dancerbabe82

I would always say RAD over ISTD because the syllabus is more carefully linked to what kids can actually do well, in terms of their physical development, and the new grades syllabi really focuses on fundamentals of technique, strength and expression.

Wow congrats to all those with Yes's! What age group?

As a 'school' trained teacher as well as as 'normal' dance teacher, I imagine that at vocational schools they have to give modified exercises to more able and less able students within one year group - Ofsted inspect vocational schools too and look for this in lessons.

True skeletal maturity doesn't happen until the early 20's... As for being on pointe in the UK 'later than other countries' - pointe work progresses much more rapidly once a dancer has secure strength in their technique. Theoretically a dancer who doesn't start pointe until age 14 could be at the same level as a dancer who started pointe at 10 by the time they're both 15, just because the older girl has much more strength and technique and can make the progression much more effectively. Conversely I've seen many young girls being put on pointe too early tottering around like giraffes, having lost all control of their centre and turnout....

Has anyone heard yet? My pupil who went to the audition said it was pretty good - not too hard :-) They thought the teachers seemed lovely - apparently they "weren't serious and scary, they even made jokes"! and really tried to put the girls at ease which was good to hear. Pupil & mum were also really impressed with the facilities there... free parking, lots of waiting areas (and the cafe has really good hot chocolate according to mum!) and the studios are gorgeous apparently!

My pupil auditioned this morning I think - I'll see her next week so fingers crossed!

Rest will result in muscles losing size. However the quads are required to perform a lot of the movements in ballet; they are the prime muscles for stretching the knees, and are also used a fair amount in lifting the legs. In terms of lifting the legs, speak to your DD about making sure her pelvis is in the right position. If the pelvis is tilted then often the deep core muscles won't be engaged and the larger surface muscle groups will take over. Imagery is helpful - imagine using the deeper muscles to lift legs, or imaginging lengthening the legs away from the body when lifting them, as well as making sure they really are as turned out as possible will also help. However it is anatomically IMPOSSIBLE not to use the quads to lift the leg so any teacher who says this is mistaken. As for the 'inner thigh...' I wrote a post about this a while ago. Many dancers can't actually identify where the 'inner thigh' is! In parallel, this will be the adductor muscle groups but in 180 degrees of turnout the inner thigh is actually the hamstring group! And the role of the hamstrings are to bend the leg and lift it into arabesque (to some degree). This articles is very useful http://danceadvantage.net/2009/08/05/inner-thigh/ IADMS has lots of help sheets, this one is all about conditioning for leg extensions http://www.iadms.org/associations/2991/files/info/Bulletin_for_Teachers_1-1_pp5-6_Wilmerding.pdf

I do teach some of the current Adv foundation exercises and then move students onto the adv 1 exercises once they're strong enough - I give them the option if they want to take the exam (but I do this at every stage because I do a lot of free work as well as exam settings) because as other people said there is a huge jump between inter and adv 1 but some of the exercises are in both syllabi - this all stems from when the majors were pre-elementary, elementary, intermediate and advanced. Intermediate was then split into inter part one and part two (with the odd few exercises added in, to make it a 'traditional' ballet class - ie still with plies, tendus etc). Some people took the exams separately but others did the full lot in one exam. Part one was later re-named pre-intermediate and part 2 was named intermediate. When they changed the names and the majors became 'vocational graded examinations' pre-ele became inter foundation, ele became inter, pre-inter (formerly inter part 1) became advanced foundation, inter (formerly inter part 2) became adv 1 and advanced became advanced 2. It was all originally the RAD's 5 year programme but unless you were in full time training it soon became apparent that it took people longer than a year to get through each exam.

The Royal ballet school is the official school to the Royal Ballet and the Birmingham Royal ballet companies. Elmhurst is only 'affiliated'....

I was trying to re-focus back to what I percieved was the original question of the thread - it appears I misunderstood it.

Implies. Semantics again. My post actually said "without getting bogged down in ballet or any other art form" - and was merely to suggest that there are more dance genres, other than ballet and contemporary that might be discussed herein. But of course if a person dislikes seeing an oversplit in ballet they are welcome to say it too.

Let us not forget that this forum is entitled "doing dance" and perhaps should not ourselves get 'bogged down' in ballet, or any other dance form. The whole topic of discussion here is whether or not practicing over-splits is helpful, NOT our own personal opinion of the direction of classical ballet choreography in the 21st century (although I do acknowledge perhaps the connection between the two). As I mentioned earlier in the thread, having the passive range of motion (ie the flexibility of the muscles and joints without using ones own strength to hold them there) to get into an over-split will allow the dancer to get a greater active range of motion in all sorts of movements - not just in ballet choreography. Dancers who can only just get to a split passively will only be able to use about 150-160 degrees of this when they're actually dancing. Dancers of all genres are more likely to be employed, given places at colleges and schools, placed higher in competitions etc etc if they have this greater range of motion as it means they have the capacity to kick, developpe, leap, arabesque, roll around, tangle themselves up in knots or whatever their chosen dance genre requires them to do, better, and with less risk of overstretching/straining muscles. Of course I back this up by saying that this needs the strength to control this greater range of motion otherwise it's about as much use as Bambi on ice!

Go to the Olympics! When else are you going to get a chance like that? EYB should understand... and if they don't, well there's always next year, and the next, and the next....

Good! Glad she enjoyed the class :-)

I actually rarely do barre work these days. I mostly teach non-syllabus ballet classes and I do a warm up, then centre practice, pirouettes, adage and allegro. The only time my pupils do barre work is in the run up to an exam, to practice the exam settings, but I've found it really helps the kids with weight placement as well as strength and control :-)

Great advice here.... gentle cardio to get the blood going, loosen up the shoulders, neck and spine. The other thing that might be good is a few movements to loosen the hip joints gently, say stand on one leg and move the other around gently with the knee bent, circles in both directions etc

Taxi4ballet yes - loose ligaments leave a joint much more prone to damage. My motto is "anything that is stretched must also be strengthened".

I've done it too - works brilliantly!

there are still professional dancers in this country dancing longer; healthcare is improving but overall training (strength, fitness etc) has not improved because classical class doesn't train the dancers to do what they are now being asked to do which is learn and rehearse 4 different roles all at once, rehearse all day without adequate breaks to eat etc THAT'S what causes injury, and the research supports this. Aesthetics are so subjective that one persons like is another persons dislike. Dancing is increasingly more competitive and greater flexibility (as well as the strength to use it) as well as the ability to do other 'tricks' such as mulitple turns, leaps etc IS an audience pleaser. On a slightly different tangent, I love dance for the ability to be expressive and moving but I find it ironic that young dancers in vocational school spend so long perfecting the technical and skill elements - in year 7 every little technical flaw is ironed out, regimented and pupils spend hours in class. Why, if the whole point is expressivity?

That's dreadful. No wonder dancers dance with injuries then... they ought to have support from the company to help with injury prevention rather than being liable to being fired!

I think it's all very well to say the dancer knows their own body and to dance through an injury if it's only mild is ok but I worry about the message it sends to impressionable kids when they see "it's ok if so-and-so does it" - and as Anjuli says, it needs hindsight. How does a dancer really know if it's NOT going to aggravate or make it worse? Pain is the bodys way of saying something is wrong....

The RAD work only covers Russian, Hungarian and Polish.... these are the only 'national' dances in the traditional ballets such as Swan Lake - Mazurka, Czardas, Polonaise etc In fact, by grade 6,7 and 8 the movements are taken straight out of the ballets (a lot from Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty). It's lovely for the kids to see the movements they learn on stage, being done by the professionals!

So if companies like the Royal Ballet are using oversplit leaps and oversplit penchees etc to sell stuff, they must think that it is desirable?

JulieW it's called character because the term 'National' really applies to very traditional study of dances from different countries (and an ISTD syllabus!). 'Character' is the term for dances in the traditional ballets which aren't 100% accurate or true to the dance of the country but are much more staged for the theatre, and often quite classicised.

You're not silly! But the 'technical' term for flexibility where there is an external 'thing' or 3rd party applying the force is 'passive' versus active. Just sayin'!