SissonneDoublee

Is/ are the degas size T0? Please could I have pictures?

Others will have more knowledge, but my first concern is risk of injury, depending on how much weight gain/ loss of conditioning. Presumably your ballet teacher has given the green light to go ahead with pointe? With physical changes, it would be better to go and get fitted by a pointe shoe fitter, who will be able to advise re shank etc, as other changes (ie width fitting) may also be needed.

The UCAS deadline has passed, but this doesn’t mean that you can’t still apply. It just means that institutions are not required to consider on equal standing with the ones that applied before the deadline if they don’t wish to. Good luck!

If your ballet teacher(s) says that you have the ability to train as a professional ballet dancer, but your parents are against funding your full-time training at 16 years old, your best bet is to apply for associate places (Elmhurst Extended Young Dancers, Royal Ballet Advanced Associates, Central Associates, MIDAS, Midland Ballet Theatre, and Kings might have an associate scheme) while you take A Levels, to supplement getting in as many hours of high-quality training as possible at your home dance school, and then applying to 18+ ballet training (at Central, for example), which you can then fund yourself with a student loan. Even so, you will need financial support to cover the cost of accommodation, pointe shoes, plus all the sundries that ballet students need. To get a place at Elmhurst you will need to be exceptional. Even the girls already at Elmhurst lower school are not all given upper school places. Auditions take place around the world, and upper school has lots of students from overseas. Some students are admitted into the graduate year (Year 14, so after A Levels), so if you have outstanding training at home, you could join at this point for a final polish and the graduate tour to help with finding employment. It is only extraordinarily talented dancers that are able to join at this stage, already pretty much dancing at company standard. As you can see, there are possibilities, but all of them involve a combination of talent, training and unfortunately finance. Hopefully your ballet teacher will be able to guide you, and the information on here will be helpful. Good luck!

MDS funding is awarded on a sliding scale, with means tested parental contributions for all children in receipt of the funding. The parental contributions would be the same wherever your child is on MDS, so the calculators on the RBS and Elmhurst websites are also true for Tring and Hammond. However, the items included in the funding do vary, so at some schools it includes a generous dance uniform allowance, RAD lessons, music tuition etc. Instagram posts and newspaper articles where people state they have won a ‘full scholarship’ are talking about MDS when they refer to lower school, which in most cases still means parents are contributing. At Tring and Hammond, the MDS funding is awarded on the criteria of ‘potential in classical ballet’, so the jazz genuinely won’t exclude them from this. There is a lot of movement on the MDS waitlist, as children offered MDS at these two schools may well also have offers at other schools.

Take the total amount payable and divide it by 12, as you can put money aside every month (starting in the May before your DC starts school) so that you have money ready for each term’s fees. We pay a fairly hefty parental contribution, but it still works out cheaper than DD’s nursery fees when she was little! Considering all it includes, we see that as value for money!

As a secondary teacher I have monitored DD’s academics since the start of Year 7 without concerns. There have been teachers that I have been very impressed by, and some less so, but all very much in line with what I would consider normal. I am aware of adjustments made for students with SEN that have been well outside what a state school would have been able to offer, although these have not been needed for DD. Be wary of anecdotal tales of friends of friends that have removed their child for XYZ reason. In my experience parents that remove their child from vocational school often delay doing so until they or their child are so unhappy that they have a plethora of reasons why it isn’t the right school for them. What we have seen in this thread so far (and I’m so many other threads) is that when it comes to academics or artistic training, different schools suit different children. ‘Vocational’ teachers not attached to a vocational school can also have their own axe to grind. Look at the GCSE and A Level results from 2019. Anything since then is unreliable. Parents of children currently in Year 10 haven’t had a full uninterrupted academic year since Year 7, so this is another thing to bear in mind when hearing opinions. Using the 2019 data, the four main vocational schools get good results. Not in line with highly academic private schools, but then highly academic private schools don’t have the pressure of (or success rate at) getting children into 16+ ballet training. Tring has a wider selection of A Levels on offer than Royal or Elmhurst, but presumably with more students in each year group (given that they have dance and MT) this is easier to timetable. Look for a school that suits your child academically, artistically and pastorally. All three areas are equally important. And then hope that they are what the school is looking for too! It’s a difficult fit to get just right, and needs lots of monitoring and supporting along the way.

This implication that bodies that fit the artistic ballet ‘ideal’ are somehow not real, and are inferior to fuller bodies, is just as offensive as any fat shaming that people are so quick to call out. While pressure on ballet dancers to fit a particular shape is unacceptable, any system of value based on size and shape is equally inappropriate. Referring to people, mostly young women and often children, as ‘freak shows’ is wholly unacceptable. We need to value everyone for their talent, not run down the smaller dancers for being smaller. Similarly assuming that the dancers that are selected for roles are chosen because of their appearance or size undervalues their skills and talent. Comments like some of the last ones on this thread are exactly why the ballet world has a reputation for being toxic.

An in-year transfer into a state school can happen almost overnight. In the first instance, it will be to a school where there is space, but this could potentially be an interim school until a space becomes available in your chosen school. When the place is offered, you do then need to take it up quite quickly, or it will then be passed to whoever is next in the waiting list. Waiting lists run in order if who best meets the criteria, so they are not first come, first served. If you are the most eligible person for a space in a school, you will be offered the next space, regardless of when you joined the waiting list.

Returning after half term can be tough, as they get used to being back at home and make comparisons with a rose-tinted version of how things are for siblings or friends. It might be that this passes as he gets back into school life. However, vocational training is full on, and some children realise that it is just not what they want. If he is miserable, I would be inclined to pull him out sooner rather than later. If he is sure that this is not just post-holiday blues, you need to find out from the school what the notice period is, and what the implications of any MDS funding are. Your local authority will be able to let you know about spaces at schools. Don’t worry about seeing through the commitment on this one. He’s eleven, and away from home. If he needs to come home, he needs to come home. There will be other children on standby for roles in productions, and the rehearsals and performances can be intense and this could make things more miserable if it’s not where his heart is.

Brava! So pleased to hear this! Congratulations to your DD (and you!)

The article is 10 years old, and the research carried out was largely articles around another 10 years older again, with a heavy biais towards articles dealing with the difficulties/ negative aspects of hypermobility. Looking at the work and photos during training of today’s principal dancers, I doubt the veracity of the claim that 0% have hypermobility. Current vocational training has a strong emphasis on strength and conditioning to support the flexible joints and avoid injury. Hypermobility needs to be carefully supported with strengthening work, and should not be over-stretched as this is a quick route to injury. The encouragement of extreme stretching on social media or elsewhere is very irresponsible, and should be an alarm bell for any parent looking at dance schools.

We have always approached this from the point of view that it’s a great opportunity, but only while it is working. DD is only fortunate and privileged to be there if it is right for her, and the rest is just spin. The children are indeed special and talented, and stepping back from vocational school wouldn’t make them any less so, but the set-up has to be right. If they are losing weight, or seem withdrawn and edgy, it is time to get to the bottom of it. If they seem quiet or worried when you talk to them, or just don’t seem right. DD hasn’t struggled with homesickness at all, so I wouldn’t be able to say how you can tell when this stops being an acceptable level, but i know that friends of hers have overcome homesickness with support (at school and at home). It is difficult to risk a setup that could prove to be wrong for a child. And parents stress hugely over which secondary school to send their child to, so how much more so when it is a high-pressure environment far away from home? The investment of time, money and effort involved in getting a child to the point where they are able to secure a place at vocational school brings so many other benefits in terms of their broader life. You can’t view them as an additional pressure to complete their training, otherwise the fear of an injury would be unbearable. It is so important to go into the school with the mentality that it is just a year (or a term?) at a time, and that stepping away from it isn’t a failure, just a change of direction. The stories of DC that have struggled are heartbreaking, and I really hope that they are now doing something that they love and that they have recovered from their experience. Children that dance at a high level often have personality traits that really increase the risk of anxiety and EDs whether they are in a high-pressure environment like a vocational school or not, but being in such an environment means things can get far more out of hand. This isn’t the case for everyone, or even most children there, but it is definitely something to have in mind.

And this is it. For some it works, and the child thrives, and for others it doesn’t. But if your child is not thriving, you can bring them home. Children leave vocational school every year, and return to regular school. There is always lots of coming and going. And children in regular school are not exempt from bullying and mental health difficulties, sadly. We have always taken the attitude that DD is there for as long as it is working for her, and I monitor this carefully every time she is home. She is thriving at a school that other people upthread have been unhappy with because different children have different needs, and wherever your child is at school (vocational or not) you need to keep communication channels open to monitor how they are doing. It’s not a permanent decision, and for the vast majority of applicants not even a decision they will have to make. But it is important to be aware of bullying and mental health issues in teens whatever your child does for secondary school, and to bear in mind that competitive, perfectionist children are much more likely to have certain issues.

DD didn’t do MAs, as she went to full-time vocational school, but I think the bow goes above the bun from what I’ve seen.

Have you been told that Y6s should have a bun? Our JA teacher preferred crossed plaits all the way through. We made the bows on hair slides, so that could be added at the last minute before going into class and not get squashed in the car 🤣

It was a while ago for us, but we always used to park at Eastleigh station and walk up to The Point. It’s only about 7-8 minutes, and there is usually plenty of parking on a Saturday. It wasn’t too expensive either, and I think I remember that the rate is for the day, so there was no panic if we overran (stayed behind chatting)!

Ouch! The wording of this is incredibly harsh! The original poster said her DC was getting fed up because there were children messing about in class and not taking it seriously, and that frequent absence was making the whole class spend weeks repeating the same thing. She didn’t even mention wanting to have a professional career, unless I have missed something. OP, it sounds like your DD is ready to move on, and is looking for somewhere that she can take things more seriously. I would definitely echo what others have said about talking to the teacher, but also to start looking at what is available near you.

Could be Pacific Northwestern Ballet. I think they are based in Seattle.

It would be nice to see a greater attention given to home grown talent, of course, and ensuring that lower school training is in line with what is required to gain upper school places. As you say, with so much funding involved, it should be imperative, but also from the point of view of the eleven year olds that forsake so much in order to place their training in the hands of the AD. However, the employability of the upper school students is massively boosted by the international renown of the school. The prizes given at international competitions and the overseas scouting for talent to ensure that the very best are being offered places is an essential part of being known as a world class training centre. It is incredibly tough, especially when we are parents of vocational dancers, to look at the numbers of lower school children that don’t make it into the upper school. But I can understand why the system is what it is. For the students that make it to the end of upper school, it pretty much guarantees them an illustrious career. But this is because the school is known for being one of the best in the world, not just in the country.

Eglantine leotard now sold.

Turquoise and Viola leotards now sold. Eglatine still available (it’s a very dark pink… a lovely colour, but definitely needs googling unless you have a Farrow & Ball vocabulary of colours!)

Of course xx

Of course xx

Hi, I have three meryl soft Degas leotards: very flattering and perfect for auditions! 9502 Eglatine 12a (excellent condition) £30 + £3 postage 9502 Turquoise 12a (excellent condition) £30 + £3 postage 9501 Viola 12a (there are tiny marks from audition numbers, but only noticeable if you look for them) £25 + £3 postage