Colman
-
Posts
727 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Everything posted by Colman
-
How cheap is cheap? Travellodge Farringdon? Royal Scot? Got a reasonable (for London!) price for a week in July in one of those.
-
My better half is unexpectedly in London that weekend, so …
-
No rush, let her teachers sort her out when she’s ready and needs it. Ignore Instagram and ignore her hyper mobile friends half of whom will likely end up plagued by injuries.
-
What on Earth were they trying to achieve? Some sort of old-school stretching thing?
-
RBS - More good news for Japanese dancers.
Colman replied to Londondancersmum's topic in Doing Dance
Yikes, yes, that’d slow it down ok. Good to hear you’re till moving, if a little more slowly! -
RBS - More good news for Japanese dancers.
Colman replied to Londondancersmum's topic in Doing Dance
You? Good grief no, I was more or less agreeing with you, I think. Still dancing, just about recovering from the setbacks over Covid/lockdown and starting to think about progressing again. 🙄 Back to doing some London workshops again too. Still mostly banned from commenting here, so I don’t say much. -
RBS - More good news for Japanese dancers.
Colman replied to Londondancersmum's topic in Doing Dance
That it’s a deal to support performances and outreach, followed by the sort of verbiage you always add to butter up corporations giving you money, especially one already offering scholarships to Japanese students and that two pages of nationalist outrage might be a little over the top? -
I think you’d be better off practicing in dance trainers, I certainly decided I was during lockdown. It’s very hard to get enough padding to protect you onto the floor without making it too soft to move on.
-
One of my teachers runs classes with reasonable numbers (in Dublin) at a centre for children with Downs Syndrome. She's trained as a special needs teacher too, which I guess helps.
-
Absolutely normal practice. I think it'd be unusual not to, unless you'd already settled on a brand.
-
Mine would be that it's a learning process (an expensive one): get the best advice you can, get your teacher to approve the shoes before you sew them, and then see how it goes as your daughter learns about how her feet work on pointe and what she needs to make them work. First pair probably won't last long anyway as the feet change from just doing pointe work and they grow. (Our son took a growth spurt not long after he got his first pair. <sigh>)
-
The school in Dublin we mostly attend did exams a few weeks ago and there was all sorts of anomalous behaviour from the kids - the older ones more than younger - so I’d guess the examiners are seeing this everywhere. I don’t know how much latitude they have on marks, but I’d count just getting through the exam as a victory and wouldn’t worry too much about the actual grade. That’s certainly how we’re going to frame it to our son who apparently messed up his Grade 4 character dance completely! Everyone lost their minds in lockdown, as Janet says, and it’s going to take a while to readapt. We also had a parents class watching day recently and the kids were very stressed out by that too, having not danced in front of anyone for two years.
-
Oh, I missed this bit: it’s not really that confusing, just a bit annoying. The vocabulary doesn’t overlap much, they have different names for things but don’t use the same name for different things that I can think of. The worst bit is different use of head - ISTD stays to centre where RAD would be changing head - and arms. It can feel quite stilted. Going ISTD to RAD would be less annoying, I think.
-
They're both quite different in their approach: RAD requires learning a lot of set exercises and is more "dancey" while the ISTD barre (for instance) is mostly not set at that level, which means simpler exercises but you have to pick them up there and then. There's less ISTD exams too, so they arrange the content differently. Having studied both recently, I'd say the difficulty level is roughly equivalent but they're difficult in different ways. Doing Grade 5 ISTD and going straight to Grade 6 RAD would mean needing to pick up the RAD way of doing things at the same time as dealing with the technical challenges, so I'd be inclined to be slightly conservative and do Grade 5 unless there's a very long run into the exam. There are style differences to deal with too: arms aren't the same (and have different terminology) and so on.
-
The risk of that when one has a weekly private is pretty limited unless they’re doing a lot of hours. Two or three classes a week will make a big difference to progress - if a physical group class isn’t an option then a zoom class or two can be effective, especially since you’re getting concentrated in person corrections from a private. There are lots of recommendations for beginners classes in other threads here. I’d discuss options with your teacher and see what they think.
-
She hates them in general, not just leotards. Feels they don’t suit her.
-
Doesn't matter: whatever makes you most comfortable and happiest: you know which style top you'll feel most confident in - I wouldn't dare buy my wife a cap sleeved one. Most seem to start with basic black (which seems to be almost universal adult uniform so it's probably worth owning one) but there's no real reason you should so if fluorescent pink makes you happy, go for it. I don't quite know how to put this diplomatically, but it might be worth ordering a matching ballet skirt too if you're planning to do in person London classes, as I've noticed that what some ladies are comfortable wearing in all-girl classes may not be the same as in mixed classes or classes that can be seen by outsiders.
-
Almost everyone is their own worst critic: I’m recovering from an injury so I sat out centre in the last class of term. Watching my wife dancing I was ready to tell her that she’d danced really nicely. She came out in a stinker of a mood because she’d done so badly in centre. 🤷🏻♂️
-
I wasn't taking issue with that at all, just the idea (suggested elsewhere) that one might need to get really good before doing a workshop with famous dancers - if in doubt, ask the organiser about the level required. I know of at least one organiser who has advertised the level higher than needed to discourage non-dancing fans from signing up for a particular workshop in order to swoon but was quite happy with relatively inexperienced dancers.
-
I wouldn't put an absolute beginner in almost any workshops/masterclasses because they'd just be confused, but anyone working reasonably seriously for a year or two should be able to get something from any of the ones that are aimed at adults: they generally aim at a mixed ability level because otherwise they'd never make up the numbers enough to make it worthwhile. I have a theory that "grown-ups" are really bad at being beginners. We don't expect to be clueless and incompetent and we get upset and discouraged when progress is slow when we've chosen to do hard things. Ballet is really hard, that's what makes it fun, even when it's not. I've been doing ballet now for seven years, which I figure makes me roughly equivalent to a not especially talented ten year old with added knee crack sound effects. Zoom is hard, learning centre work on Zoom is really hard and learning anything involving turning and changing directions on Zoom is extremely hard. All we can do is our best.
-
I have seen at least one cartoon panel or meme based around that particular struggle, so it's obviously not just you.
-
Nobody is looking. We're all *far* too busy (and if anyone is looking, they're not working hard enough!).
-
I started at the age you are bow I was your age when I started, and I’ve done a little pointe work as a giant guy. A lot of adults older than you have, so assuming you’re not unable to for some physical reason it’s a matter of strength and technique. Should be doable after a few years serious ballet if you want.
-
Took me four or five years before I really developed a memory for choreography at all, and I had the advantage of decades of martial arts with long forms, which isn't that different. I'm a bit better now, though if different classes set similar-but-different exercises in the same week I'm doomed. You need to know the vocabulary and the grammar, and that takes time to learn.
-
It takes years. My wife and I are about seven or eight years in as complete beginners, and we occasionally don’t feel completely useless. Just enjoy the process. If the teacher is good and is giving corrections then you should be able to learn in an intermediate class, though I’m not sure how much you’ll get out of the allegro initially.