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Ballet Talk, which the moderators affectionately term the "upstairs board", is primarily for people who love ballet and love to watch ballet, which would include ballet journalists and critics, dancers and parents of dancers who love to attend performances, people who love to read about ballet and great ballets as well as reviews of company performances, dance scholars and historians, and basically anyone 16 and up who loves ballet! On Ballet Talk you discuss watching, as opposed to dancing, ballet.
On Ballet Talk for Dancers, the "downstairs board", we discuss everything about dancing ballet. That includes students who dance, parents of the students who dance, and teachers of these students. There are forums for Teens from age 13 and up, Parents of Students under 13 and over 13, Male dancers, Parents of male dancers, Pointe Shoe issues, Dance Education, Teachers, Professional Dancers, a Pro Shop to discuss behind the scenes work in dance, and a HUGE forum on Summer Intensive Programs.
From the beginning of Ballet Alert! Online, the purpose of our dancers forums has been to educate students and parents about ballet training. We are here to help everyone who studies ballet, for whatever reason, however, our focus is, and always has been, on the very serious study of ballet. Our faculty on the technical forums are professional dancers and respected teachers. This focus on the serious, or more intensive aspects of training does not preclude our interest or ability to help dancers of all levels and goals, as long as they take the study of ballet seriously. Whether a vocational dancer, hoping to be a professional, or an avocational dancer who just loves to dance and wants to receive the best training possible, we believe that the training should be the same. There is good ballet training and there is, unfortunately, a lot of not so good ballet training. We believe that everyone should have the top quality training available if they are going to put their time, energy, love and passion, and of course money, into this art form.
Our knowledge and expertise lies in the schools and programs that offer this kind of training. When we discuss SI programs and College and University Dance Programs, we tend to think only in terms of the best programs we know. We are not here to recommend less serious programs, as we are not familiar with them. We are not going to recommend "recreational" programs, basically because we just don't believe in them. Good ballet is good ballet, and recreational/competition type schools which offer once a week ballet and lots of other forms of dance, plus lots of rehearsals for competitions in lyrical, tap, jazz, and whatever, are USUALLY not good schools. There are always exceptions, and sometimes there are good ballet teachers in these kinds of schools. However, they are rarely able to give the students enough ballet classes to make it real ballet training. This means that even if you study ballet as an adult, maybe two or three times a week, we will still recommend the very best program that you can find. We will tell students who take once or twice a week that they should not be on pointe, and if they study at a school that will put them on pointe with that kind of schedule they are not in a good school. We will tell students and parents that if a school is using class time for "recital rehearsals", then this is not a good school. If you want to do something as special as ballet, then it is worth it to do it right. It is not an art that one dabbles in and accomplishes anything.
Most major schools will give the same quality of training to students regardless of their goals, as long as they maintain their schedule and do the work of their level. SI programs will accept avocational students if they are good enough and really want to work that hard all summer. Students who do not want to do intensive work, but just very good and steady work, would most likely be best continuing their study at home, as opposed to spending a great deal of money to go away to SI programs. However, well trained and advanced level students who want to study through college, even if they are not majoring in ballet, do need to look for a college with a really good ballet program or they will not be satisfied with the classes. Therefore, it is also recommended these days that students who wish to attend a really good college dance program should also attend SI programs during their high school years, if possible, as they really need to continue intensive training year round to make it into these programs.
