Auditions Europe

[Nama]

28 minutes ago, rowan said:

It’s just as bad abroad, I suspect. Where my DD is - European national company - there are complaints over the number of foreign dancers in the company, and over the fact that fewer and fewer young people from the national ballet school get into the company. They accept about one every two years in recent years.

I guess if you look at the pathways into top schools lately has been very focused on international competitions. Uk kids aren’t a majority in these comps - the pathway from white lodge has been volatile. Then when they audition into the uk ballet companies at graduate time - a large portion of the graduates are overseas passport holders - they’ve also been show cased through the last 2 years at the school and hence go in with an advantage. Plus having gold medals etc on your resume and scholarship winners. You look better on paper to even get the advantage of an audition and p.r to get you noticed.  If you come up through the uk rbs system you are discouraged from international competition and hence very reliant on the local system. If that system then focused on the overseas students where does that leave the uk kids. There is a problem with the funding model of the uk schools and the reliance on overseas students and attached scholarship money and donor sponsors. 

[Glissé]

18 minutes ago, Pups_mum said:

Even at 18 we are not fully mature - never mind at 10 or 11 when many children are asked to nail their colours to the ballet mast. It is surely only to be expected that many will change their minds, if for no other reason than they have grown up and found other interests. Goodness, how many of us ended up doing as adults what we thought we'd be at 18, never mind 11? I didn't even know that my eventual specialty existrd when I was 11 and I would have struggled to write more than a couple of sentences about it at 18. In fact it wasn't on my radar when I graduated either. So why would anyone look down on a dancer for changing direction when they are just doing the same as most of us - growing up, not giving up. Some will grow into ballet, others will grow away. 

 

Exactly right, even when our children decide to audition for upper schools at 16 they are still very young and between the ages of 16 and 19 they mature into young adults. If they go to an upper school and complete a levels or a degree  alongside their training they may find interest in a field elsewhere and therefore their aspirations may change I think upper schools need to accept and realise this. 

Edited March 10, 2021 by Glissé

[Lifeafterballet]

I feel as parents on this ballet journey we find it easier to accept and support a change of heart and path in our children more than the schools do. Less disappointed I guess.