Colman

I find myself unexpectedly in London that weekend with the 15 year old boy as we have some PDD workshops to do. Though SMBallet has precedence here:

But they don't have to code switch - helps to have dance wear to get into the right mindset for class when dance isn't your job.

Leggings or proper dance tights/dance shorts. Not the black ballet tights like ladies' tights you see sold as mens tights in shops, which are far too see through, but something properly opaque. Something like: https://dvrs.shop/prodotto/plain-ankle-tights/ or https://wearmoi.com/en/tights/268-2642-orion.html#/27-size-s/101-color-black or https://www.capezio.uk/studio-collection-legging-mens. Running leggings will do too if you're not near good dance shops or don't want to ship but the dance ones tend to have much higher waists so if your top rides up you won't be excessively exposed. I prefer not to wear footed tights if I don't need to for a performance or something, but preferences vary. I'm mostly in Diverso stuff at the moment, since they'll make it in bigger sizes at no extra cost. You didn't ask about dance belts, but following on from the above: get a dance belt. Then, if you don't like that one, get a different one and repeat until you're happy. *I'd* avoid the common quilted Capezio ones which seem to be easiest to get and go for something padded like the Wear Moi models - they're more modest and the Capezio thong ones are much less comfortable. (in my experience, and the choice of dance belt is very much personal (I don't like full-seat dance belts at all!))

There's a thread of ballet teaching that's been inherited from military training schools or czarist academies (or possibly just English public schools) - maybe it's the ancient fencing connection - and bad martial arts teachers. Students are disposable assets to be thrown away if they don't survive the ordeals.

My remark about productivity and outdated U.K. management practices wasn’t off topic.

There are a good number of economists who are willing to blame out of date rubbish management practices for a lot of the UK’s terrible productivity figures,

That sounds like a very wise approach

With the delightful Karis Scarlette, who's a lot of fun to train with: she was doing a workshop in Dublin this weekend. If you happen to have quite a lot of thousands of pounds/euros down the back of the couch, obviously.

Yes, and it’s exactly the right type of work to fend off the dangerous age related deteriorations that eventually lead to cascade failure. With a bit of luck you’ll be able to get better at it for a decade or three. (But why wait until you retire?) If you’ve done IF you should be able to keep up with almost any of the adult workshops/retreats that people run. Karris Scarlette, London Ballet Classes, Everybody Ballet are the three we normally go to, but I’m trying to get around to the Ballet Retreat ones as well. You might be a bit overwhelmed by trying to learn rep at the speed they have to cover it in a workshop, but that’s normal. No one cares* so long as you’re not in the way, so the rule is: be in the right place first, then worry about technique. If the level is set much above IF/Grade 6 they wouldn’t be able to sell enough places! (* Actually, there was one choreographer that I think wasn’t best pleased to see the group of less experienced people and less ballet shaped group I was in butchering his piece, but hey, he got paid.)

BMI was invented as a tool to look at changes in population weights over time. It's completely useless at an individual level - the only possible use for it is to give a doctor an excuse to open a conversation to a patient who clearly has too high a body fat percentage. It's especially useless for athletes - the classic being international rugby teams full of "morbidly obese" players - and adolescents. It's a cheap, easy and utterly inaccurate proxy for body fat % (unless, perhaps, you're a male white college student in the 1950s, which is were most of this sort of thing was originally calibrated). (Even using BMI at a population level is complicated - how much of the increase is due to the fashion for bodybuilding, or the changes in ethnic makeup of the population?)

Well done. This year's plan is the (boys) bit from the Coppelia Discovering Rep. Our teacher was talking about February, but I don't think I'll be properly fit to dance it until Christmas, so might push it out to May. Probably doing grade 4 in the other curriculum class I do, not sure I'll bother with that exam.

I’d recommend being taught how to do those properly, and make sure you have spotters and so on if you’re trying to do high lifts. The grip varies from lift to lift and pairing to pairing, so there isn’t a best one.

Yeah, see the physio: you know the drill, find one with experience with dancers, do the exercises, incorporate them into ongoing practice. We (my wife and I) have a collection of them at this stage that we use in meant-to-be-every-morning conditioning/stretching practice. Could be a couple of things other than calves, so best to ask an expert.

I’d got the impression they just ticked the scores, but maybe they write up notes later.

Some do, some don’t, I think. And they all have examiner faces which they wear differently for different exams and people. Best not to worry about it.

The explanation of marks isn’t available with the iPad based marking system, apparently?

That’s better than I did, and I’m forty years older than her. 🙂 (To be fair I was on the ibuprofen before the exam for an injury I got a week before, but still.) The results for our adult class were mystifying as well, with marks in a quite narrow band despite a wide range of ages, abilities and experiences. Anyway really not worth worrying about, in the long term no one will even ask

My account is rather restricted. I don’t see likes either and can’t post or comment in most areas of the board.

Well, yes, it requires a system designed to impoverish graduates with “loans” and completely disregard that most of the benefits of education accrue to society at large rather than the individual for the framing to make any sense at all.

@ondine, it's the obvious response. The whole thing smacks of "Arts are for rich people, peons!" and a view that education should be entirely vocational unless you're rich.

If "professional courtesy" means that students are intimidated from exploring their options then it says something about which relationships the teachers are prioritising and how they view students, doesn't it? I think I'd avoid a school that required you to tell a borderline(?) abusive teacher that you were thinking of going elsewhere. Very much so, in any teaching situation.

You might have learned to protect your knee: if you have slight hyper extension (as do I) it’s very easy to bruise the inside of the knee joint when you lose control of it and go past straight, so you might be trying to avoid straightening it in order to protect it. If you have lots of hyperextension the problems are, I think, different.

Don't forget the logoed water bottles and bags.

We are, sadly, seldom as distinctively imaginative when picking names as we think we are.

I’d be surprised if anyone seriously studying ballet in Central/Eastern Europe didn’t have enough English for you to get your point across. PDD classes generally work up slowly to any lifts that would be dangerous and you should always be able to call a stop if you’re uncomfortable, language barrier or no.