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Colman

Just4DoingDance
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Everything posted by Colman

  1. Colman
    I think it’s one of those things that teachers have OPINIONS on. My policy is do what I’m told by my teacher until I eventually work out what’s going on myself.
  2. Colman
    I have spent no more than a couple of hours over a couple of sessions in the new Opera House (which I think is a huge improvement) and have ended up giving ladies directions to the toilets every time while I waited near the gents for one of the boys to return from a trip. I'd swap "essential" for "useful" there - people see the obvious toilets in the corner and don't see the ladies at all even outside busy show times when the sightlines are clear.
  3. Colman
    I’m sure I’ve heard of her making similar remarks before but I thought it was more in the sense of the boys catching up with the girls after an era in which they had been very much secondary (apart from a few famous standouts) rather than assuming the lead in some sense. Perhaps that the pace of improvement in women’s technique has been slower than that of the men’s (which is inevitable if you think the men started from a lower base).
  4. Colman
    It's a question of how sure are you? We were pretty sure, but not sure enough to not have a contingency in case he couldn't handle it. It was a great experience for him though. Early in the week he was sending us messages in the evening, by the end he didn't bother …
  5. Colman
    If you're close enough, and you think you might be being over-cautious - you could send her residential and rescue her on the off chance she can't handle it. That was certainly our strategy last year.
  6. Colman
    My wife took the week in London while he was in residential as a holiday so she’d be nearby if there was a problem: we really weren’t 100% sure how he’d deal with it. (She spent the week wandering around museums and ballet classes and apparently is doing the same thing this year even though there’s clearly no need at all …) (The Battersea TravelLodge is cheap and nearby.)
  7. Colman
    Our just-eleven year old boy did it last year and enjoyed it immensely. They’re looked after pretty closely. First thing he said when he came out was “can I go for two weeks next year?” Depends on the child of course: I’m not sure we’d have sent him the year before, but purely because of his personality and emotional development.
  8. Colman
    Yep, slow and methodical is the way to go. (My spotting problem is that I learned to do it in karate, where you’re moving your head sharply to acquire your next target, so it’s too violent a movement. Inhibiting that on slow movements makes me forget to spot and/or fall over. So I can spot pretty well on enchaînés or fast diagonal turns and fall over on pirouettes. <le sigh>)
  9. Colman
    I suspect that you’re probably right and there probably isn’t a user story in there for the balletomanes unless there happens to be one in a senior position on the development team. Even any ROH reps aren’t going to represent those users, because they won’t have experience there.
  10. Colman
    I believe that going as far as you can with good form, hold it there, slowly increase over time is pretty much the only solution to that one. Currently starting doing something similar to try and stop overusing my quads. <le sigh>
  11. Colman
    What exam is she doing?
  12. Colman
    Yeah, I’ve had to order Grishko’s biggest size (on advice of a fitter, obviously). If they don’t work out I’m planning to follow up with the Siberian Swan lot and see how that goes.
  13. Colman
    Does my son count?
  14. Colman
    @BeaverElliot I’m doing ISTD grade 3 & 4 (one class) which I’ll do the exams in, RAD Grade 5 and RAD Intermediate Foundation, which I won’t. There’s a non-curriculum class too and a two hour practice session in studio, which makes four hours class and two hours practice in studio. All in the local ballet school, not aware of a lot of open classes in Dublin. Generally end up travelling for workshops and the like to get that sort of thing. For my impressions of the differences between the curriculums, see my comments in response to the OP.
  15. Colman
    Why do you want the recordings on DVD?
  16. Colman
    Yes, having made the mistake of getting a Blu-ray player recently it turns out that it does and I need to replace my DVDs. You tend to watch a laptop much closer than a big TV, so you’ll see the detail level.
  17. Colman
    I’m currently doing four different curriculum classes, though I’m only actually doing exams in two of them. Three are adult only, one is 10-60+. You’ve got to the master the craft of your tools before you can make art with them.
  18. Colman
    @BeaverElliot the ISTD have a pretty comprehensive website and shop where you can download and/or order their curriculum materials to your heart’s content.
  19. Colman
    Since you’re doing them recreationally, I’d take whatever you can get, or both - the graded exams are quite different, but that’s not a bad thing.
  20. Colman
    Go join the ballet society. They’ll likely be delighted to have you, especially if you’re willing to perform with them. ISTD set work seems to me (as an adult student of much more advanced age doing classes in both) to be (on average) simpler than RAD but almost all the RAD stuff is set while the ISTD has all that hilariously stressful free work. You should be able to switch from one to the other, it might set you back six months while you adjust to the different way of doing things, but you’re not in a rush from the sounds of things. RAD require learning a dance and a character dance for the exams rather than just one dance.
  21. Colman
    Pax de deux and boys’ technique classes would be something that would make me much more interested in an intensive. Not that it would help in this case, since I’m pretty sure I have our local adult summer camp that week, but *in principle*.
  22. Colman
    Unfortunately the free image hosting sites are rapidly disappearing, which means people will need to pay up. I don’t know what the constraints are with the system here but it might be worth allowing useful members a larger allowance on a case by case basis.
  23. Colman
    Political commentary, obviously.
  24. Colman
    80% of everything is rubbish. Always has been. We bin the 80%, keep some of the 20% and move on. And the bits of the 20% that we consider worth keeping change with taste too. (Actually, sometimes we keep some of the 80% too, because the composer is famous or the choreographer was powerful or whatever) There is a general, long-standing tendency to confuse great art with being very serious and intellectual and to downgrade anything frothy and happy. See discussions about Fille.
  25. Colman
    Even something listing dancers in order of appearance or whatever if you really don't want to assign them names. But I'm sure there were cast lists at the time.
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