Nicola H

it is a funny thing to see the impact clothing has on people , whether it's ballerina in a tutu or the first time a Military Recruit , Student Constable, student health professional or trainee ambulance person puts on their uniform ... distinct swerve in topic what are the (presenting as) male equivalent rites of passage in dance to the tutu and pointe shoes - further swerve - men en pointe why not and why should past practices in choreography drive the future ?

like a job interview ( as arguably that is what any audition process is ) regardless of how objective all parties try to make it will have that uncertainty about it. it might even be down to the panels and the type of 'sparkle' they like fro mthe individual... sparkle in this case not referring to anythign to do with glitter or fairy dust , but the intangible 'extra' that turns the technically competent and otherwsie completely unobjectionable about performance of a skill into some thing more than the sum of it's parts ... I've heard the tern used in a variety of trainign / teaching settings all with that similar meaning driving / sailing / 'alphabet soup' short courses in healthcare (the 'alphabet soup' courses are those short ( usually a week or less) courses in healthcare that get used by employers / accreditors as tick i nthe box that the individual has a certain level fo skill in various things - often resuscitation focused but also trauma, transfer of critical patients , initial managementof burns , various surgical things)

I think that is part of the point of why the dancebelt is generally of the design it is; a traditional bare bottom with leg straps jockstrap would have terrible ' VJL ' under tights or a unitard ,and given that increasingly male cut leotards are tending towards the thong to reduce the VPL effect. i also suspect that a jock would dig in far more in certain movements/ postions which are fairly common in ballet ... outside ballet / modern where else do you find people doing full plies in second ?

Surely it's a matter of 'breaking them in ' being different for each dancer in just how broken in is 'ready' ... Pointes are a funny item in that i cant really think of any other product that is is not only 'some assembly required' but requires you to source your own bits to do this ... ( vs. something you make up from components ).

parochialism at it's best , once you are beyond the 'risks' associated with basic techniques being taught differently , whether by teacher or because of the differing award schemes in use ... accessing training with different peopel shouldn't be an issue as long as the other people are safe and appropriate. Although i do think there is concern in some quarters over the 'overtraining' issues that were an issue with (association) football a few years ago, where promising lads were training with the league club academies,. still playing for their 'sunday league' club and playing for school teams etc meaning they were playing more 'competitive' games than the pros were ...

as long as suitable educational provision was in place ... also with the raising of the 'school leaving age' i think we are going to actually see some more innovative solutuons coming through as 17 and 18 year olds will have to be in suitable education , training or 'employment with training ' ...

A good question ... altough my involvement in ballet as an actual participatn is limited, recent ,and 30 ish years removed from JAs etc , there does seem to be soem very strange ideas floating around among teachers of dance. I say this as someone who teaches and assesses in a variety of settings and whose teens were spent in a somewhat faster than usual progression through the ranks of youf sailing ( hadn't stepped into a boat before the age of 12 and a half - started sailing as an extra curricular with school, made 'winter training' / national squad selection at my last eligible youth year (which other than making very limited in numbers 'full' national squads was the limit of the system) - i'm not sure how exactly that would compare with dancers getting into associates and summer schools ( no equivalent to a vocational school for sports people ,especially in the 'sitting down sports' - but much like dance there is tension between your 'home ' school / club and what is beign taught when you go away and there;s also the aspect of the older / better people assisting and demonstrating etc. So had done the equivalent to progessing through the grades in the two training parallel schemes the RYA run - one is 'just' sailing and is purely technical and the other is competition based ) and passing a variety of 'auditions' you have to pass and be recommended for the next stage on a couple of occasions in the scheme - open access to 'red badge' recommendation needed for next stage - the white and blue badges - once in that recommendation pool you can keep going to the regional stuff but you need a further recommendation for the national selection )... many of the people i was sailign with at blue badge / selection were peopel who had come fro msailing families and been racing since 8 or 9 ...

the burning to DVD option is probably the most straightforward one, though with the increase in computers without any form of optical drive that might create a few difficulties for some people ... Annaliesy is correct that some people really do see mto struggle with dropbox etc

by level 6 do you mean the English / Welsh level 6 i.e. Degree level (the SQCF is slightly different and includes the 'entry' levle qualifications in itls levels despite them being belowthe expected range of attainment of a 'normal' 16 year old ), HNDs are level 5 these are actually higher education courses and the funding if the institution is compliant with the requires of SFE would be via student finance

possibly, if you look the part ...

I don't think there is much to say beyond that ... one would hope that at that level any fears over time wasting / leching / ulterior motives are out the window ... ( anyway whose the say the lecherous behaviour won;t be poor Plie22 being leched over by the young ladies ) I didn;t realise there was suppsoed to be a taboo , rather than men not havign the confidence to say sod the idiots and do what they want. the only uncomfortable moment i have had in class in the relatively short period i have been attendign classes is when the teacher has to swerve mid sentence as she realises she was aobut to say something that presumed all the class were female presenting.

Shame the OP doesn't . I attend class in Lincoln and staff and students have been lovely to me. yes, teachers, get used to addressing classes as 'girls' or 'ladies' , same also happens in certain female heavy professions . end of the day if someoen comes to class and wants to learn it;s money in the till . is there such as thing as the 'blue pound' in dance ... much as we talk of the 'grey ' pound , the 'pink' pound and the 'rainbow' pound or even the 'kink' pound when it comes to certai ndemographices and their purchasing ...

we are straying into cap'n Jack Sparrow territory here, a bit like the 'gatecrashers' (from int / advanced) in parts of 'beginners' class i attend ... ' they're more guidelines you see ' ...

i can appreciate that as a metaphor

BBMF visitor centre at Coningsby as well http://www.raf.mod.uk/bbmf/visitorscentre/ and while it;s still in build the Bommber command memorial at the top of Canwick Hill ( just outside the city boundary)

However part of the 'problem' rightly or wrongly is that some graduates don;t want to 'lower' themselves to doing other short term or seasonal work ... it;s quite interesting when you see the 'work biographies' of soem quite senior people in big name retailers that start off with ' x first worked for the comapny as a saturday girl / christmas temp ' or ' y first worked with us as an agency colleague at such and such Distribution Centre) ... the 'graduate job' of old still exists but the numbers are the same as when 10% of 18/19 year olds went on into HE rather than the near 50 % seen now. There is however a problem which really stems from 2008 of appinting managers wanting people who can already do the job ... let;s not even talk about societies attitudes to jobs/ education / training which develop a lot of transferrable skills along side a particular vocation qualification ...

carrtying two soups presumably fitting with the tomatoes under the armpits / carpet carrying ...

i can also imagine some 'racist' ( to geordie) comments and advice about the 'carpet carrying' stance

leftpondian - a colloquial term for North Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_guard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Marine_Corps_Silent_Drill_Platoon http://www.raf.mod.uk/queenscoloursquadron/

drill is a form of danc really, yes it had it's purposes in the pre rifled firearm days but realistically it is a form of dance now ... if you look at the left pondians they have turned drill into a performing art - colorguard / winter guard ... but even with proper drill if you consider the USMC silent drill team or soem of the stuff that peopel like the QCS do ... the choreographey and the processes to learn it are like dance

not a correction , but one that tickled my mind ' you have good feet ... for a boy ' ...

perhaps a modification from the ' drill pigs phrasebook' saying of 'look expensive' ... when trying to get a squad of military persons to stand properly ( which is wrongly for dance and vice versa )

the door thing sounds like local embellishment - seen and heard similar local embellishments in health, social care and voluntary sector presumably the checking stuff was pre 'portable' DBS - under the old CRB scheme only the requesting organisation got the full disclosure the applicant 'copy' wasn't necessarily a true and accurate copy - as information on the 'other information at the discretion of the Chief Officer' box could be suppressed on applicant copies if there were ongoing investigations or there was information which was being developed to start an investigation . With the change to DBS if it;s made portable any 'employer' can check an up to date status on any relevant 'worker' ... ( usual caveats apply about they have to have grounds to do that - usually becasue you are going to be doing some work with / for them )

The take away message is ' it will depend on the school , the principal and the teacher of the class if s/he is not the principal ' . they have to be sure that their safeguarding practice is robust enough , not just to let you into that class but to let any adult into that class. why do they have to do that though ? it's you asking now ... think about the Equality act and all the various protected characteristics ... age, sexuality, gender expression ( contrary to the belief expressed by some the whole transgender spectrum is covered not just binary trans people who are under the care of a gender identity clinic) as well as race and disability ... you only need to look at the over reactions of the curtain twitchers to swimming pools that have accepted private hire bookings from naturist groups and/or various LGBT groups ...

the classic 'work experience' setting doesn;t meet the defintions of substantial unsupervised access - as it's a a week or two that occurs a couple of times during the education of older children ( often Y10 and either pre-Y12 or during Y12) voluntary work depends on the nature of the work , the uniformed youth organisations where DoE participatns are taking part in young leaders development programmes etc - all the leaders are checked any way, in care settings staff / supervisors will be checked , ditto many of the service delivery charities such as Red cross or St John ) 1 to 1 does pose specific additional risks, which need to be considered , especially in coaching type scenarios - and DBS checks are just a small part of safeguarding but an area that seems to attract rather a lot of attention, primarily because people are under the impression that they can be 'failed' by someone who is not on the Barring lists. Similar lacks of understanding are applied to m Occ Health and diversity monitoring process at times.