victoriapage

With the right information OP can make the right decision. I will grant that New York schools are going to be much more expensive not only in their tuition rates but also because with them comes the cost of living in New York, which of course is inordinately high. Getting accepted would be wonderful; paying for the costs comes next. The OP will be able to judge what their budget can afford. I remember, for instance, a pair of sisters who entered PCS at the same time when moving to New York to study at SAB. One had an SAB scholarship and the other didn't. I seem to recall that the fees for the two at PCS at the time (22 years ago!) were over 25 thousand dollars a year! Then! Their father was a doctor and paid for his wife and the children to move to New York, tuition at SAB, tuition at PCS, an apartment, living expenses (they were 10 and 12 years old), not to mention pointe shoes(!) and maintained his own home in their state. I shudder to think. But if OP and family were to be moving here, then they would be looking near where they were headed to see what the best offerings were in their area, and thankfully most larger cities have good schools. So with the information they get here, I hope the decision will be a little easier.

Just offering information as I cannot assume foreknowledge of OP's situation.

Professional Childrens' School is walking distance from the School of American Ballet and a lot of their students (as well as others) attend there. It has a long list of distinguished alumni and was established some 100 years ago. http://www.pcs-nyc.org/

Hauntings seem to be a modus operandi for this seller, as seen in a sale in February: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Haunted-doll-/281320170157

For some years I was a student assistant to a teacher of young children in the US. She taught the way she had been taught. Her youngest students were about 7 years old. The very beginning students were taught about simple time signatures like a march and a waltz, etc., how to draw them on a music sheet, how to count them, how to conduct them and then how to do simple steps like a march etc. to them. This was of course in addition to things like pointing feet, keeping backs straight and so forth. The pianist would help at the beginning by playing a piece, for instance a march, with particular emphasis in different places to help with counting etc. It was pretty effective.

Actually she wasn't dancing, he was; this was c1985-86. I'm pretty sure she was teaching in the school. I only recall him briefly in a ballet called Brahms-Haydn Variations by Michael Smuin.

Dale Baker and Anne Jenner were in San Francisco for at least a year, as he was dancing with San Francisco Ballet, before they went to Australia.

Many years ago, when Margot Fonteyn was doing a tour to promote her book "The Magic of Dance", she was a house guest of Ruth page, with whom she was great friends and who owned our ballet school. Miss page came to the studio one morning with Fonteyn in tow and asked me to give her a building tour, show her where she would dress in Miss page's own dressing room, where the studios etc. were. We had her with us for two days, during which she was ever so kind to the students she met (she never did class with anyone, but didn't seem to mind if a student looked into the studio where she was doing her barre), and when she left she took an entire hour in our building's lobby, surrounded by the students, signing anything and everything they presented to her with great patience, after which she made a point of thanking me "for everything". No disrespect to Miss page's last name, but for some reason my machine is having trouble with capitalizing the letter "p".

Hope putting it here is okay?

Actually, 'ballerino' is used in Italian: http://www.wordreference.com/iten/ballerino

However, she did dance with ENB in the 60s or 70s, I don't remember which..

grrr...from last year: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/sep/03/quality-street-chocolates-nestle-cadbury

Ah well, I think I shall retire from this discussion, I hope you don't mind. But I do appreciate the points you make.

I think that a person teaching those who wish to make dance a profession needs to have been a professional dancer. This doesn't include a recreational dancer in my mind. I will grant that a teacher who hasn't been a professional can bring a lot to a student who needs to know about the subject and can also do a lot to bring enjoyment and appreciation of it to their students. They may even serve well in the beginning stages of a dance education. However as a parent, I would be looking for much more in the dance education of my future danseuse or danseur. A certificate or diploma might or might not be part of that.

I partly agree; certainly if someone is a natural teacher then hopefully a course or certificate will only help, but I don't think it's a marker of a good teacher just because someone has one. But I must respectfully disagree about a professional career, unless you're thinking of someone teaching those who are not expected to become performers. I don't really see how someone who hasn't performed in a professional way can fully convey the realities of the profession to someone who wants to practice it.

Looking forward to the reports!

In my view, a teacher of a performing art needs to have been a professional performer. I had a long stint in ballet classes (over 14 years) but never once gave a paid performance. The unpaid ones I was part of (and there were just a small few), in my opinion, did not qualify me as a professional. Neither did the illustrious careers of those who taught me what they could. There are so so many good dancers out there whose claim to teaching credentials were better than mine would have been. So many teachers seem to have risen early from their dancing careers to be known as great communicators; I've never thought a teaching course or diploma or certificate made a good teacher in and of itself. And sometimes the greatest teachers have been those who had perhaps less than stellar careers (i.e. corps de ballet vs principal) but came into their own when teaching.

This one?

Well speaking of videos ...

I always thought Marguerite Porter was rather Audrey Hepburn-esque.

Miss Piggy was one Graham Fletcher! wicked magician trichinosis indeed!

Oh absolutely! But evidently Michaela De Prince has joined the junior company of Het Nationale Ballet (this according to her Facebook page and a number of other online sources).

Actually I think most of them go for the chance to be seen by a large group of professionals all at once, who could help you later if so inclined. Rather than go to see them etc.

I have to admit that I'm severely suspicious about the entire thing as it appears for now. At first observation, it would seem, no matter what their stated reasons for doing such a program, that it is more than just a little bit for prurient interest; for those who want a good laugh, etc. I took many, many years of classes. I loved dancing. I left it because at one point I could no longer afford to do it. I am now a large woman. Dancing is still of great interest to me. However not in a million years would I ever consider going back to it in this body. I'm not ashamed of the body. I don't like the way dancing looks on a large body as a whole. I can appreciate quality of movement no matter what the size of the practitioner of it, however I would consider it terribly flawed if I could not appreciate every part of it, in particular when it's being presented to me as a spectator and not as something that's just for the pleasure of execution. And when I say that, I have to go further and say also that I'm not speaking about the poor girls whose size varies in such tiny increments and who are excoriated for those tiny increments; they mostly look just lovely in tutus and tights and dance beautifully whether they are on the larger or the smaller side. I'm talking about really large people. I don't find it inspiring as a spectacle, though I'm sure it feels great for them. Oh dear, I've gone on.

From one ebay addict to another! Since 1998.