Birdy

There are around 24 students (boys and girls) in each year of Associates Degree 1 and Associates Degree 2 at Dutch National Ballet Academy. Some come from the top year of their regular school (National Ballet Academy 7). Some international students enter during that last year of their regular academy. NBA7 students have to audition to be admitted to AD1. In the past couple of years the Junior Company has usually taken 4 girls and 2 boys from AD2 into the Junior Company. Most Junior Company members end up in the main company after 2 years. Some have jumped up after 1 year in the Junior Company. It’s nearly impossible to join the main company without going through the Junior Company. The recent hires from outside have mainly been dancers who were previously dancing in Russia.

What system is this that you are talking about? I’m from the USA and have never heard of such a thing.

My DD knows UK passport holders in junior companies in the Netherlands, Germany and Finland right now and none of them had any particular trouble getting visas. Obviously it is an extra process since Brexit, but it hasn’t been a barrier to them getting contracts.

I can tell you that there are actors in America asking why Hollywood keeps casting so many people from the UK not just in film but also in television here. (They even hired a Brit to play Martin Luther King). I think most countries will always have international diversity in the arts. There doesn’t seem to be the same standard of showing that there wasn’t any local talent that could fill the position.

Yes, I’ve noticed that the height requirements aren’t always set in stone, but they are definitely a helpful guide if you are really tall or really short. I think for really tall girls it is tougher to get into a shorter company and for really short boys it is tougher to get into a taller company. And of course the company needs may change depending on the size of dancers who have recently received contracts.

I would also recommend searching for audition postings this year so you can get an idea of what companies or junior companies require for their auditions so you can be prepared next year. For companies that use video submissions as a pre-selection for auditions, many now use the International Pre-Selection Guidelines (IAP). This was established so that dancers wouldn’t have to make a lot of different videos for different companies. It’s also helpful that some post minimum or maximum heights if your dancer happens to be particularly tall or short. (For example Bayerische Junior Ballet Munich just posted their auditions and the minimum height for ladies is 1.68m and for men is 1.82m).

Dutch National Ballet Academy is a two year program. They take 18 year olds. Students get an Associates Degree at the end of the two years because the program is run through Amsterdam University of the Arts. The second year students choreograph their own contemporary piece (with help) and are coached on a classical variation for their audition video. The videographer also records the classroom work for the video. Students are also given the opportunity to audition for second cast parts in some productions. There are three girls from Australia in this year’s graduating class. The only drawback I have found is the extreme difficulty with finding housing.

My DD’s school is super helpful in the process—they consider it their job and part of what we are paying for. This is a school in Europe. I know of some in the US that help, but most do not. We are fortunate that DD’s school not only helps with the CV, but has a photographer and a videographer that they use and they schedule the time slots for the students. They have specific class for the dancers to choreograph their contemporary piece with help from teachers. They have classes where they work on their chosen classical variation for their audition video as well. It’s going to be a stressful year but it is a huge relief to know that people with much better knowledge of the process are guiding my DD.

A few days after Grand Audition is held in Barcelona in early February, YAGP usually holds a job fair in Stuttgart. If your son is graduating from a YAGP affiliated school (one that recruits from YAGP, basically), he can automatically attend, otherwise I believe they use audition videos to screen potential attendees. (They also do one in Nashville, in the US, but I’m assuming Germany would be more convenient). A lot of company directors from the US and Europe attend. I wouldn’t rule out junior companies. Most are tuition-free and provide stipends. They often tour and have choreographers come to set new works on them and also give the dancers opportunities to dance with the main company. This is different than post-grad trainee programs that require tuition. I know of almost no dancers that go straight from school into a main company.

Many universities in the United States are doing away with the SAT requirement. It has been shown to disproportionately favor wealthy students, as their parents pay for tutoring and private test preparations. There is no national curriculum in the United States, so class requirements vary not just by state, but also by school district. Most universities here require English until 18 (four years of high school English) and Maths until 17 (three years of high school) or 18 if your degree will be STEM related.Then once at university students are required to do another full year of English and at least a semester of maths, regardless of major. It’s ridiculous, really. So many liberal arts students struggle to get through the maths requirements. However, high school students are also able to take Advanced Placement courses and if they score high enough they can get college credit for those courses. It seems to me that A levels would be equivalent to AP courses in the United States. To be frank, in general the (pre-university) education system in the United States does not seem on par with the system in the UK, with the exception of our very expensive private schools.

It may depend on what country you’re coming from. My DD is from the US and only needed a residency permit for a school in Europe. Students needing visas to study there had to wait quite a while for the process to be completed. I’m sure every country has different rules, but DD’s program is run through a university so she got her residency permit with the school as a sponsor.

My DD is 18 and posts nothing to her Instagram. When she got accepted to her European upper school the current students all tried to find her online to figure out who she was before she got there. The only internet presence they could find were articles about her dancing Clara in a company production when she was 11. Not actively posting on social media didn’t hurt her at auditions. She never attended a competition school. Neither her current school nor her previous school ever posted students’ names when their photos appeared on the school’s social media. I don’t know what kind of clout the students with super active social media accounts are chasing, but I don’t know that it’s particularly helpful to them in the long run.

In the US, summer breaks are really long. At my DD’s former school, final performances were at the end of May and classes didn’t start up again until early September. Dancers didn’t want to take three months off, so the parents ended up spending absurd amounts of money to send their kids to summer intensives. Even kids who did one 5-week program ended up supplementing with a lot of drop-in classes. The longest summer intensive my DD ever attended was 3 weeks, despite her teachers telling her it wouldn’t be enough. She was accepted into a 2-year Associate’s Degree program in Europe last year, so for the first summer ever she has a shorter break and has just been doing drop-in classes occasionally to stay in shape. I often think that it is fortunate that we didn’t have unlimited funds to spend on ballet or else I might have given in to the pressure to pack my daughter’s summer with intensives. As it is she has made it to 18 without injury or getting burned out.

This sounds a lot like the arguments happening in the United States, where there is a big push for science and math degrees, while liberal arts and humanities degrees are devalued. I find it to be really short-sighted. Obviously engineers and doctors may get well-paying jobs in their chosen fields directly out of school, but there is plenty of evidence that people with liberal arts degrees earn a very good wage ten years post-grad. If you only consider whether someone works in the field of their degree, you discount the value of everything else an education brings, like critical-thinking, teamwork and creative problem solving.

When my DD was 9 I knew that it was time for her to change schools. At her school classes were only 45 minutes long, after the December holiday break most class time was dedicated to working on year-end recitals with not much time spent on basic technique, more attention was given to students whose parents spent a lot of time at the studio, kids kind of goofed off in classes or regularly skipped class, etc. Though she was only 9, my DD was more focused and dedicated and it seemed likely that she would want to pursue ballet seriously for the near future at least. She was reluctant to make a switch, and hated change in general, but once she tried a class at a more professional school, she leapt at the chance to make the change. Kids can’t really know how they’ll feel about a new situation until they try it. And honestly you shouldn’t be made to feel like you are being disloyal or doing something wrong by looking at other options. You are trying to find the best fit for your child. At 17 my DD left her lovely, very professional school, to train in Europe (we are from the US), and they were very understanding about why she felt it was time to make that move.

I agree with what everyone else has said. My DDs school had all the students with hyper mobility do extra sessions with a trainer to learn specific strengthening exercises. Another reason you can’t maintain extension while dancing is because when you do the splits on the ground gravity is helping you. When you are dancing gravity is usually working against you. You need strength to pull up when dancing.

Oh no! I have done the same thing (different name here than on Ballet Talk for Dancers). When Ballet Pursuit started I chose a new name, Tulip, because my old one may have been a little too self-identifying. I had no idea there was a Tulip over here and had no nefarious intentions. The name has a few special reasons for being significant for me and I had never (to my knowledge) run across Tulip on this site.

A dancer at Dutch National Ballet just circulated a petition for higher pay for dancers. Amsterdam is not cheap, only two unrelated people are allowed to live in an apartment, and landlords are allowed to discriminate. Listings quite often state Not for Sharing, Couples or Families Only. Of course these same landlords tout their listings as being in close proximity to cultural institutions, but they wouldn’t deign to rent to the people actually producing the art.

Unfortunately, Ballet Talk for Dancers, the big US-based ballet training forum recently shut down after decades of valuable service to the community. Ballet Pursuit hopes to pick up where they left off. A few people copied and pasted their posts before the old site shut down. There is one review posted for Nutmeg. I’ve included the link. https://balletpursuit.invisionservice.com/topic/274-nutmeg-ballet-conservatory-si-reviews-research/

The question of why international students would want to come to RBS if they have good training at home is an interesting one. At least in the US I think a lot of students start looking around and making changes in their later teens. Often smaller schools or non-company affiliated schools have great training, but aren’t the best for getting students “to the finish line.” There are only so many truly exceptional dancers at each school. At some point dancers want to be with the other exceptional dancers instead of always being the best in their class. They may want to go somewhere with more performance opportunities or to a school with more connections in the ballet world. It’s hard to resist the pull of a school where most graduates get contracts to second companies or main companies. Another aspect may be the boarding option. That isn’t found in most countries, so if a student can’t get higher level training where they live and their family can’t move, sending a child to a place with boarding is very appealing. My DD left very good training in the US for very good training in the EU. She identified a place where she thought she’d be a good fit and where they really liked her, knew the way into their company was largely through their junior company, and knew the way into their junior company was largely through their upper school, and made the jump. The odds are still stacked against her, as they are for all dancers, but she is giving it her best shot.

While I agree that some kids will never have what it takes, no matter how hard they train, I must also stress that there is such a great degree of subjectivity when it comes to who gets a spot or a career. There are way more qualified dancers than there are spaces. A no from one school doesn’t mean a no from all schools. Same with companies. Again, I’m from the US, where there is no government funding of the arts, so there is less expectation that there will be any loyalty to American dancers. Our summer breaks are long, so the crazy expensive system of summer intensives is vast. While I hate the necessity and expense of that system, it does mean kids audition all over the place and get an idea of what a wider pool of companies think of the dancer and the dancer can gauge how they stack up against other dancers. Sometimes the kids getting accepted, often with scholarships, all over the place at 12 are not the same kids getting those places at 15. As the kids get older it’s also a helpful way for the dancers to get a feel for the training at the particular school and think about if it is a place they’d like to be long term. We gave up trying to figure out why some places were lukewarm toward my DD and others were crazy about her. Instead we went where she was wanted and where she felt the best. That isn’t always the same place over the course of training, but we were very fortunate that she had options.

Also, the $2400 is tuition only at Southland. Add in the hotel in Southern California. But hey, you can have CP teach your class.

We’re from the US, so it’s a problem for us as well. I would give anything to be an EU citizen at this point!

Perhaps because it isn’t also considered and academic school? At Dutch National you can get a residency permit that lasts a few months past the two year school enrollment. The university initiates the process.

Housing is really tough in Amsterdam. The school has a couple of apartments that sometimes have a room available for the kids, but they usually use those for kids in the highest level of the regular school. I know of one 16-year-old who is staying with a Dutch woman, but I’m not sure how they found/arranged that situation. Perhaps that student will move into an apartment next year and the woman would take on a new student. AD students generally rent an apartment with a fellow student. There is a weird new rule in Amsterdam where only two unrelated people can register in an apartment, so you can’t get a bigger place and have three students share. Also, apartments are allowed to list as “no sharing” and only rent to couples and not students. There is a place called The Social Hub (used to be The Student Hotel) with two locations in Amsterdam. The City location is the most convenient for the school. It is basically a hotel room with a shared kitchen down the hall. About 12 students share each kitchen. Laundry is free, there is a small gym, and it includes a bike. It is shockingly expensive (a bit over €50/night) compared to sharing an apartment and rooms get booked within a couple of hours of registration opening for the semester. I don’t mean any of this to sound discouraging. The school is very international, has great training, and is a very positive place. The kids all do fine living on their own. They socialize together and support one another—perhaps not all living together eases some of the pressure students feel in a boarding school situation. The city feels really safe and manageable. I am about 5500 miles away from my daughter as we speak and have absolutely no regrets about sending her there.