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British born dancers and the global ballet market


aileen

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The POB website has biographies of all the dancers.  On quick perusal I have found 2 dancers who did not train at the POB school - one from Korea and I think the other may be from New Zealand.  Feel free to do more research yourselves:

 

https://www.operadeparis.fr/en/artists/ballet/ballet-company

 

Hannah O'Neill trained in NZ! We are very proud of her! I'm trying to read all the comments before posting but there's an AWFUL LOT (I'm up to page 8). 

 

I just wanted to add, when talking about 'British-born' that in terms of the world being a smaller place, there are many of us who were born in the UK but now live in another country, with dual citizenship. Two of my kids were born in the UK but raised in NZ, and the youngest, my DD, was born in NZ but has a British passport through me. So I think it is more complicated than 'British-born' as we all have two passports and can live/work in both countries (as well as the EU and Australia).

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Sarah W - In terms of jobs, most of the EU companies are very open to dancers from other EU countries, including Britain, so that works both ways for us too as a kind of reciprocal arrangement.  So in that respect Paris is one of the exceptions.  Each country has its own immigration rules for dancers from outside the EU though, and I am under the impression that some of these may be stricter than those in Britain as I know non EU dancers that have struggled with this - as with the USA you have to go to great lengths to prove that you are truly exceptional.  Certainly a lot of European companies specify in their audition notices that you must have an EU passport to apply, which doesn't seem to be the case here, apart from for short term contracts and the smaller companies.   

 

What I would say though is that I have noticed that most other countries do seem to both train greater numbers of their own students than we do, and take greater pride in them.  When I was training several years ago at one of the UK schools there was a very negative attitude from some teachers towards British dancers, and I'm aware that this was the case in at least a couple of other schools too.  It is this I feel that needs to change.  There weren't many Brits left by that point, so generalised negative comments directed specifically at one nationality could feel very personal.  Regular articles in the national press slating British dancers/training were also unhelpful and demoralising, and just knocked our confidence further, especially when you had to go into school the next day knowing that everyone would have read it. As did repeatedly hearing there was a 'shortage' - that it was officially considered that British and European dancers just weren't good enough.  My heart sunk when I saw last year that they had moved on to talking about contemporary dancers in this way too, as until that point I thought this attitude was something only classical dancers had to contend with.  I trained for a brief period in the USA at the end of my training and I actually left wishing I had done all of my training there, as their attitude was so positive and completely different to what my friends and I experienced here.  It was the first time I felt like my British nationality and training background was seen as a good thing rather than something to overcome, avoid mentioning or be ashamed of.  For anyone thinking about training there I would highly recommend it, experiencing a far more positive and encouraging culture in the ballet world there was a real eye opener.   

 

So I would argue not for restricting or alienating foreign dancers, but rather supporting British dancers better than we do at the moment (or have in the past) by adopting a more positive attitude towards British dancers in our schools and companies and showing more confidence in them.       

Edited by Pirouette
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Thanks for your informative post Pirouette.

 

Without doing a huge amount of internet searching, it is hard to say where Britons are dancing.

 

The new RDB website is absolutely awful but I know there are at least 2 Britons in the company - Kizzy Matiakis and Gregory Dean.

 

Alex Jones was a principal in Stuttgart and is now a principal in Zurich.

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Are you questioning the quality of your relatives UK training? Or are you saying that although he/she trained in the UK was able to gain employment internationally?

 

 

The latter, of course. And at the time, there were more jobs in Europe than here. European companies are still offering more opportunities for dancers from all over the world. The couple of European companies I know very well (from the inside as it were) have an exciting mix of nationalities. The audiences love it, and the level of creativity is vey high.

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My glass is always half full...

 

Maybe they got employment BECAUSE they trained in the UK!

 

I have heard it said that some company directors like to see 'British style' rather than 'Russian style' all the time (and yes, I do realise there are a lot of assumptions and possible stereotypes in that sentence)

 

Edited to add: we have a family member who was given a performing contract overseas recently and a number of those (not British) not given a contract were moaning to the audition director that it was unfair a British performer got chosen again! There was even a 'sit-in' at the end of one of the 'cuts'. Which I don't think helped their chances.

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Off the top of my head I can think of British dancers dancing in Norwegian National Ballet, Royal Swedish Ballet, Romanian National Ballet, many companies in Germany including the Staatsballett in Berlin and Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, Royal Ballet of Flanders, Compania Nacional de Danza de Espana, several companies in the USA and the Royal Danish Ballet and Zurich Ballet as Janet mentioned.  And of course there is Xander Parish flying the flag at the Mariinsky Ballet.  I'm sure I've missed several! These are all very good companies.  So we can't be that bad after all. 

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I think almost every country has its protests against so-called foreigners "coming here and taking our jobs"** particularly when some job areas are fiercely competitive (such as professional dance). So sometimes, UK nationals are the "foreigners"!

 

** I have no truck with this attitude - just using this phrase as an extreme stereotype.

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Yes, I experienced that attitude from time to time when working in a large company in Europe, from a very small minority of people, and its not nice.  Happily, the vast majority of people inside and outside the company were very welcoming. 

 

I did notice though that the company did go to considerable effort to recruit and develop native dancers, and employed a far larger proportion of local dancers than is usually the case in the UK.         

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Pirouette, I think your point about how we could enhance and encourage the education of young dancers in the UK is really important. And even more so with the rapid changes in our pre- and post-16 education system.

 

For example, the adoption of the EBacc poses a specific threat to the presence of the creative arts in the GCSE curriculum. The concern amongst those of us in the business of creative arts education is that it will become the preserve of the rich (Eton has an amazingly staffed and resourced theatre programme, for example). There's an electronic petition doing the rounds (you can find it on FaceBook) if you share this concern.

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This is an interesting thread. Taking summer schools as an example, I'd be interested to know if the top UK summer schools like RBS prioritise international candidates over UK. My DD's experience and those of her dancing friends is possibly yes as very few if any get into RBS senior summer school and some do not even get ENB. On the other hand many who can afford to try are accepted for top summer schools abroad including schools with just as stellar reputation as RBS. Perhaps they also favour candidates from overseas but many of these schools require audition DVDs and not just photos so they have a much better look at the candidates you would have thought. 

 

If it's the case that schools like RBS use their summer courses to hunt for international candidates I'm not sure it's true to say international competition can only be a good thing and you can always look abroad too if you don't get a UK school. The loser is the child (wherever they are) whose parents can't afford to up sticks and book fights for courses on the other side of the world... 

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