Colman

As far as I can tell, the U.K. government is hostile to any freedom of movement arrangements with the EU, because they would have to be reciprocal and they’ve decided that their new voters don’t want that. It’s just the rules being applied to the form of Brexit the U.K. chose.

It’s something that develops over time, like turnout, with work. You’re constrained by physical limitations but you won’t really know what those are until you’ve put in the work to strengthen the muscles and teach the feet ankles to move properly.

4K video is about 10GB an hour, so just make sure you make space.

Depending on the models involved, it's quite possible a recent iPhone would be a better camera to use than a slightly older camera, so I'd experiment.

I’m the definition of stumpy - though male - and I get on quite well with Repettos. Some of the stretchy ones like the Grishko Dream Stretch maybe? Has she got the shoes tied right? It’s possible to tie them on the flat and then discover they’re too tight when you go on demi-pointe.

They’re planning to restart in-studio this week, doing hybrid classes, unless there’s been a change of plan. But yes, he’s really good at zoom classes.

And, let's not forget, opportunities for all sorts of fun workshops/masterclasses taught by pros who are willing to at least pretend to take us all seriously. 🙂

Hannah is great (and I really must get back to doing those classes), but having started a lot of new physical skills as an adult I’d say it takes about six weeks to get over the “confused and overwhelmed beginner” stage to “beginner” stage. Less if you have previous experience. It takes a couple of weeks just to bring muscles you don’t use for anything else online (and there’s always some unique movement pattern that causes something to hurt, no matter how strong you are).

Definitely not too old: 29 would be pretty young for a lot of beginner adult ballet classes I've been to. I started six or seven years ago as mid-forties old man with the body of about half a dozen ballet dancers. I'm currently doing about seven hours a week. Dress how you like: in my experience dress ranges from t-shirt and leggings heavy classes of people doing an hour a week for a bit of fun and fitness - though there's normally one or two in ballet gear even in those classes - to the fancy leotards, tights and ballet skirts of the much more serious dancers (like my wife, who started a year before me and who appears to have taken up collecting ballet skirts and leotards as a side hobby). Dressing the part seems to help most people though. A lot of the ladies seem to feel that ballet skirts make them feel less exposed in class, so that might be a consideration. Strictly speaking, as I understand it, students should be wearing the shorter skirts (for the reasons NJH explains above) but I've known people wear the longer ones until they become comfortable enough for the shorter ones.

This sounds like good advice.

Worth keeping an eye on it until a copy at a sensible price turns up if it's of interest. Those hyper inflated prices are some sort of scam I don't understand.

This seems sensible. If the answer was more-or-less “change your timetable” I think I’d have a very careful think about the overall situation but hopefully it’ll be more positive than that.

I’ve always been inclined to regard this as a red flag against a teacher of martial arts, dance or anything else, especially since you’re not proposing to do ballet elsewhere. To me it speaks of both inappropriate possessiveness of the students and insecurity that they’ll come off badly in comparison to other schools. I could understand a warning that being taught different styles of ballet by different teachers could be confusing (it is!) or even a gentle steering away from another school because you didn’t agree with their teaching style or culture.

My wife started doing Hannah’s Friday class last week, enjoyed it. Ben Gartside has good classes going on Everybody Ballet, with about ten a week available. As a side note, I got into studio for about six hours or so over two weeks before Christmas and was pretty much ok, mostly stronger in fact, except that side to side movement - glissades for example - in the centre tired my knees and lower legs a lot. Online classes since March had neglected that movement pattern for obvious reasons. Didn’t try any grand jetes, suspect that might have gone badly. My balance was off too, I’d become used to focusing on nearby objects rather than much more distant studio walls.

I’m resigned to zoom classes until March, at least, and the U.K. looks to be considerably worse off than Ireland. You might reopen before is though, not sure how wisely.