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Are we training too many dancers?


aileen

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Guest Autumn days

This is turning into yet another thread about fundind!!

 

The bottom links is that there are too many dancers in training. This applies to all sorts of other area with the advent of so many new universities and alternative subjects attracting student finance. Anyone and everyone can get a degree nowadays as, it seems anyone can train as "a dancer". Only the best in every discipline will be rewarded with a job relevant to their training.

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I'm not sure I agree, dance students learn valuable skills throughout their training which are transferable. Let's produce more hardworking, disciplined young people.

 

I agree completely with Tulip and would really like to see more care taken with the awarding of precious funding. The perceived most gifted at year 7 may not be the same as in year 11, students change, some who weren't in the running for any funding but who have the grit and determination to work hard often bloom with training. I don't understand why the government doesn't expect a greater return for its investment in people. There are rules in place for behaviour when accepting an MDS award but the schools dont seem to worry.

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We were of the mindset that if dd had not been offered an upper school place at one of the schools we decided to apply for this year, then academic 6th form would have been the route, as hard as it would have been to accept. I too think that there are too many dancers in training, but that probably goes for a lot of other professions as well. I appreciate that it is all a matter of personal opinion and choice, but we just felt that if she had not achieved a place at one of these schools, then it would probably have been time to move on. I appreciate that anything could still happen over the next three years and getting employment is going to be tough, but at least I feel it's worth taking the chance.

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Perhaps it would be better to regard the purpose of the 11-16 dance schools as not necessarily "to create employable dancers" or even "to train dancers", but rather to provide an all-round education with additional access to specialist dance training to children who are selected on their dance potential - much like many state secondary schools select or partially select their intake  on their academic/sporting/musical/tecnological ability.

 

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A friend of my sons is at the local college. He is studying the BTEC Level 3 Extended Diploma in Performing Arts. He is very talented; I`ve seen bits he has put up on You Tube. Natural ability,natural comic timing,etc.That can`t be taught,as we all know.You`ve either got it or you haven`t. I was looking online at the college prospectus the other day. For the Progression Opportunities after studying this BTEC in Performing Arts [it`s mainly acting], it says students from this course go on to become Professional Actors,Professional Dancers [????],Singers or work in other fields in the Performing Arts. Really?  Who are they trying to kid? They are telling these 16 year olds,most of whom will have absolutley no training in Dance or Drama before, that they can get work as professionals. How misleading is that? And there are Further Education colleges up and down the country offering Performing Arts courses like this.Even if you go to a "proper" performing arts college[Laines,Bird etc.]the odds must be stacked against you. My son`s friend is convinced he is going to become a professional actor one day. Maybe he will,i hope he does. But I  don`t think the college is advising its students that what they ought to do after their 2 year course is audition for Drama Schools, if they want to even stand a chance of making it. Completely misleading? Who knows.

I think TheQuays is making a valid point here. Pretty much every college in every town offers a Level 3 BTEC in Performing Arts/Dance and I'm sure that the students are told that there is a very good chance of future employment when embarking on their course.

 

It could be that maybe there are far too many young people leaving these colleges with their qualifications who then rather quickly find out that they have very little in the way of prospects. When they are auditioning up against graduate performers from the vocational dance schools and MT colleges (Laines, Bird etc) then realistically they don't really stand a chance.

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I don't think any dance students to my knowledge were resentful of any students that had funding in my daughters year, even though a group of these girls were so badly behaved and undetermined. However I object to tax payers money supporting children who aren't prepared to work hard in all areas of their education, these awards are like golden tickets a gift. My daughter was offered a DA DA at two schools, but chose the school that suited her the best. I would have been appalled if my daughter had have accepted one of these DADAs and then just took it for granted.

 

It has to be said also, my other children went to a private school and any behavior that I had witnessed at my daughters second vocational school, would have been immediate expulsion. One boy was expelled on the spot for bullying. Even though parents were paying school fees, the school takes great pride in their pupils behaviour and achievement. The children know that there will be concequences to bad behaviour and so do their parents. It is hard to get into this school , so therefore no one would want Hesperides their space.

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My feeling is that there has been an enormous expansion in courses of all kinds promising dubious outcomes at a huge cost to the state and individuals personally. I think that these courses have become an industry in themselves, providing employment to the tutors who have often been unable to make a living in their chosen field and keeping down the number of NEETs. I feel that there's something a bit dishonest about the whole thing. It seems that we are offering too much training in fields that many young people are attracted to eg law, fashion, dance, music, theatre, art and too little training in fields in which employers struggle to find suitable employees. It's a great irony that even in the recession many vacancies in specialised areas cannot be filled. I feel that courses have proliferated in response to demand by would be students rather than in response to the needs of the economy and society. Not everyone can be a dancer or a lawyer. There aren't enough jobs and only the very best will get the few jobs that there are. It's time to be more more realistic with young people.

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I also agree with Tulip that some more careful monitoring of those who are awarded grants would be useful.

 

Ive also known a small minority of students take their funding for granted and were guilty of persistently unpleasant behaviour. Heartbreaking to witness.

 

And Nana Lily I do realise you didnt actually say "The Big Four" but you did refer to second best students. And I wasnt just talking about Ballet , when I said students of mine had got into vocational schools I meant just that, that is vocational schools of all genres.

 

I do think that the DaDa system is unfair for a lot of people and that it should have a far more reasonable sliding scale. The MDS is far more realistic. However funding issue have been thoroughly discussed on other topics.

 

The Quays makes very good points about the Btecs in performing dance and I agree that they can give students unrealistic expectations as I also agree with Nana Lily that any organisations with particularly poor graduate success should have funding reviewed. So in this respect then yes there are too many training to be dancers with unrealistic expectations.

 

However I think we are all agree that our dcs deserve the chance to follow their dreams whatever they are and that hard working dance students generally become employable, successful people in all walks of life.

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Guest Autumn days

Well, ENB certainly seems to have benefitted. There are quite a few of their dancers listed.

But I doubt that many would disagree that this IS one of he top schools!!

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I think Aileen meant ENB the company, not ENBS the school.

 

Vanemuine in Estonia's done well out of it too - funny to see my son and his friends' names on there (couple of errors that i know of too).

 

Thanks for posting the link.

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Or dare I say it, perhaps our own country need to fill companies with home grown talent first. Australia do this not for dance but other professions, you can only get into the country if they need you.

I'm sorry Tulip, that might have been the case many years ago, but there are for instance more Somalians etc, entering Australia than Britain. If a British citizen applies to emigrate to Oz, then yes, they do need to have the requirements needed.  

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I think TheQuays is making a valid point here. Pretty much every college in every town offers a Level 3 BTEC in Performing Arts/Dance and I'm sure that the students are told that there is a very good chance of future employment when embarking on their course.

 

It could be that maybe there are far too many young people leaving these colleges with their qualifications who then rather quickly find out that they have very little in the way of prospects. When they are auditioning up against graduate performers from the vocational dance schools and MT colleges (Laines, Bird etc) then realistically they don't really stand a chance.

Do agree with you generally, but I do know a girl who did the level  BTEC, after which she worked hard dancing at Haven and has since spent the last 5 years working on cruise ships alongside others from vocational schools.

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I'm sorry Tulip, that might have been the case many years ago, but there are for instance more Somalians etc, entering Australia than Britain. If a British citizen applies to emigrate to Oz, then yes, they do need to have the requirements needed.  

Don't the Somalian's etc need the requirements to enter ? If they do, then Australia is still putting it's own citizens first

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Well, looking at the world right now - 90% of the human population could make a case for being under threat, oppression, etc.  What we are seeing is a huge population shift across the globe.  

 

The newest wrinkle is what is happening along the southern border of the USA where hundreds of thousands are unaccompanied children as young as five are coming up from Central America and  being abandoned on the USA side of the border - knowing that the USA will feed and care for them.  In response, one can't put a 5 yr old on a bus and send her/him back across the border without knowing that a responsible adult will meet her/him.  Actually, there is no responsible adult - because a responsible adult would not have dumped the child at the border in the first place.

 

All of this has an impact on work opportunities, education and how taxes are levied and spent.  And all of that affects dance opportunities for those seeking work and funding.

 

I am not saying that asylum should not be granted - my mother fled from certain death and legally entered this country - but she had to show proof that she would not be a burder on the state coffers.  Today the magnitude of the problem has grown exponentially.  I can't think of a part of the world - Africa, Asia, Middle East, South America - which is not in flames.  There does come a point at which merely emptying the population of a country is not the answer.  Sometimes the good people need to stay and fight the bad people.

 

If this population shift does not taper off, then we will not have enough funds to do anything but emergency rescue and basic feeding and care.

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My feeling is that there has been an enormous expansion in courses of all kinds promising dubious outcomes at a huge cost to the state and individuals personally. I think that these courses have become an industry in themselves, providing employment to the tutors who have often been unable to make a living in their chosen field and keeping down the number of NEETs. I feel that there's something a bit dishonest about the whole thing. It seems that we are offering too much training in fields that many young people are attracted to eg law, fashion, dance, music, theatre, art and too little training in fields in which employers struggle to find suitable employees. It's a great irony that even in the recession many vacancies in specialised areas cannot be filled. I feel that courses have proliferated in response to demand by would be students rather than in response to the needs of the economy and society. Not everyone can be a dancer or a lawyer. There aren't enough jobs and only the very best will get the few jobs that there are. It's time to be more more realistic with young people.

 

I totally agree with this - there seems to have been something approaching a scam over the last couple of decades. In my day (says the old lady), students getting a place at university would be guaranteed a grant from their local education authority (means-tested depending on parental income), but only 10 to 15% of kids went to uni. Then along come politicians and their everlasting consultants, deciding that everyone should be able to go to uni. So the technical colleges and teacher training colleges suddenly became universities, everyone and their pet rabbit was expected to get a university degree, and that had a couple of really serious consequences. First, it isn't practical to give grants to every kid to do everything, so the grants were replaced by loans and the UK (of course) went down the US route of kids coming out of college with massive debt. Second, courses that used to take a year or so and lead to a diploma turned into three- or four-year university courses, and subjects were tailored to appeal to all the less academic kids finding their way to universities, so now you have all these media studies graduates and whatnot, with their debt and their expectations, while the less popular but expensive science and engineering courses are still struggling to get enough students.

 

I know the old system had problems - I remember Kenneth Branagh being (understandably) bitter about kids who could pick up a grant with no questions asked to go to Cambridge to study Egyptology (and get their drama education with Footlights once they were there) whereas there was no equivalently funded route for the most talented drama students to go to RADA - but I don't see much improvement with the current system of encouraging kids to go into debt in order to study subjects that won't really get them anywhere. I think the same thing seems to be happening with dance, from what people are saying. As well as courses that do train kids for a performing-arts career, there seem to be a worrying number of courses that really don't, but that claim to. This might be nice for a short time for the kids who haven't got into somewhere with more rigorous training, and obviously it's nice for the institutions getting the students and the money, but if they're just churning out graduates who are basically unemployable in their chosen field, they aren't doing any favours. I have a certain suspicion of the argument that, well, these courses do at least give good life skills to their graduates even if they don't lead to a job in the theatre. You could say that about just about any course of study, and the ironic thing is that people do tend to say it about just about any course of study except maths, engineering, and science, and that's where graduates are most deficient, going out into this technology-base society.

 

And as for training our own first - I'm not sure what to think here. I know ballet companies want the best dancers, but, looking at that ENB cast list yesterday, with not a single name that looked remotely British (to say nothing of the roster of Royal Ballet principals), it does make you stop and wonder. The taxpayer is funding a lot of these places at the top ballet schools, and apparently basically what they're doing is subsidising the training of the corps de ballet, while the top dancers come from Asia, South America, and Eastern Europe. Some of them get into the upper schools after winning international competitions that the British schools aren't even sending their pupils to, and some of them just get hired as professionals after training in other countries. I know a lot of countries have exceptions in their immigration laws so that people talented in arts and sports can leapfrog the queues, but I think it's still something that needs to be looked at. To say that there are no natives with the required skills is just ridiculous, given how many really good kids are competing to get into the ballet schools. Nowadays, with public money being so tight and governments being much more focussed on the needs of business than the needs of the arts and sciences, sooner or later someone in power is going to come up with the question of whether this public expenditure is worth it, when there's scarcely a British name in the international roster of the world's greatest ballet dancers or even in the roster of the top levels of the British companies, and there hasn't been for some time.

Edited by Melody
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It's my impression that three or four year degree courses have replaced most other forms of training, including on the job training. I don't think that employers want to train school leavers any more; they are expected to study full-time at their own cost. Apparently, apprenticeship do still exist but they were largely phased out a couple of decades ago. My brother, who was bright enough but lazy and almost certainly dyslexic, left school at 16 (in 1979) and went to work as an apprentice with a computer company. 'Day release' allowed him to obtain a qualification which was equivalent to 'A' Levels and a few years later (fully funded because, having worked for three years, he was assessed independently from my parents) he went to the local polytechnic and obtained a degree in computer science. He has always worked and has earned a lot of money. This route was ideal for him. If he had stayed on at school he would have mucked about and failed his 'A' Levels. I regret that the same route does not appear to be available nowadays and that everyone is pushed to go to university to study for a degree however little appetite they have for higher education. I really feel that there needs to be more diversity in education and training post-16.

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I work at an FE college - loads of the students in our dept are moving onto apprenticeships after their level 2 or 3 qualifications especially the IT students. Apprenticeships have made a big comeback recently.

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Yes, I was reading about that. The sad thing is that years and years ago they were praising the German system of apprenticeships, but apparently decided to go a different route themselves.

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I know ballet companies want the best dancers, but, looking at that ENB cast list yesterday, with not a single name that looked remotely British (to say nothing of the roster of Royal Ballet principals), it does make you stop and wonder.

 

Melody, I take your earlier points, but am not sure what you mean here.  Admittedly, ENB hasn't had a British principal since Sarah McIlroy retired - and didn't have a very good track record before that, either - but looking at my cast sheet from yesterday I can see at least 7 names on it which I either know to be British or which at the very least don't look "un-British".  And the Royal Ballet has 3 British principals - a fact which is often bemoaned in the press, true, but I don't think there's ever been a time in the RB when they didn't have any British principals.

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Melody, I take your earlier points, but am not sure what you mean here.  Admittedly, ENB hasn't had a British principal since Sarah McIlroy retired - and didn't have a very good track record before that, either - but looking at my cast sheet from yesterday I can see at least 7 names on it which I either know to be British or which at the very least don't look "un-British".  And the Royal Ballet has 3 British principals - a fact which is often bemoaned in the press, true, but I don't think there's ever been a time in the RB when they didn't have any British principals.

And another principal, one of my favourites trained at WL from a young age!

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Melody, I take your earlier points, but am not sure what you mean here.  Admittedly, ENB hasn't had a British principal since Sarah McIlroy retired - and didn't have a very good track record before that, either - but looking at my cast sheet from yesterday I can see at least 7 names on it which I either know to be British or which at the very least don't look "un-British".  And the Royal Ballet has 3 British principals - a fact which is often bemoaned in the press, true, but I don't think there's ever been a time in the RB when they didn't have any British principals.

 

Oh, sorry, I meant the cast list for Coppelia that was posted in another thread here. Copying the list

 

Wednesday Evening 23.7.14        Shoiri Kase                                          Yonah Acosta

Thursday Matinee 24.7.14          Erina Takahashi                                 Fernando Bufalá

Thursday Evening 24.7.14           Tamara Rojo                                       Alban Lendorf

Friday Evening 25.7.14                Fernanda Oliveira                            Dmitri Gruzdyev

Saturday Matinee 26.7.14           Erina Takahashi                                 Fernando Bufalá

Saturday Evening 26.7.14            Tamara Rojo                                       Alban Lendorf

Sunday Matinee 27.7.14              Shiori Kase                                          Yonah Acosta

 

 

Now, seriously, ENGLISH National Ballet? I mean, if someone who isn't a ballet enthusiast (but is maybe a civil servant in the Treasury) looks at that, he could be forgiven for asking - why are we using so many thousands of taxpayer pounds training all these British kids? What are we training them for, exactly? Is it a good use of taxpayer money to train kids who go off to join companies in Croatia and Outer Mongolia (or the Bolshoi) but seem to be invisible in companies in Britain? And then, if said civil servant wants to make a case for not spending all this money training British kids to become ballet dancers and someone says, oh but there's three British principals at the Royal - well, it's not hard to find articles by respected critics suggesting that those promotions had an element of "gotta promote some natives, I suppose." Not that everyone agrees with that by any means, but I'm just saying that Mr Treasury Bean Counter could make quite a case.

 

I suppose this is going back to the topic in the thread about British ballet training and where it leads. It's really heartbreaking when you read the threads about families going through so much stress to put their DC through these schools because of funding problems, only to realise that far more kids are still being trained than there are jobs for - AND that the top jobs tend to go to foreigners, even if they were trained for a couple of years on a scholarship at a British school, meaning that the British-trained kids are often having to find work abroad so the government funding isn't really helping the British ballet scene.

 

 

 

Edited by Melody
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Most of my ds year who are British trained dancers (and Im talking in terms of actual age not 1 individual institution) are now professional dancers.

 

Most are dancing in British companies including BRB, RBS and Northern. A few are abroad and in my view that is no less an achievement, how fantastic that British talent is wanted and needed overseas.

 

I do agree though that ENBs name is a bit of a misnomer but this has all been discussed before as has the merits of British training.

 

But this is going off topic anyway. The fact is that there are more dancers than jobs but not enough realistic funding for many students who have real potential. But I would hate to see opportunities curtailed for those who have a burning desire to dance but who are not deemed suitable for some of the "best" or "big" schools. Having said that all dance students, wherever they are training, need to be aware that there are absolutely no guarantees of successful progression into a dance company. Thankfully these days a lot of courses reflect the need for dancers to be versatile and be aware of other career paths.

 

I wouldnt want to stop anyone from following their dreams whatever they are. But within reason, and I do think far too many people are misled into thinking that years of training and the related costs will lead ultimately to a dream job. And for those that do make it, well very often they quickly find that its all work and no play.

 

Perhaps another topic is that if young professional dancers had known how hard it is, would they turn the clock back and do something different?

Edited by hfbrew
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I think I can answer some of this, hfbrew. My daughter wants to be an actress. She has always known that there are no guarantees of a job. At the moment she has been knocked back from several drama school, having done a degree in drama because we insisted that she had a proper education first. She will audition again next year. I feel discouraged but it is her life, not mine. Having been prevented from doing something similar myself, I could not possibly have tried to prevent her from following her dream. All her drama and associated teachers spelled out the risks repeatedly. If you don't try, you never know. It is awful to live with the idea that perhaps you could have made it as a dancer or an actor. If you don't make it, at least you know you have tried your hardest.

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I so agree with you Fiz.

 

I have met far too many adults who have regretted not being allowed to at least try and see if their dancing could lead anywhere having been encouraged to take a more "sensible" path.

 

Good luck to your daughter, she possibly has chosen an even more precarious route!

 

And just for the record I actually only know of one dancer who wishes perhaps she had done somthing different!

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