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Ballet training in the UK


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I think a key aspect also is that if at year 7, children are chosen on potential, it is difficult to say if that potential can be realised, even if the body proportions remain as desired.  Children learn a different levels and to me it stands to reason that they will not develop at the same speed.  Take for example your year 7 intake with some children used to multiple classes, associates and holiday classes before they start and others at a lower grade being used to only a few classes a week.  Now they all have the same training, the rate of progression between them all can be seen and far from being the weakest dancers those starting from a very low grade may well end up being the best.  You get this in academics at school.  Some children who are top of the class in the first few years at school are not necessarily the brightest but have had more pre-school 'education' and they will be overtaken as the school years continue by those who can learn faster and reach top grades more easily.  I guess what I am trying to say is that school can choose on potential re body type etc but not on human nature and individual's learning curves .Many of those assessed out are probably not fitting that schools learning pattern, and not necessarily a reflection on their ability or talent.

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2dancersmum - did you mean to post here? Your post seems more relevant to the 'appraisal' thread?

 

mimi66 - sorry, I'm not sure what your post is saying? The schools are recruiting students from abroad at 16/17/18 through Prix de Lausanne etc. and they do end up in RB company etc. My point is that their training from a young age is much more advanced than in this country so they look far more advanced at the school auditions and at company auditions than children who are trained in this country. Nobody is thinking 'oh but this student has been British trained since the age of 8 so will take longer to mature - therefore I'll hire her and not the amazingly advanced Japanese girl who was doing double pirouettes on point at the age of 11, unlike the poor British girl who didnt do this until age 15' 

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2dancersmum - did you mean to post here? Your post seems more relevant to the 'appraisal' thread?

 

mimi66 - sorry, I'm not sure what your post is saying? The schools are recruiting students from abroad at 16/17/18 through Prix de Lausanne etc. and they do end up in RB company etc. My point is that their training from a young age is much more advanced than in this country so they look far more advanced at the school auditions and at company auditions than children who are trained in this country. Nobody is thinking 'oh but this student has been British trained since the age of 8 so will take longer to mature - therefore I'll hire her and not the amazingly advanced Japanese girl who was doing double pirouettes on point at the age of 11, unlike the poor British girl who didnt do this until age 15' 

 

Ribbons, my previous comment relates more directly to Melody's comment (one before yours) .

 

Having read your comment above,  one thing came to my mind... the training method.

 

To my knowledge, in Americas and in Japan, most popular method of teaching is Russian-based or Russian infulenced. 

 

But this would not explain how Australians make it, as I would imagine RAD is more popular there.

 

 

Edited to say that I am not making any comments about RAD method here.  This is just a causual observation. I still think key factor is that there will always be certain number of people who would make it to the top...say 1%?  It is just that some countries are more populated than others, so pure numberwise there will be more people who get to the top if they are from certain country.

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Actually in Australia many schools are Russian based rather than RAD.  Gailene Stock's own training was Vaganova (Russian).  I am not sure about Mark Annear (head of RBS Outreach) but I think it may be similar.  Schools enter students for the RAD vocational exams so they can do the Genée competition, but the main training is not necessarily RAD.

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What you also have to remember about the UK based vocational schools is that although it is undoubtedly a hard life & they work the children hard in the UK the schools still have to adhere to the standards of pastoral care stipulated by OFSTED and/or ISI

 

when they are inspected the dance is still classed as extra curricular amazing though that may seem

 

Also parental expectations are different

 

Look at the outcry at the moment at Goves proposals on school hours. Many many many parents would not send their children to vocational school (me included) if we felt they were going to be pushed too far too soon. Wheeeas the stereotypical Japanese/Chinese "tiger mother" sees it as normal to push children to excel whether or not they actually want to

 

Most if these children will not make it do what price losing their childhood/possibly risking injury

 

The story of the pianist Ylang Yland springs to mind. A child prodigy yes, but I watched a documentary on his childhood where he described the most appalling treatment/ mental cruelty in an attempt for him to reach the top.

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Well pushy "stage mothers" exist all over the world (Margot Fontyne's mother, for instance?) , "tiger mother" tradition being more Chinese/ Korean, though - 5000 years of tradition!.

 

However, I do see that in other parts of the world the family members (including the extended ones) seem to be prepared to make a lot of finacial contributions to train talented children. Public in general (other than parents) I think are more aware of the financial burden of training a child. 

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Well, in some countries there is no financial sacrifice for the parents because the training and living accommodation are free (eg Cuba, and France certainly for training).

 

Let's not be too pessimistic. There *are* British principal dancers in companies in the UK and abroad and there is a crop of more junior dancers coming along quite nicely eg Francesca Hayward at the RB (still in the corps but has already danced Clara in The Nutcracker and the lead in Rhapsody having only graduated in 2012) and Laurretta Summerscales at ENB (now a first soloist and has danced several leading roles).

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With reference to the Australians - we once had an Australian examiner and I asked her how their RAD children are so advanced at such an early age - by the time they get to vocational school at 16 many of them have passed Solo Seal.  She told me that her students had at least 9 x 90 minute ballet classes a week by Intermediate Foundation level! Three syllabus, three non-syllabus and three extra classes before school with more advanced students!  From what I have heard, one 60 minute class a week at that level in the UK is nearer the norm.  My students get 2 x 90 minute classes and I don't think that is enough! The amount of classes a week makes a huge difference and I think that more effort should be made in local ballet schools to offer more hours a week.  By the way, the new RAD syllabi places a far greater emphasis on turning, which should be a good thing for the future.

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DD's teacher keeps reminding us how much easier her life will be at vocational school, instead of school (37.5 hrs) plus Associates (10hrs) plus classes (10.g hrs) & travelling (goodness knows how many hours) she will only do 8:30-6:30 & one lot of travelling

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Dance*is*life, I assume that the examiner was referring to students who were hoping to pursue a career as a ballet dancer rather than recreational dancers. I'm sure that serious dancers in the UK also attend many hours of classes. It's interesting to hear that early morning classes are available in Australia though. Do many UK dance schools offer this?

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Well, in some countries there is no financial sacrifice for the parents because the training and living accommodation are free (eg Cuba, and France certainly for training).

 

I agree with you Aileen about free training in France but that only applies to POB school and National Conservatoire where they take lots of foreigners for free too and only from 14 there. The other places that are free or nearly free, i.e. small conservatoires don't have a good enough level to hope for a ballet career, they are mainly aimed at recreational dancers... So that leaves us with POB and no intake after the age of 13... Not that good either...

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I think if you look at the rising stars of the Royal Ballet Company - Francesca Hayward, Tierney Heap, Anna Rose O'Sullivan, Yasmine Naghdi, all British, all trained at RBS, then it seems that British training *is* fit for purpose. 

 

And Shiori Kase - an absolutely lovely dancer - may have been fast-tracked into the Upper School, but in 2009 it was Ruth Bailey (graduate of White Lodge & RBS Upper School) who gained a contract with the Royal Ballet Company. Shiori went to ENB and she is flourishing there. 

 

Really, I think we're so lucky that our schools and companies train and employ the 'Best of British,' alongside wonderful dancers from around the world. It's fantastic that so many dancers choose to pursue their careers here - it enriches our schools, our companies, our culture.

 

And of course, the schools aren't perfect, the training doesn't work for everyone, but to suggest that they are failing seems a huge overstatement.

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I don't want this discussion to become too personal but I have never seen Ruth Bailey dance any soloist roles at the ROH. I think that 2009 might have been a bit of an unusual year as both Shiori Kase (who seems to have been a favourite at the RBS) and Vadim Muntagirov were turned down by the RB. Vadim, of course, is joining the RB in March as a principal dancer having won the Benois last year and guested with, among other companies, ABT and the Mariinsky as well as dancing the leading roles in most of the important full-length classical ballets.

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I honestly can't remember where I read it but it was an American review of Osipova, saying how fantastic she was in Giselle which was relayed across the world in cinemas. There were numerous comments from people saying how awful the corp dancers were and how most of them looked no better than good British school students.

 

I am just beginning to feel more and more like our training isn't keeping up with the rest of the world, not even with our American and Australian cousins. It's no good saying that we get there eventually - it's the critical stages of 6th form and company selection that are important.

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This discussion seems to have almost gone full circle, because many people believe the problem with the corps is because the dancers come from too many different places.  Some dancers may have had only a few months or a year in Upper School, and the disparate training backgrounds show, the corps lacks cohesion - not the individual dancers fault of course.

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Well I saw this performance and do disagree with these comments about the corps de ballet on that occasion......I think the filmed one was on 27th January......the one I was at in a good orchestra stalls seat at Covent Garden. The corps were particularly excellent n fact.

 

I'm not saying they may always be......but on the particular night of that performance they were certainly as good as any company anywhere in the world!

 

 

If it is true that companies like the Royal are going abroad to find the company "stars" because their own trained students are really only good enough for the corps then obviously there may be a need to look at the UK training so that there is a more level playing field by the time students are competing for Company jobs.

However this still does not mean that there won't still be many dancers from abroad in our companies simply because so many dancers from around the world aspire to perform with the Royal and ENB. So competition would still be fierce for places in these Companies no matter how good our girls were.

 

I'm just not sure how I feel about dancers being pushed at younger and younger ages........is there to be no boundary then between junior and adult worlds anymore!

Have just been talking about this in relation to ice skating and gymnastics. Olympic gymnastics is now basically a children's competition....nothing wrong with that in itself.....but I also want to see an adult competition. I'm worried that this is now going to start affecting ice skating as it becomes more gymnasticy.....you'll have tobe under 16 to do it all!!

A very ugly spin is now being demonstrated in competition with the leg held at roughly 180 degrees(as is now nearly the norm in ballet)

But it looks even worse when in a spin!! This to me is the gymnastic effect and what happens when you push these feats at early ages and so on. Like 10 year olds doing advanced pointe work......even if doing it reasonably well.

Personally I don't care how many Fouettes a dancer can do.....it's a party trick to,me and is okay in certain places in certain ballet pieces but I would never judge a dancer by how many they can do whether at 12 or 22!!

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This discussion seems to have almost gone full circle, because many people believe the problem with the corps is because the dancers come from too many different places.  Some dancers may have had only a few months or a year in Upper School, and the disparate training backgrounds show, the corps lacks cohesion - not the individual dancers fault of course.

 

This diversity of training in the corps is also true of ABT.  

 

On Sept. 14, 2001, in the Grand Salon of the San Diego Civic Theatre,  I had the opportunity to chat with Victor Barbee, who was at that time Principal Dancer, Asst. to the Artistic Director, Ballet Master, American Ballet Theatre.  

 

I asked him:

 

"How as ballet master do you marry the many disparate styles of the dancers, particularly the corps de ballet of ABT, into a cohesive stylized whole?"

 

 He said: "I feel that the many schools and countries from which the dancers come is an advantage which gives them a great deal of versatility rather than  a liability and it is my task to “blend their talents and styles without losing their individuality.”

 

Interesting response.

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It's a long time since I've seen the RB do anything that required a synchronised corps such as Giselle of Swan Lake.  Are the corps all similar in size?  Could it be as simple as height differences causing these comments?

 

I've heard comments in the recent past that, for example, the BRB ladies were not uniform in height enough to be considered wonderful as a swan corps despite their wonderful synchronicity.  I didn't know the person who made the remark, they were behind me as I was leaving the auditorium.

 

For myself I prefer to see a varied company who can still perform as a cohesive whole.

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I was under the impression that most foreign dancers dancing with RB or BRB are mostly RBS graduates.  They tend to get scholarships from various competitions (eg Prix de Lausanne) at younger age and obtain their places at RBS or other vocational school.

 

Miyako Yoshida, for example had started learning ballet at 9, then at 15 she had won a scholarship to RBS and graduated from RBS before joining BRB.

 

Well, yes, but this is also partly the point I was trying to make. They get the kids in the lower school from year 7 or whatever and they give them this slow, careful, unflashy training. And then they go out to all the international ballet competitions, which don't tend to include British dancers all that much because of the unflashy training, and they hand out scholarships to some of the foreign dancers to spend a year or two at the Upper School before they go into the company with the prospect of eventually being soloists or principals. Whereas the British kids seem to mostly be on track for the corps, or on track for being assessed out of school to make room for the Asian and South American prodigies. 

 

I seriously doubt that being British is the problem for these kids - it's not as though young Brits aren't on the fast track to stardom in some of the other arts. It just seems unfair to the kids, and the taxpayers who subsidise their vocational education, that the very school that's teaching them to be low-key from the ages of 11 to 15 or 16 is then salivating at the prospect of glitzy performers from the international competitions, which the British kids aren't being prepared for.

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Interesting that of some of the names mentioned as British ballet 'stars' Lauretta Summerscales trained locally (ie not at vocational school) until age 16. Tierney Heap was at Elmhurst until age 14 then went back home for 2 years. In an article I read online (http://www.balletassociation.co.uk/Reports/2013/Dean_Heap13.pdf) it says she "had felt the training at Elmhurst had been too constricting for what she needed at the time – quarter turn pirouettes when Tierney felt like doing doubles"

 

Interesting bearing in mind the debate about training at vocational schools!!!

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I haven't noticed any problems with the synchronised corps at the RB or ENB (I haven't seen a synchronised corps at the other companies). The swans, willis etc always seem very well drilled to me. I suspect that it is the range of heights and physiques which bothers some critics; the corps is more uniform at POB and some of the Russian companies.

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Thank you for posting that article, drdance. I have read somewhere else that Australian ballet students enter a lot of competitions and perhaps this gives them  more confidence when they are auditioning for schools and companies. Clearly, many students from Asia, Australia, South America etc want to train and work in Britain and competitions are an important route in and are given a high priority. On top of that, only the best and the most driven will come to Britain and so the British students are competing with dancers who are already dancing at a very high level when they arrive in the UK. Tierney Heap's comments about what she was actually doing at Elmhurst before she left at 14 are interesting and rather confirm some people's fears on this thread.

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Just going back to the corps for a minute; I don't believe that heights or sizes make a difference to the synchronicity of the corps. ENB in particular has a huge range of heights, feet and body proportions (which I really like) but the dancing of their corps always impresses me. I was particularly impressed with them in Sleeping Beauty.

 

Royal, similarly has a range of sizes and although there are times when the corps has seemed a little ragged (Shades in Bayadère if I recall correctly) I must say that The Wilis in this run of Giselle are dancing beautifully together.

 

I don't know whether we are perhaps more concerned with the long term mental health of our children; conscious of burnout, aware of the importance of academic qualifications as a backup, perhaps? I remember reading on the old forum about a dancer (Marianela Nuñez I *think*) who, as a young teenager, was at the ballet studio at 5 am, school at around 10??, then back to the studio from 5pm until 10 or 11 every night.

 

For one thing I don't know of any local dance studio in the UK who would or could provide that much teaching; secondly, when did the dancer sleep or get any homework done? and having left school to dance professionally at 14, what qualifications would she have got for future career had she become injured? I can't see many UK parents - or schools! going along with that.

 

If my dd gets an upper school place, completes her training, gets a job - even "just" in the corps in a company and has a happy career getting paid to dance, I will be delighted for her. Not least because I know she will still be able to walk at 50 from not having been pushed en pointe at 8 or 9, and because (hopefully) she will still be talking to me and not end up resenting me or with depression. I'm not saying this happens to all little hothoused children but I'd rather not risk it.

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Ref post #47, as I recall it, Ruth Bailey (a YBDY winner) was taken into the Royal Ballet in the spring of 2009.

 

I don't recall seeing her on stage recently at all but I believe she has had some named roles such as that of a chicken in Fille.

Edited by capybara
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Interesting that of some of the names mentioned as British ballet 'stars' Lauretta Summerscales trained locally (ie not at vocational school) until age 16. Tierney Heap was at Elmhurst until age 14 then went back home for 2 years. In an article I read online (http://www.balletassociation.co.uk/Reports/2013/Dean_Heap13.pdf) it says she "had felt the training at Elmhurst had been too constricting for what she needed at the time – quarter turn pirouettes when Tierney felt like doing doubles"

 

Interesting bearing in mind the debate about training at vocational schools!!!

 

Interesting article - thanks for posting. Although I'm not sure the decision to leave Elmhurst was entirely her own. 

 

Anyway , just look at the difference in hours of training between Claudia and Tierney at age 15. Claudia was moved up to second year after 6 weeks and I am told that this is very common with students from abroad - again, because they are so much more advanced.

 

Spanner -  I don't think it is about over-pushing children or hothousing them but it is about doing more than they do now. Even at White Lodge, the year 10's and 11's only do a 2 hour classical ballet lesson a day. 

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One factor that hasn't really been mentioned is that many of the overseas dancers don't attend ordinary academic schools.  Originally due to geography, in USA and Australia the nearest academic school might be hours away, home-schooling is considered to be much more normal than it is generally in UK.  Claudia says she was dancing all week, many hours each day, and doing school work at the weekend.  In the UK it is usually the reverse.

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One factor that hasn't really been mentioned is that many of the overseas dancers don't attend ordinary academic schools.  Originally due to geography, in USA and Australia the nearest academic school might be hours away, home-schooling is considered to be much more normal than it is generally in UK.  Claudia says she was dancing all week, many hours each day, and doing school work at the weekend.  In the UK it is usually the reverse.

 

 

They do in Japan. 

 

And schools are normally pretty unco-orporative - Ballet there also, at least from schools, seen as "posh kids' passtime" though in reality it is anythig but, as this forum members are well aware.  They might overlook absence days if they go to Prix de Lausanne, but that's about it.

 

Also any sort of scholarship is unheard of for ballet - though there are plenty of scholarship and plus guranteed entry to university for talented children who play other sports such as baseball or figure skating - or most of Olympic soprts.

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