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RBS Graduate Destinations 2018


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ENB regards dancers who come via the Prix de Lausanne as Artists. They might well be on one year contracts initially but they do not appear to be within a separate 'category' as at the RB.

Edited by capybara
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1 hour ago, capybara said:

ENB regards dancers who come via the Prix de Lausanne as Artists. They might well be on one year contracts initially but they do not appear to be within a separate 'category' as at the RB.

 

Yes, although I understand that Shale (and Others) was offered an ongoing contract, otherwise ENB would not have needed to offer anything because as the first prize winner they were obligated to take him for the year under the conditions of the PDL.

The Prix website always lists the prize winners as being awarded a scholarship or an apprenticeship depending on which age category they were in because that is what they're funding. Some companies might choose to offer a full contract to a prize winner from the outset if they're really interested in them so as not to lose them to a company offering a better contract! This must be a dilemma for dancers with the ambition to join the RB as the company often don't keep on the apprenticeships after the initial year. Notably, none of this years prize winners chose the RB for their apprenticeship and I wonder if this is the reason.

 

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Please forgive my ignorance, but what are the *material* differences between being an Aud Jebsen dancer and having a full contract? Do full contracts for new graduates typically run for longer than a year, or is there a significant amount of extra money for a full contract?

 

If neither of these is the case (and there are suggestions above that this is so), does the real difference from the dancer's point of view boil down to an appearance of greater commitment from the company's side?

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An Aud Jebsen apprentice is taken on a trial basis this means they are not accepted as - nor do they have the status of being - a Company dancer, they are not official members of the corps de ballet. If at the end of their trial period the apprentice is offered a contract it becomes a permanent contract, once on a permanent contract an RB dancer cannot be sacked and will be with the RB for as long as they want and can dance (unless their performance standard is not up to RB standards and RB expectations, or for any other reason...!).

 

An Aud Jebsen dancer can be asked to leave the RB after their Apprenticeship is over and there is no guarantee they will be offered a permanent contract. They take daily class with the Company and watch their rehearsals. They may be asked to stand in when a corps de ballet member is ill or injured. It allows them to observe and adjust to Company life, to the physical and mental demands of being a professional dancer, and they also learn choreography by watching the rehearsals. 

 

Those days of offering permanent RB contracts to Graduates seem to be well and truly over as the Company seems to be at full capacity, already filled with so many highly talented dancers who came out of the School over the past decade. 

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16 minutes ago, Xandra Newman said:

 

 

They may be asked to stand in when a corps de ballet member is ill or injured.

 

This season, particularly in Swan Lake, a number of the apprentices have been taking corps de ballet roles in their own right (i.e. they have not just been filling in for injured dancers)

 

Also, I remember Kevin O'Hare saying that apprentices get additional coaching, tailored to their needs. He specifically mentioned that he had asked Darcey Bussell to come in to give guidance to the taller female apprentices of a particular year's intake.

Edited by Bluebird
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28 minutes ago, Xandra Newman said:

If at the end of their trial period the apprentice is offered a contract it becomes a permanent contract, once on a permanent contract an RB dancer cannot be sacked and will be with the RB for as long as they want and can dance 

 

Really?  So that's more comparable - if I've understood correctly - to the situation at the Paris Opera Ballet, except without the enforced retirement age - but not as (overly?) generous as the situation with some Russian companies?

 

Quote

An Aud Jebsen dancer can be asked to leave the RB after their Apprenticeship is over and there is no guarantee they will be offered a permanent contract. They take daily class with the Company and watch their rehearsals. They may be asked to stand in when a corps de ballet member is ill or injured.

 

Presumably taking priority over RBS students, then?

 

Quote

Those days of offering permanent RB contracts to Graduates seem to be well and truly over as the Company seems to be at full capacity, already filled with so many highly talented dancers who came out of the School over the past decade. 

 

It was predictable that this was going to happen, given that intake seems to have outpaced "natural wastage" over the past few years.  But tough for the students graduating at the moment.

I suppose that even if there are no places for AJ dancers to move into, they might be told "we really like you and want you in the company, but there are no places available at the moment, so go and get experience somewhere else for a year or two".  They might even get preference when vacancies do arise, as management will already have an idea of how well they'll fit into the company?

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1 hour ago, alison said:

Presumably taking priority over RBS students, then?

 

Maybe so. However, I saw the following RBS students on stage during the run of Swan Lake:

Yu Hang, Yu Kurihara, Yuki Sugiura, Katharina Nikelski, Amelia Townsend (I think), Harrison Lee, Dingkai Bai and some other young men whose names I'm not sure of.

 

Did anyone spot anyone else?

 

As I mentioned on another thread, some of these students, along with others, have been working with BRB quite a lot during the year.

 

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16 minutes ago, capybara said:

 

Maybe so. However, I saw the following RBS students on stage during the run of Swan Lake:

Yu Hang, Yu Kurihara, Yuki Sugiura, Katharina Nikelski, Amelia Townsend (I think), Harrison Lee, Dingkai Bai and some other young men whose names I'm not sure of.

 

Did anyone spot anyone else?

 

As I mentioned on another thread, some of these students, along with others, have been working with BRB quite a lot during the year.

 

Amelia Palmeiro and Nadia Mullova Barley. 

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  • 4 months later...
  • 3 months later...
On 29/06/2018 at 08:33, RuthE said:

Here it is in text form for the benefit of anyone on a more basic user interface (and for ease of editing for whoever ends up posting later amendments!) with apologies for any typos.

 

Harris Bell - Royal Ballet - Aud Jebsen Young Dancers Programme

Yu Hang - Royal Ballet - Aud Jebsen Young Dancers Programme

Harrison Lee - Royal Ballet - Aud Jebsen Young Dancers Programme

Taisuke Nakao - Royal Ballet - Aud Jebsen Young Dancers Programme

Katharina Nikelski - Royal Ballet - Aud Jebsen Young Dancers Programme

Amelia Townsend - Royal Ballet - Aud Jebsen Young Dancers Programme

Yu Kurihara - Birmingham Royal Ballet

Tori Forsyth-Hecken - Birmingham Royal Ballet

Callum Findlay-White - Birmingham Royal Ballet

Lennert Steegen - Birmingham Royal Ballet

Isabella Howard - Birmingham Royal Ballet

Yuki Sugiura - Birmingham Royal Ballet

Eli Gruska - American Ballet Theater Studio Company

Ryota Hasegawa - Ballet de l'Opera National de Bordeaux

Lore Zonderman - Dutch National Ballet Junior Company

Dingkai Bai - Dutch National Ballet Junior Company

Rebecca Blenkinsop - English National Ballet

Maren Skrede - Norwegian National Ballet

Laurence Elliott - Polish National Ballet

Aaron Venegas de Frutos - Scottish Ballet

Gearoid Solan - Zurich Ballet Junior Company

Where is Emily Umbrazunas?

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I don't know where she is at present. Her name appears in the cast list of dancers in the 2018 Disney film Nutcracker and the Four Realms in which Misty Copeland and a certain Sergei Polunin seem to have leading roles. As for where she is now. Possibly back in Australia ?

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