rowan

This may help. 1923 to 2009 Radio Times listings with fairly comprehensive details about the programme. https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/

In addition, community and amateur arts organisations are closing. My local community choir shut down yesterday, along with its twin choir nearby, and our concert cancelled. Community groups can restart later, but our choirmaster is a professional musician paid by the choirs he teaches.

We have been asked several times not to talk about the political and medical aspects of Coronavirus. Those of us living directly with the effects and life-threatening knock-on side-effects of it, who know some actual verified facts, will beg to differ on whether it is “collective hysteria” or a “whimper of victimhood”. I could say much, much more, but we have ALL been requested not to talk about this on this ballet forum.

Possibly not as simple as it sounds. The BBC doesn’t necessarily own the programmes it holds in its archives, or have the rights to show them.

The Stage is listing minute-by-minute updates over theatres, cancellations of shows, procedures they are putting in place for staff and theatregoers, etc. At the moment the West End stays open. https://www.thestage.co.uk/features/promoted/2020/coronavirus-breaking-news-and-live-updates-as-the-theatre-industry-responds/

Some TV shows have cancelled their live studio audiences. The Jeremy Vine Show in the U.K. and several in the US.

My DD’s company abroad has cancelled all performances, the theatre is closed, and its tours have been cancelled/postponed. As a relatively large company, it’s probably financially better protected than many, but I know of dancers elsewhere being sent home. Mine is hanging in there for now, waiting for news.

I would have expected all finals to be cancelled. Likewise, dance exams. Anything that involves people travelling. I also would expect dance schools in general to be developing some procedures about limiting contact - though how you do that in a dance class I have no idea - hand sanitisers, cleaning the barres, etc. I would expect some dance classes to be cancelled or schools closed for a while.

Here is POB school timetable - from their website. I’ve no idea how this compares to the U.K. The hours don’t look excessively intense to me. Students have their education divided in two parts each day: in the morning, from 8 am to 12 am, the students attend academic classes and in the afternoon, they have ballet classes.The students have a lunch break with a meal they necessarily take at the School restaurant, then the ballet lessons start at 1.30 pm, with a break and a snack at the restaurant between 4.30 pm and 5 pm. They can have one or two classes of 1h30 each every day, apart from rehearsals.

Schools like Vaganova and POB have their own established training systems. Students are also ruthlessly assessed out of those schools. It seems to me that many intensively trained young dancers come from countries where there isn’t a world-famous national school available to them, or countries where home schooling is very normal.

And worth bearing in mind that many who have trained intensively from a young age won’t “make it” either. We just don’t hear about them so much.

I’ve always thought that U.K. vocational schools should be regarded as normal educational schools with additional dance training, rather than dance schools with additional educational training.

“The ultimate proof that there are many roads to Rome ...” This is so true. If it helps, mine did not go to vocational school, but still ended up in a company with a dancer who had been to RBS from 11. They were the only Brits, I think. Depends what sort of teaching you have available locally, of course.

York Dance Space does drop-in classes. Looks to be more contemporary dance, but offers ballet too. http://yorkdancespace.com/

That’s interesting, Karen. The problem with vocational schools is that many students start at them at 16 and they may be studying for degrees or diplomas or whatever. Many are much more like higher/further education institutions, as we see from all the threads about funding, etc. Would that make a difference re statutory obligations/Ofsted? I don’t know if it would be different if you were in the same institution from 11-19.

I don’t think it is equivalent to this. It’s more like, what support does a university give to its graduating students to find a job? On average, not much, I’d guess. It’s for the student to be proactive and seek out what they need. However, I think as a minimum, a ballet school needs to lend out its studio for the taking of videos or photos, with coaching for a solo, if this hasn’t been done already. Plus, a suggestion of where to look for jobs, websites, etc, for those without a clue. But really, students need to have a clue. Unlimited time off for attending auditions. It would never occur to me this wouldn’t be granted. The issue of using connections is tricky, because no doubt this might not be opened up to all students.

It might be worth having a look at the bios of dancers from various companies, in Europe, say, and see if you can see where they trained, bearing in mind that websites might not be up to date and bios can be misleading, by mistake or on purpose. You might for example see RBS, but that actually means “was a JA” or “left after one year”, omitting the years spent doing solid top-notch training at no-name school.

I do think it’s difficult for ballet schools that are not affiliated with a company to help a great deal. There will be a limit to the number of contacts they have, the number of company class invitations or invited auditions they can wangle. And they probably can’t - or won’t want to? - get them for all their ballet students. Even if they can get some, it doesn’t mean there are any actual jobs going. And can they keep that up year after year? There are also a lot of ballet schools out there in the world - the world - the vast majority of which most people won’t have heard of. It can be easy to fall into a trap of thinking that X Not Famous ballet school won’t be much good and their students are no threat, otherwise they’d be at somewhere “better” = well known. This is not the case at all. In fact, it may sometimes be the opposite.

To be frank, I’m not sure that anyone should be optimistic about chances of getting a job in ballet. In fact, realistically, it’s downright idiotic to aim for it. You are much more likely to get a decent dancing job if you aim for other types of dance. It’s hard to comprehend when your child is younger and all things seem possible, no matter how much you read about the odds.

I’ve been checking some facts on the questions you posed. Advice about where to apply? - Yes, but DD also applied for everything she could find. Was offered lots of auditions at major and smaller companies. Sometimes had to turn auditions down because the dates clashed with other auditions. Hard choices had to be made here. She turned down auditions in the USA, because of the likelihood of not getting a work visa, and the expense made it unfeasible for us. Was help given in school to make rehearse/ plan/produce audition dvds ( or online equivalent) ? -Not needed. Took headshots on her phone. No arty shots. But did have access to professionally filmed stage work. She edited and set up everything herself. I think help would have been given if needed. Were company artistic directors invited into school or for a special performance? - No. But school did get her a couple of auditions through contacts. Were solos choreographed/ rehearsed by staff for auditions? - Not needed. DD already had solos to use. But these had been rehearsed by staff originally. Or were the dancers ( or parents?) left pretty much to sort this sort of stuff out on their own? - Much of the legwork was done by DD, though the school helped where it could. As parents, we had no involvement at all, apart from forking out for flights/hostels, etc. DD did not attend one of the well known vocational schools. I suppose if she had attended RBS or the worldwide equivalents, it would have been easier. However, she always made the last round everywhere she auditioned and had several job offers. Most of her auditions were cattle call. As had been said, there are hundreds at these auditions, with talented ballet dancers from across the world and competition is tough. Just to give an idea of the possible competition, sometimes she was up against a soloist from one company trying for a corps position in another. Or a load of ballet dancers made redundant from another national company. In one of the major German companies, she made the last four, with the jobs eventually going to Vaganova school graduates.

Pictures, I have always followed your posts with much interest over the years. I do not post so much these days but I always look out for the old-timers here, of whom you are one. Thank you for your much valued contributions. I wish you and yours all the best.

You don’t need to have professional photos done. My DD never did. Doesn’t seem to have mattered.

Short-term work in a company situation while you are on breaks or at home will be hard to come by, especially if you are only 16. There are short-term dancing jobs advertised for a few months or weeks, but they might not fit with the times you have off for breaks. They will be highly sought after by professional dancers who have completed their training. At 16, most dancers are not company ready. But no harm trying if you meet the minimum age required. It might be helpful if you can explain why you want the work - to gain experience in a working company, to gain performance experience, to have something to put on a CV? Are you looking for ballet in particular or more general dance work? If you need stage experience, could you join a dance school, or perhaps a summer school, that offers performing opportunities?

It doesn’t seem to matter. My DD doesn’t have any “qualifications” in ballet and is a ballet dancer. No grades, diploma or degree but does have three A levels. Never did a competition or had a private lesson. No directors came to her ballet school. She got lots of audition offers - based on her video submission - and a few job offers. I suppose there will be auditions she applied for that she didn’t get but I didn’t hear much about those! Her teacher did get her a couple of auditions but neither resulted in an actual real job.

I had a similar encounter with Francesca’s grandfather while in the audience for Onegin a couple of years ago. I started chatting to a man in the seat next to me during the interval, and it turned out to be him. He was clearly so proud of her.