Dancers in Training

[penelopesimpson]

I was wondering if anyone could tell me a little about life at The Royal Ballet School.

 

i would appreciate any information, but am especially interested in how a dancer progresses through the years.  My question is in part prompted by Yasmine Naghdi’s interview when she mentioned that being singled out caused her problems.  Does this mean that it is evident from an early stage which pupils are likely to be future stars, or does everybody develop at a different pace?

[alison]

All I know, Penelope, is that some years ago the ROH held a ballet open day which included a rehearsal of the Nutcracker's Snowflakes scene, in the Floral Hall.  I suspect that Naghdi was still a student at the time, but obviously at the sort of stage in her training where she was occasionally performing in the RB corps.  I picked up a very real sense from the other Royal Ballet girls as they helped her assimilate everything that they were already acknowledging that she would end up outstripping them, and I noted the name "Yasmine" to myself and kept an eye on her thereafter.  Some dancers are clearly destined for stardom (your favourite Ukrainian, for one ) from an early age, whereas others develop more slowly: some don't end up attaining their expected potential for whatever reason, while others surpass it - I suspect every school of note has probably missed the odd "rough diamond" or been disappointed that someone hasn't progressed as expected.  Some get fast-tracked - not necessarily always to their benefit - while others find a slower approach more useful: someone (I think it may have been Jane S?) recalls that Stuart Cassidy did a third year when that wasn't the norm, and apparently benefitted greatly from it.

 

Others will be able to tell you more about the situation at the RBS, I'm sure. 

[hfbrew]

I remember a prominent teacher that I was working with at the time raving about this wonder child before she even auditioned for White Lodge .And yes,that was Yasmine. And I remember a certain child called Anna Rose O Sullivan , I knew she was special just from watching year 7 body conditioning class and told my dh to look out for her in the company.

But I would say that everyone develops at a different pace. I've seen students assessed out when the previous year they had top marks and had been picked for company productions. (Very often those who do get assessed out do much better elsewhere.)

And then there are those like ds who hang on by the skin of their teeth but still end up with a career having had the support and encouragement of one or two exceptional teachers.

I do think sometimes though that a lot of pressure can be put on the chosen few who end up missing out on half term holidays.  Then at the other end others are never singled out and I have seen some students who  have possibly underachieved  as a result of both extremes.

But to have been chosen for the Royal Ballet School in the first place a student has to have had something special. These students are often multi talented and the academic staff nurture them,  at least they did in ds day, There are many successful people in all walks of life who once went to the RBS.

[FLOSS]

Penelope,

There are at least two schools of thought about the part that teachers play in the development of dancers .Danilova's opinion was that " Great dancers are born, good dancers are taught by good teachers and good teachers are teachers who are good psychologists and know how to restrain one pupil and encourage others by helping them overcome their fear of failure." Baryshnikov said "Dancers are made not born" but then he had been taught by the great teacher Alexander Pushkin.

 

Obviously the rate of a student's development as a dancer varies from child to child. There are some students who stand out, even to the untrained eye, when they are still very young. It is generally factors such as the quality of their movement, their musicality, or their precocious ability to  command the stage  which mark them out from their fellow students.

 

Some are singled out as having something special about them almost from the day that they enter the school. I have always assumed that this was true of Sibley. There are some who give their best performances in class and others who don't seem to register with staff in class but are transformed and come alive on stage. I have always assumed that this was true of Karen Donovan who, as I recall, went into her main stage RBS performance without a contract but had one by the time that it had ended.

 

Then there are some who don't seem that promising to their teachers. Melissa Hamilton is a case in point and has said that coming from Northern Ireland where she had few opportunities for serious ballet training she was a long way behind students who had the opportunity to receive training on a regular basis. She went to Elmhurst where, she says, the teachers saw little potential in her because she was so far behind her classmates. It was only when Masha Mukhamedov  taught the class as a temporary replacement for the usual teacher that Hamilton came into contact with a teacher who saw potential in her.Hamilton has said that when Masha Mukhamedov told the other teachers that she had a potential ballerina in her class and named Hamilton the announcement was met with a degree of scepticism. When Irek's wife moved to Greece Hamilton followed her to continue training with her and after winning a US ballet competition and being offered a contract with ABT's junior company she eventually joined the Royal Ballet.

 

Even within an institution with a couple of hundred years experience of training and developing dancers the powers that be don't always get the match between teacher and student right. Nureyev said in the Foy documentary that when he joined the Vaganova Academy he was put into the director's class. Nureyev felt that the director could do little for him as a teacher and was afraid that if he stayed in his class he would

be called up into the army. Nureyev managed to get into the class of the great teacher Alexander Pushkin's, which put him in the director's bad books. He said that Pushkin explained little, but that he emphasized artistry and insisted that every movement had to have meaning. He described the combinations which Pushkin used in his class as "delicious" saying that they made you want to dance.

 

In every form of training there are students who are  quick learners seeming to understand everything immediately they are told and others who need far more help,support and attention.Those who not only show a rapid grasp of what is required of them and only need one correction to incorporate what is required in their own performance, possess real musicality and are performers tend to get on rather rapidly.Do schools recognise students with obvious potential at an early stage some film clips may provide an answer. The first can be found in a documentary made about Anthony Dowell called

"All the Superlatives" which interestingly was able to include a section of a boys' class which included the teenage Dowell; the second was a documentary about the RBS  made during Park's directorship which included a section with the young  Bussell and the young Wheeldon and then there is one  I recently stumbled across of Darcey Bussell visiting White Lodge and talking to some of the girls. A couple of the young students in the film looked incredibly like  Hayward and Naghdi.

 

It is not all perfect of course and schools are always in a state of transition simply because of the students passing through them. In an article published in the Observer in 2012 about why British trained dancers were not making it to the top of the RB a former teacher at the school was reported as saying that instead of helping students who were struggling the school tended to assess them out.The former teacher said that it was up to a school to do the best they could with their students and that in her experience such students often developed into very interesting dancers. I leave it to you to decide whether this is still a problem but I think that it is always the case that students need to find the right school and the right teachers for them.Robert Parker at Elmhurst has said that he had the experience of almost being assessed out and that experience influences the way that he approaches dealing with students who are slipping behind. He tells them and their parents and provides the student with the support and assistance that they need.

 

It would be inappropriate to make generalisations about the approach taken by individual directors to the development of the student dancers in their care, Each director's approach will be influenced by their own experience of being trained, their time working as a professional dancer and teacher and the state of the school, the quality of its graduates and its students'rates of employment on graduation, at the point at which they become the school's director. Gailene Stock  became director of the RBS at a time when the school's technical standards had slipped and the employment rate of its graduates  was  disappointingly low. During her directorship technical standards were improved and the graduate's employment rate was running at 100 %.

 

 Opportunities for RBS students to gain stage experience fluctuate according to the repertory which the company is performing. As you know White Lodgers get the chance to appear as guests and rodents in Nutcracker while students at the Upper School get opportunities to obtain stage experience when the company performs late nineteenth century classics like Swan Lake, Nutcracker  and Sleeping Beauty, These ballets  provide opportunities for final year students to appear with the corps as courtiers and other characters and as dancers to supplement the numbers in the corps. In the past students have been offered contracts and have joined the company during their final year without graduating. It will be interesting to see whether this will happen quite so often now that Kevin has put an apprenticeship scheme in place.

 

I hope that this throws a little more light on the topic.

Edited November 7, 2017 by FLOSS

[Nina G.]

Is this the short film you are referring to Floss? Five very young RBS pupils, filmed in 2006, Darcey Bussell coaching them. 

Two of those five girls are future Principals and they are standing right next to one another. It's hard to tell from this short clip if it was evident they were each destined to become a Principal at The Royal Ballet.

 

 

 

[LinMM]

Well it would be interesting to know in the recent world ballet days RBS student class film clip ...knowing that they were being filmed for a large audience ....how that class was arranged. It could have just been height order? Or if mixed years the older ones at front? Or were we meant to especially look at the three in the front row?.....because these are deemed possible future stars? Only because I had seen her somewhere else ....in a whole class length situation.... I was looking at or rather trying to see a girl who was not in the front row in this clip because I really feel this young lady has something special. It was also interesting to see her in a class of more equals .......they were all pretty good! But maybe people do see different qualities in different trainees ( whether a teacher or not) I suspect only rarely does ONE student stand out continually above others in all aspects of the Dance.

 

For me it is the progression from Lower school to Upper school which is an interesting point.

I've seen at various times lovely dancers who didn't make it into RBS upper having gone through all of White Lodge and one just hopes they make it through somehow and again lovely dancers who did make it to Upper School but not the Company ( Did they miss a trick with Guilia Frosi for example) As they did with Hamilton of course. 

Then of course once in the Company who will make it to Principal level ....this can be a bit subjective too as we all know.

 

I think finding a great teacher who you really gel with is a great asset for any dancer to have .......love the comment Nureyev supposedly said about "delicious" combinations which make you want to dance ....not always the most complicated ones either....ones that sort of reveal the dance to you....so that in those classes you are somehow "in"the dance not just  "doing" the dance .....teachers like that are rare gems I think. 

This is a fascinating subject but also maybe some purely practical concerns on the school's part maybe the children on scholarships ......can they feel justified in still offering one each year after Year 7? It would be lovely to think that all the students who wanted to would be allowed to stay until at least 16 but it's quite a hard world out there for top talented people ....who goes who stays.

 

In the recent documentary about the selection at year 7 of Vaganova students in Russia even the selectors were not always in agreement and one teacher in particular seemed to really fight for the little girl Olga to be allowed to train there.

Looks like it's paid off so far..... she is still there and such a delightful little dancer!! 

 

[capybara]

7 hours ago, Nina G. said:

Is this the short film you are referring to Floss? Five very young RBS pupils, filmed in 2006, Darcey Bussell coaching them. 

Two of those five girls are future Principals and they are standing right next to one another. It's hard to tell from this short clip if it was evident they were each destined to become a Principal at The Royal Ballet.

 

Maybe not then even though they had clearly been chosen for the filming! However, by 2009 when Yasmine Naghdi won YBDY and in 2010 when Francesca Hayward won the same competition, their extraordinary talent was plain to see.