who might be able to help then please let me know! Otherwise I will get in touch with the contact in Bath to see if we can organise something with them.
  5. My daughter (15) fractured her ankle over the summer, and we finally have clarity on the precise nature of the injury (8 weeks later). It is good news: two fractures, one with a flake of bone coming off which really confused them, and a fracture across one part of the joint, but no ligament damage, the main fracture is stable and it should all be healing nicely. She can now put weight on her foot, and her main complaint is lack of flexibility in the joint, which makes it hard to walk properly and is apparently just due to the swelling in the joint, and that is hurts if she uses it too much. SO getting there. She has had a lot of time off dance recently - a very limited timetable last year, due to a back problem (diagnosed as Bertolotti Syndrome exacerbated by Pole Vaulting (a girl has to have a hobby, apparently. She tells me dancing isn't a hobby, it is a life)), gradually built back up to about 14 hours a week and then hurt her Achilles tendon. Was staging another return when she landed a leap badly and, opps, ankle... So, anyway. I think we need to be really careful about how she restarts dancing and how we help her to build up her strength and technique so that she isn't constantly hurting herself. Her current timetable (if she were dancing it) involves 2 pointe classes, 3 Inter ballet and 2 Adv 1 ballet, 1 Grade 6 ballet (and she is assistant teacher in a Grade 1 class) as well as Jazz, Modern, Acro, Hip Hop, Tap and a conditioning class. Her teacher is super helpful, and is currently giving her a private Pilates session every week (free!), and I will be discussing with her how we manage E's return, as well as chatting to her (non-dance specialist) physio, but I wondered if anyone had any ideas about how to help a very keen dancer rebuild their strength and endurance whilst not taking part in their full timetable of classes. My initial thoughts were for her to initially just do something like demonstrating G1 and dancing G6 and taking up swimming (alongside the Pilates, obviously).... But I wonder if it would be better for her to do more ballet classes, but only to do the barre work to start with and build up from there. Sorry this has been long. I have spent the day trying to find sources of online advice or someone who can help her develop a personalised rehabilitation timetable type thing, but with no luck. I hoped someone here might have some experience, or insight to offer. Or even to know someone I could ask (we live in Wales).
  6. I would go straight to a physio, to be honest, and not bother with the GP.
  7. I watched this today. It seemed appropriate to share it here: video Ballet Cymru are holding an event in Madev's honour tomorrow, if anyone is local and didn't know about it.
  8. Well, finally had the results back and DD managed to scrape a Distinction for her Grade 3 RAD. Which reading this seems fairly good on so few lessons. She did her Grade 2 ISTD a few days later, and managed a solid distinction for that too. We are, however, in the process of looking for a completely different dance school for her - she wants to do well, and I suspect having more than one lesson a week would help her achieve that. And other reasons too... for those who have read my other posts...
  9. Oh. I stick my daughter's in on a cold wash. They are always fine.
  10. Have you tried bunging them in the washing machine?
  11. To be honest the bit about the physio was almost an aside in a much longer and much more distressing conversation, where she has a go at me over a lot of things. A couple of which were almost justified, but most weren't. For example: 1. My daughter is "becoming unteachable" and if she doesn't change her attitude we will have to start thinking about whether this was the dance school for her. Examples of this were: when in her very first lesson for her very first song and dance solo my daughter wouldn't sing. She learnt the whole dance, but point blank refused to sing the song. Which was not good, I know. She said to me she felt embarrassed and every time she tried to open her mouth nothing came out. She has since then had another lesson and overcome this problem. The teacher then gave an example of when she "sulked" in class and refused to lead a row of children in a set of steps which they had learnt the previous week (when, as it happens, my daughter was absent), and another example of how she had taught her a particular exercise one day and the next day my daughter didn't do it correctly (and actually my daughter had some home after that lesson very indignant about being told off as she HADN'T been taught the step the day before). 2. I had dared to speak to the tap teacher a couple of weeks before and say that my daughter had a "negative thing" about tap at the moment as she felt the tap teacher thought she was rubbish. My daughter said that the teacher had said in from of the class that tap was her "downfall" (which is probably a misremember of something). Apparently this, again, is all down to my daughter's bad attitude, and I didn't need to say anything because they were all too aware of my daughter's sulks and moods. I should probably say at this point that NOWHERE else has my daughter been criticised for having a bad attitude. Her school reports ddescribe her as putting 100% effort into everything she does. She has been described as the start defender of the hockey team, her RAD ballet teacher had nothing but praise for her. So if she really IS as bad as the dance teacher makes out, then I wonder why? Or whether the dance teacher is putting every not so good moment under a microscope and making that all there is to her... 3. My daughter is antisocial, and the other girls won't want to do duets and trios with her (but then, daughter says if she does try to sit with the other girls a certain couple always make nasty comments to her, so she chooses to just steer clear). Again, this is hugely different to how she is seen outside dance - she makes friends everywhere she goes - on campsites, at hockey matches, at the playground... 4. The physio issue. I left the studio in tears. However, it must be said that the teacher I was speaking to very rarely actually teaches my daughter any more - she is the owner of the studio. My daughter absolutely adores the teacher who teaches her most of the time, and she is a very sensible woman. That said - the general negative attitude towards my daughter and towards any perceived questioning of her "methods" has made me feel that enough is enough. My daughter has already put a lot of work in for the festival, and would be devastated to miss it, but I do think that we will not be there for long after the festival. Sorry - it was cathartic to get all of that out! I didn't post it all earlier because I was typing on my phone, which I hate, but now I am back at a proper keyboard it all comes flooding out!
  12. Thank you for your responses. I didn't think I was being out of order, but frankly the teacher does make me doubt myself. It is almost certainly a dance related injury, and if I am honest I am uncomfortable about that too. Basically my daughter had about 2 private lessons in January where she was given a series of exercises to practise - one of which was developees. She was then expected to continue with the exercises daily in her own time. However, being 11, she didn't do them every day, and after a month or so stopped altogether as she was practising festival solos and exam work instead. Fast forward to end of may where her teacher gets cross and says "we have given you exercises to do - if you were doing them you would be making more progress". So daughter starts doing them again. However, when she does a developee she lets her standing hip collapse, and doing it incorrectly is what has caused the problems. Her teacher did say (when we discussed it this weekend) "Well I knew what had caused the problem and we had shown her how to do it properly " but I can't help feeling giving an 11 year old an exercise and expecting them to do it properly 4 months later with no further specific input is not particularly sensible. Or maybe that is just me. I am going to change her dance school. It needs to wait until after October, because she has committed to a festival then. And I think my daughter needs time to come around to the idea. I am sad that it is coming to this though.
  13. By taking her to see a dance Physio after she developed a snapping hip problem. Apparently this indicates I don't really trust the teacher. Actually *I* thought it indicated my daughter was in discomfort and I wanted it sorted. I had told the teacher about the problem and she had said "Well stop doing the developes for the moment, we will Look at it after the exam." But she then kept cancelling my daughters private lesson - and then stopped teaching her at all and got another teacher to do it. All without ever mentioning the hip again? Was I out of order? Or is the teacher being absurdly precious?
  14. Hm... this is a really stupid question, but reading through the details it is not 100% clear whether the course is at the Ballet Cymru studios, or at the Riverfront Theatre...
×
×
  • Create New...