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Associated schools of Birmingham Royal Ballet


Nana Lily

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Along with the new website of Birmingham Royal Ballet came this extra section which attempts to explain the affiliation of RBS and Elmhurst. The explanations are lengthy and detailed and loose impact early on. Even though I am eager to understand the affiliation I lost interest in the first couple of paragraphs, meaning that I couldn't be bothered to read the full explanation of the Elmhurst link as too detailed and appears to be clumsily put together and somewhat schizophrenic explanation of the two affiliated schools.

 

Thats my opinion, maybe I am just being skeptical, and would welcome other views. Open to persuasion

 

Here is the link to the BRB website:

 

http://www.brb.org.uk/Vocational-ballet-schools.html

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This is the historical story of how the Royal Ballet and Birmingam Royal Ballet were linked. They both emerged from the same place, it seems as though this is just an informative insight and reminder of their past and present links. In a recent performance of Copellia by the Birmingham Royal Ballet when my DD looked at the back of the programme at where the dancers had trained, the majority had trained at the Royal Ballet school. It does make for interesting reading.

Ax

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After re reading over breakfast this morning, I can now see the history of the Royal Ballet, BRB and the RBS is complex. On a positive note its fabulous the schools have a whole page of the website explaining the affiliation, something which hasn't always been so transparent. The statement at the beginning, "Birmingham Royal Ballet draws most of its dancers from two leading British vocational ballet schools: the Royal Ballet School in London, and Elmhurst School for Dance in Birmingham" is a strong statement and support for two of our top British schools. So well done to BRB for including this section. Is there is anyway to smooth over the complexity of the history though to make for easier reading?

 

NL

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I think this is a great step forward in an official link between Elmhurst and BRB. We were at Elmhurst in its relatively early days in Birmingham and the link gets stronger and stronger.

This is good in a number of ways. One which can't be over-emphasized is in auditioning for companies. They like a recognised name . So Elmhurst's link to BRB is very important. Their involvement in the school has changed beyond recognition since my son's day.

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Why don't they change Elmhurst's name to The Birmingham Royal Ballet School? It would then be really clear to foreign ballet companies that the school has a strong connection to Birmingham Royal Ballet.

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Why don't they change Elmhurst's name to The Birmingham Royal Ballet School? It would then be really clear to foreign ballet companies that the school has a strong connection to Birmingham Royal Ballet.

 

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

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If you think about maybe giving Elmhurst the "Royal" name,i suppose it could work. Just look at all the music schools;Royal Academy of Music,Royal College of Music,Royal Northern College of Music,Royal Scottish Academy,etc. And i don`t know anything about music schools,but they are just the ones i know about.

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Dancerbabe82 in your opinion what is the difference between an official school of, or an affiliated school of?Maybe I am not looking in the right place or haven't done my research but I can't see a huge difference between the Royal Ballet School's association with the RB or Elmhurst's association with BRB. True historically RBS have supplied more dancers to BRB than Elmhurst but Elmhurst haven't done too badly of late and considering the school has only been associated with the company since 2002 ( correct me if I am wrong) I think they are doing incredibly well. It has also been known for the odd dancer trained at Elmhurst to end up a the Royal Ballet.

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