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International Students taking 6th form places


Oldermum

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Oh now wait a minute a majority of our British students at vocational schools are just as focused, determined and committed as their foreign friends equally so, especially at 6th form level. They are all as fierce as each other. My daughter has been at vocational school and has never witnessed verbal abuse towards her teachers both dance and academics in all the six years she has been there. Places should go to the best students but anyone who is not determined or lacks respect should be asked to leave

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At my dd's school the 'use of touch' is standard and discussed as part of training. Not abusive touch but movement and correction.

I also appreciate that foreign students are accepted to her school for many reasons...diversity, standards, striving for the best.

Regarding funding? We have different sources for scholarships and bursaries. Tax money - in my opinion - should be used for residents. But her school has funding from other sources that allows room for foreign scholarships and thus the school has seen some amazing dancers graduate.

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Totally agree Tulip but they aren't disciplined Actually many of the foreign students do work harder as they have often come a long way to study. . As I said I hope things have changed but the behaviour was truely shocking. It would not have been tolerated in a local state school but was in this vocational school. All I ask is students work hard but I really think if a student getting a DaDa is consistently rude and abusive the DaDa should be removed. should say this was not just one pupil either.

 

 Of course this may have just been this school going through a not great time. Same school did have complaints about its students when out and about. A great shame.

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Hmmm I'm intrigued now in wondering which school it was back then. I totally agree with you that funding should be removed for bad behaviour and not even on a strike three and your out, more of a case do it again and your out. I agree for example the culture of some nationalities such as the Japanese behaviour like that would never happen in their country, and yes they work exceptionally hard in all subjects, however not all nationalities are the same and they too must get some bad behaviour in their schools.

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The "touching" issue is a touchy one.

 

When I first started to teach, touching was part of teaching. But as the years went by it changed and now....

 

In the USA, my experince as a teacher has been:

 

In a college/university setting - no touching. Any hint of any un-PC communication - physical, verbal or anything else will immediately be reported. That included not only the teachers but other staff such as the pianist.

 

In a performing arts middle and high school (public school in the American meaning of that) - absolutely no touching.

 

In a private studio - ask for permission and/or clarify policy of studio with parents prior to registration.

 

Even in a non-dance setting, when I was tutoring reading to an 10 yr old girl, with her mother present, I asked permission of the mother before giving the child a hug.

 

When I spent the day going from teaching ballet class in the university to the studio and/ or performing arts schools - it was difficult to remember where I was allowed to touch and where not and whom - so I got in the habit of keeping my hands behind me lest I make an error. Oh dear, oh dear!

 

The reality is of course that in a private studio setting as time goes by students, parents and teachers get to know one another well and there is a trust and so touching becomes the natural part of teaching ballet that it should be. This never happens in a public or university setting.

 

Sometimes, it is just so hard not to spontaneously give an upset (or happy!) child a hug.

 

This is the same with verbal communication. In the public school I was told that all instruction must be preceeded by the word "please." As in: "Please try it this way" or "please stand over there" or "please move your hand forward." I began to feel I was teaching in a prison run by the inmates. Needless to say, not dependent upon my income to eat, I did not seek to renew my contract. Any knowledgeable teacher who could left after a semester or two.

 

Of all the different venues, I preferred teaching in a private studio.

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Anjuli, what a nightmare! I teach Pilates and I can't imagine teaching without touching to correct. I mainly work with adults but also work with young dancers and whatever their age and experience -correction is needed.

 I remember very clearly my own teacher shaping my foot around my ankle with her hands.  Another arranging my hands.  I was thrilled they took the time to do this.

 

In one of the classes at the university,  I was lining the students up in small groups to come down the diagonal.  One young woman was standing behind me and in a class of about 25 I didn't see her behind me.  So - after getting all the groups set, I turned around and seeing her, said: "Oh sorry, I didn't see you behind me ......"

 

She interrupted me and said:  "Too late to apologize - you've lowered my self esteem.  I'm going to report this."

 

The other students talked her out of it assuring her it was not intentional. 

 

As for me, again not being dependent upon my income,I came to the conclusion that a university is not a good setting for teaching - seriously teaching - ballet.   When an Islamic female student demanded that the male pianist (he realy needed his income)  be replaced by a female and the room to be closed off so no one (male) going by in the hall could see her and another student demanded a huge fan to blow on the entire class no matter what the temperature because she had asthma - that was the final straw for me.   A private studio has some craziness, too, but not like this.

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I wonder if one of the reasons that UK schools are so attractive to international candidates is because people all over the world learn English as a second language, and it must be much easier to live in a foreign country if you have already learned to speak the language.

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I think the key question is here is not 'why aren't the British students given priority at RBS upper school' but more 'why, having come through 5 years of full time training in the specific method/style the RB/RBS US want to see, aren't more of the RBS lower school better able to compete with their international peers'. To me this is the 6 million dollar question!!

 

I don't think anyone is suggesting that RBS should practise positive discrimination, it's more a query about the teaching quality at the lower school. I have often wondered about this because amongst the (mainly Russian) teachers who have taught DS the general opinion of RBS lower school is not that high (sorry if this annoys people and I don't say I agree as I have a huge degree of ignorance of the general ballet world). But because the upper school does take so many international students (who have had the majority of their training elsewhere) I do think the RBS rep for high employment after upper school is harder to interpret....

 

Logically there seem to me to be 3 possible explanations:

1) UK is a small place and simply can't produce all that many internationally competitive dancers (and never has done);

2) RBS lower school teaching is currently out of step with the type/style of dancer favoured by upper school and RB company;

3) RBS lower school teaching is just not up to the job so only the most extraordinary talented youngsters stand out when it gets to US level...

 

Of course there are many examples of students going through White Lodge to US to RB, but the issue here is why aren't there more. I really don't know the answer but I do think there is very little information available with which to judge this objectively (it would be pretty easy to analyse the data but it isn't made public)........

 

By the way when I was desperately canvassing opinion about the merits of sending DS abroad for vocational training at 13 the vast majority of people on this site who responded were extremely positive about the concept of going abroad and how to cope with it- in huge contrast to the USA ballet forum where most people said we should take the stay at home option. So I don't think UK parents are all that inflexible when it comes to thinking about international training....

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I think the key question is here is not 'why aren't the British students given priority at RBS upper school' but more 'why, having come through 5 years of full time training in the specific method/style the RB/RBS US want to see, aren't more of the RBS lower school better able to compete with their international peers'. To me this is the 6 million dollar question!!

I absolutely agree! And that question has been bothering me for a while...

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of course I have just thought of option 4) which is: suppose that in 20 countries there are 40 international standard classical ballet schools generating around 800 students at age 16. Assume therefore 80 are in the top 10% for ability. If a third of them decide to apply to RBS because it has such a great reputation, that's 25 or so applying. At the lower school, assuming there are 40 16 year olds, there will be 4 who are in the same top 10%. So you can easily how the Upper School places go to international students. You can fiddle with the numbers a bit (I have no idea in truth how many ballet schools there are and how many apply to RBS and whether only the really top tier ones apply or all sorts!) but if you look at the figures like this then the lower school looks actually pretty good if around half the school get places.

 

Apologies about all the numbers (you can tell I do statistics as part of my job!)

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I don't normally contribute to this part of balletcoforum. However, yesterday, at the final session of RBS's series of lecture/demonstrations about the schools which influences Ninette de Valois, there was emphasis on the need to retain the English/Ashton style. It was such an august gathering that I hesitated to enquire whether the enrolment of so many Upper School students whose initial training has been abroad and the subsequent integration of many of them into the RB and BRB risked having an adverse impact on style.

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Good analysis, CeliB. I wonder whether the problem in the UK schools generally is that it takes a long time for the students to really get going. As has been said previously on other threads, it's possible for a student to get into the RBS at 11 having done almost no ballet if s/he has he right physique. Does this happen in other countries? I feel that the RB US takes credit for the success of international students whose technique has really been honed in schools abroad. I wonder whether the constant stream of students entering and leaving the Lower School (up to year 10) actually militates against the students reaching the standard of their international couterparts. Do students entering the Lower School after year 7 have the same success rate (however that is measured) as the ones who started in year 7?

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I think CeliB has hit the nail on the head. There are actually more White Lodge students taken proportionally than statistics should suggest with regularly over half of them making it to Upper School. In my experience of seeing WL students, they are all beautifully trained with an attention to detail that is not always there in some of the other schools. The ones that make it to Upper School are the ones that seem to have that something extra that can't be taught.

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"As has been said previously on other threads, it's possible for a student to get into the RBS at 11 having done almost no ballet if s/he has he right physique. Does this happen in other countries?"

 

In POB, a student can get in without any ballet at age 8 or 9. After that, they are supposed to have reached the same level as kids their age who are already at the school. Feasible at 10 but far less at 12 or 13 hence the few who manage to get in...

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I don't normally contribute to this part of balletcoforum. However, yesterday, at the final session of RBS's series of lecture/demonstrations about the schools which influences Ninette de Valois, there was emphasis on the need to retain the English/Ashton style. It was such an august gathering that I hesitated to enquire whether the enrolment of so many Upper School students whose initial training has been abroad and the subsequent integration of many of them into the RB and BRB risked having an adverse impact on style.

Well... maybe some of the august gathering read this forum!

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I think CeliB has hit the nail on the head. There are actually more White Lodge students taken proportionally than statistics should suggest with regularly over half of them making it to Upper School. In my experience of seeing WL students, they are all beautifully trained with an attention to detail that is not always there in some of the other schools. The ones that make it to Upper School are the ones that seem to have that something extra that can't be taught.

And generally those who don't make it to US get snapped up elsewhere.  But this thread is about international students taking places.

 

As I've said previously I'd much rather know a student is there on merit rather than Nationality.

 

And as a teacher I've observed students from all the major 6th form schools and can honestly say that our safely trained British students do hold their own. Yes some international students are better , just as I am sure some British students who choose to train abroad will be better than their peers too.

 

Again as i said earlier some internationals will turn, bend, do tricks etc but this often goes hand in hand with lack of musicality (I'd much rather see a clean musical pirouette than multiple spins) , untidy distorted lines,  heavy landings on over turned out feet (rather than proper use of turnout through legs).

Some of these youngsters will have been performing these feats for years but this does not make them more advanced, rather more likely to struggle with injury or in the case of girls have over pronounced bunions.

 

Obviously I have also seen many beautifully trained international students and also badly trained British ones but this doesn't equate to all internationals being better, or vice versa for that matter. 

 

Finally, a student who doesn't get to the Upper School of whatever school they've been training at isn't necessarily a failing of that school- more a case of being then better suited to a another way of training.  I have known many ex White Lodgers do very well in further training away from US. Certainly in my ds sons year many found themselves in employment before their peers at Covent Garden- a testament to their excellent training when they were young.

 

Which leads me to the final point that there are British trained British dancers all over the world so is it any wonder that international students want to come to Britain?

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Quote Celib:  "I think the key question is here is not 'why aren't the British students given priority at RBS upper school' but more 'why, having come through 5 years of full time training in the specific method/style the RB/RBS US want to see, aren't more of the RBS lower school better able to compete with their international peers'. To me this is the 6 million dollar question!!"

 

This is something that has puzzled me as well. Looking at the White Lodge trained students who continued into US, and were subsequently taken on into the RB, there are very few of them!

 

For the past half a decade or so I can only think of Clare Calvert, James Hay, Yasmine Naghdi, Francesca Hayward and Ruth Bailey (my apologies if I omitted mentioning any other WL trained dancer).

 

Of course there is Liam Scarlett, Demelza Parish, Sabine Westcombe, Leanne Cope, Romany Pajdak,...just to name a few, who are all White Lodgers who have joined the RB in the last 10-15 years; it would be interesting to know the % of White Lodge trained dancers who are in the RB compared to the international dancers. But very few (compared to international dancers) have made it to 1st Soloist and Principal status. Perhaps this will now change since Mr O'Hare has become Director? We have already seen a positive and welcome change this Season: young dancers (WL trained) like James Hay, Yasmine Naghdi and Francesca Hayward have made wonderful debuts in high profile roles. 

 

I remember reading somewhere on this Forum a while ago how Directors seem to forget how much enjoyment the UK audience gets following their "home-trained" talent.

 

I must say that whenever I watch ballet at the ROH, I always find the White Lodge-Upper School trained dancers to stand out: their placement is so clean, they have an expressiveness in their upper body the international dancers often lack, they have a beautiful use of their feet, lovely epaulement and are often more musical. Watch an Ashton Ballet like "La Valse" and you can pick out the WL trained dancers. They can use their backs to full expression.

 

The question remains : why are so few fully (WL US) trained RBS students making it into the company? What is it the Directors of RB and RBS prefer in foreign dancers over WL trained dancers? (I am under  the impression they do love the Japanese dancers very much so what is it those dancers get from their training in their home country the British don't get?

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RBS upper school always take approx 6 or 7 boys and girls from WL, and usually the same number of the very best international students . DC is at Upper School and says having the elite young dancers from around the world come in is great as it gives them an idea of where they stand in comparison and helps raise standards as no one wants to get left behind.

And as Anjuli says " the competition is either now or later" .

As for ballet teaching at WL , the students that don't make Upper School, always get offered places at ENB or Elmhurst, so they must be doing something right.

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Not always, some go to Tring and obviously we are not taking into account those who, for whatever reason, don't go to a classical ballet course for 6th form.

 

I don't have any experience of WL but I'm not sure we can blame the teaching - and I am also mindful of posters with children at, or starting WL in September. There are students who make it from WL through US and into the company. It can be done.

 

There is however - and has been for a while - a certain amount of disconnect between our lower schools and their respective Upper Schools, and the Upper Schools and their associated companies. Luke Jennings wrote an article on this issue last year. He focussed on RBS but I don't think the issue is solely limited to RBS. But this is a separate issue to International students "vs" British students.

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Actually that is not true. In 2011 several WL students did not get into ENB or Elmhurst. (not even to finals) I know at least one went to Central. I think a good indication of how well British trained dancers are doing is to look at the nationalities of the dancers in companies.

In my opinion I do think that schools should offer a smaller percentage of places to international students. The talent is here in this country, but good teaching is lacking and does not allow these students to progress to the standards of international students. I am also definately against MDS and DADA awards being given to students born outside of Britain. Maybe schools should fund the international students themselves.

I think it is a good thing for our dancers to realise how strong the competition is in the world. The schools could address this by entering their students into the prestigious competitions around the world. They are a real eye opener. I am not saying that our schools shouldnt have international students, just not so many. A good balance in my opinion would be 80% Brits and 20% foreign students. Yes I hear you saying that the places should go to the best students, but sometimes the best students in Britain just need good training to reach the required standards these upper schools require.

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Yes I hear you saying that the places should go to the best students, but sometimes the best students in Britain just need good training to reach the required standards these upper schools require.

But it seems very strange to me to hear in the same sentence "the places should go to the best students" and "the best students in Britain just need good training to reach the required standards these upper schools require"... What I hear is you saying, let's take 20 % of the best ones and then train the other 80 more so that they get to the level they should have been at in the first place!

 

Why would US want to do that when they can have 100% of the best ones without retraining some or most of them?

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and I am also mindful of posters with children at, or starting WL in September.

I agree it's worrying for posters with children at WL or starting soon to read this thread but I don't think it's possible to split the subject of foreign students at RBS US and the why not so many from WL make it... And I also think it can be useful to get into something with open eyes. Getting into WL doesn't automatically give one access to US and even less RB but it's still a wonderful experience...

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What I am saying is that the talent is here in this country, the schools need to take the time to nurture it. Why should they do it, because these schools are British and recieve British funding from our hard earned wages. I am not saying that the schools should take students who arent going to make it professionally, but there are quite a few Brits on the waiting lists that obviously do have the requirements but are overlooked in favour of foregn students. To me its just not right. I am talking about all our US schools here and not just WL.

Edited by primrose
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"As for ballet teaching at WL , the students that don't make Upper School, always get offered places at ENB or Elmhurst, so they must be doing something right."

 

Sorry to go back a bit as the conversation moves on, but just for clarity of facts - in my son's year (not the same year Primrose was talking about), not all of the students from WL got into (or chose to go to) Elmhurst or ENBS (in fact, my son was the only ex-WL boy to get an offer for ENBS, but some girls went I believe) - some also went to Tring & Central and I think there was one who stopped dancing altogether.

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RBS upper school always take approx 6 or 7 boys and girls from WL, and usually the same number of the very best international students . DC is at Upper School and says having the elite young dancers from around the world come in is great as it gives them an idea of where they stand in comparison and helps raise standards as no one wants to get left behind.

And as Anjuli says " the competition is either now or later" .

As for ballet teaching at WL , the students that don't make Upper School, always get offered places at ENB or Elmhurst, so they must be doing something right.

Absolutely, and many ger worthwhile employment world wide- getting into the RB isn;t the be all and end all   Ex White Lodgers are found in companies all over the world. And believe it or not some choose not to go to US!  People are far too obsessed with statistics of what is only a small group each year of vocational students in year 7. A great deal happens in 5 years and each year there are new sets of circirmstances, new life stories, so there is no pattern. In some years there are hardly any "original" students but this is a reflection on how lives, feelings , bodies change not the training.

 

I know of some British dancers who opted to work abroad as soloists rather than start in corps at RB- and why shouldn't they?  Non British people may just as well be asking why is it British dancers are being employed in their companies, is it the training etc.etc.   The truth is that at the top thare will be dancers of all Nationalities who have reached where they are because they are the best. For every successful dancer emerging from any training system there are hundreds who haven't made it and very possibly been injured in the process.

 

Incidently two of my favourite dancers Laura Morera and Ricardo Cervera trained at White Lodge and US. 

 

They happen to be at RB but I'd just as soon go and watch Northern or BRB, or indeed any of the fabulous smaller companies. Plenty of British talents in these companies too!

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