rowan

The RAD boys-only class on Saturdays is taught by a renowned and very experienced male teacher.

I've just discovered that the ENB are running a Sporting Dance set of events in colloboration with London Broncos rugby club. http://www.ballet.org.uk/editorial.php?ref=big-dance-sporting ENB seem to be doing a lot of community work. Apart from its First Sleeping Beauty, they were also involved in a project at Tate Modern and there's their programme Dance for Parkinson's that seems to have a quite transforming effect on people with Parkinson's disease. All of these might get more people paying to see ballet in the theatre. I think there's a danger in emphasising the sporting nature of ballet. While it's good to show people that a ballet dancer has to be a supreme athlete, do people want to see the effort that goes into dancing on stage? Ballet is an art form that uses the body as its instrument; the blood and sweat are the red badge of courage for a rugby player, not a ballet dancer. The ballet dancer has to keep that badge well hidden. There's already a danger that ballet is becoming too sport-like, tending towards gymnastics, and soon, if it hasn't happened already, this is what is going to be expected of all ballet. Is the audience meant to applaud just those bits of the ballet where the dancer gets her leg up the highest, or does the greatest number of fouettes or performs the highest leaps? There are a number of sports which like to add ballet to their training regimes, as Stirrups36 mentioned: gymnastics, figure skating, high-board diving and I read recently that freestlyle skiers are encouraged to take ballet too. All these are sports with an artistic element though, and the ballet is to help with both the body conditioning and the artistry of their own sports. I'm not sure that the fact that ballet is used in a training regime will encourage people to buy tickets to watch ballet itself. I have experience of the Junior Talent ID programme for diving, which goes scouting for likely talent in primary schools and elsewhere. Interestingly, the scouts did not care whether children could even swim; the children that often got selected for this scheme were ballet dancers already.

I would really like to try some ballet classes but when I mentioned it to my dancing teenager that I might enroll in the adult beginner classes at her dance school, the look of utter horror on her face was something to behold!

Liked from my household too.

I noticed too, Jellybeans, and was going to say something! You beat me to it!

Thank you, Paul, for your interesting review. And I applaud ENB's effort here to introduce ballet to the young, or the very young even, and it's certainly great for ENBS students. It's a great start. But I worry that a production like this is preaching to the converted. The little girls, the furry pink wands, the lack of dads and boys... Bad habits are indeed formed young. Children's theatre performances and productions surely manage to get more of a gender mix in their audiences, and there's a wide range of stories, both old and modern, that are used; many children's theatres create their own tales from scratch. Why can't there be more short ballets for children that encompass a wider range of stories? Space, superheroes, animals, the list is endless. Children's bookshops are full of good tales that could make fantastic ballets and might have a broader appeal. If best-selling musicals can be created on the theme of cats or trains, why can't ballets? Some might wince at the thought of Spider-Man the ballet, but it might work!

Yes, I've heard that some art colleges like to take old pointe shoes so students can use them in projects. Also I've heard of people dyeing them and decorating them, as mentioned above, and doing a roaring trade selling them as decorative items at craft fairs and so on.

My mind has gone completely boggled reading this thread! Can anyone tell me, are soft pointes, demi pointes, soft blocks all the same thing?

I have to say I'm shocked at these prices. The situation can't be any different for ENBS or Rambert or any of the other London dance places. What about host families? Could that be an alternative?

I have to agree with Jellybeans and Pups_mum. It won't matter what you wear. There's no need to go to the trouble of getting a new leotard or new shoes - unless you needed them anyway, of course! And don't worry about waist belts either. If you don't have one, it doesn't matter. A simple bun will be fine for hair too - for the girls, that is! Enjoy!

DD's school (state comprehensive) offers GCSE dance only as a twilight subject for year 9/10. DD unfortunately couldn't do it because she was already taking GCSE music as a twilight subject in year 8/9 and the year 9 times clashed with GCSE dance. If we had known about her school's GCSE dance earlier, she would have picked this over the music, but as she was already a year into music, it seemed pointless to change. I don't know if outsiders can join the GCSE dance course though. The school was happy for her to try to fit in the GCSE dance on top of the GCSE music by offering her catch-up sessions on the dance syllabus that she missed, but in the end, DD didn't want to do it because the timings meant she would have to miss her own "proper" ballet lessons after school and she didn't want to do that. If it had been available during the normal school day she might have taken it as an option, but it's not. Some dance schools offer GCSE dance; the RAD HQ does. I don't know if you've looked into that too.

Aileen, yes, I agree. I think I said in an earlier post that it was Rite which was my own Road of Damascus moment in regards to ballet!

I saw Beyond Ballet Russes Programme 2 - thank you, balletcoforum, for mentioning the discounted tickets! - with a newbie ballet goer. Although not initially keen on going, especially on a sunny Sunday afternoon, he said he'd be up for seeing something again another time. What he liked the most was Suite en Blanc, where he felt there was no pressure to follow or understand the "story"; whereas with Apollo or Jeux there was a story of sorts which he had to concentrate on and work out who was meant to be who and what they were meant to be doing. With Suite he felt he could just enjoy the dancing.

I wasn't clued up about vocational schools when my child was 11 at all, but later on I started thinking about it and sent off for brochures, etc. But DD's father was adamantly opposed to it all - the idea of ballet training, the leaving home, "breaking up the family", etc. He wouldn't even consider looking at the prospectuses or going to open days, zilch. It caused a few arguments, and I let it go. Personally speaking, I would have liked my child to have tried, and now she's stuck in a much grimmer than expected inner-city comp while cramming in as many ballet lessons as she can manage after school, I wish she had!

That's fantastic news, Tulip!

I was hesitant about saying anything - not that I've got anything to say on this topic! - but some ballet forums have a policy about not discussing eating disorders and ban any attempts to do so...

The outreach schemes can be very successful. One of my own Nutcracker-hating children was identified for ballet training through one of these schemes and is now both a ballet-doing and a ballet-watching teenager. The sorts of ballets children on these programmes are exposed to are not necessarily the big classics either. Checkmate, Firebird and Elite Syncopations all spring to mind, to name but a few - definitely not truncated versions of Sleeping Beauty or Angelina Ballerina.

Are there acting exams like the one Primrose posted in British vocational ballet schools too?

I think I should be the one blushing and running away, saying I didn't like Nutcracker on a ballet forum!

I consider myself a ballet ignoramus and I only saw my first ballet a very few years ago at a Hamlyn Performance. It was Nutcracker and it typified everything that I thought I didn't like about ballet - the sparkly costumes, all that prancing around, the plot (What on earth was the second act all about?) I considered it a children's story done for children - a certain sort of old-fashioned, middle-class child. My own children were bored stiff! But through the Hamlyn Club I had access to other performances, including the mixed bills. When I saw the Rite of Spring it was simply fantastic - thrilling, dynamic, much more "real" and significant. I had no idea that dance could be like this. I think many people imagine ballet to be like Nutcracker - old-fashioned, irrelevant, for children who like dressing-up. Marketing the mixed bills as "not the Nutcracker" - thrilling ballets for modern grown-ups is, I think, the way to go. Their shortness should be an asset - three very different productions for the price as one! They should be the perfect introduction to ballet.

Can I ask, are apprentice contracts paid positions, or are they like the unpaid internships we hear so much about nowadays?

Back to the Training Abroad subject, there are many dance summer schools in Europe if young people want to test the water!

In case anyone isn't aware, the comments section on the Observer article is still going strong, with some particularly interesting posts from professional dancers, among others!

Not directly related to this topic thread but... I bought two £30 tickets at the Coliseum for R&J for Peter Schaufus Ballet starring Osipova and Vasiliev last year. At work the next week I discovered my work colleague had been at exactly the same event, had better seats and paid... nothing at all. How? Through being a member of Showfilmfirst. Although this advertises itself as a film club, it also gets lots of tickets to other events - opera, pop, ballet, comedy, all sorts. My friend has VIP membership (about £15 a year). You are emailed or texted details of events at short notice - often on the day of performance - and the tickets are free. I am not in Showfilmfirst myself because the short-notice thing doesn't work for me, and I don't know if there are any downsides, but there doesn't seem to be! Also personally, I love the mixed bills. I prefer them to the classics...

I know a few children who have been offered places at vocational school for Year 7 over the years. All were boys, all were doing one class a week, plus a JA class, none had done any form of dancing before they were eight or had taken any formal exams. I can make no comment of their ability technique-wise, etc, because I don't know enough about that, but as an observer, what these children had was a physicality, a quality of movement and a joy in movement and a "sureness" about them, a certain self-composure that made them stand out.