RAD Sylabus

[Fred]

Someone has mentioned that alot of adult beginners start with grade 5 or grad 6 when being trained in the RAD method. It is properly not impossible to learn every thing you need to no to do the exams as you do not have to complete one grades exam to be able to do the next one. But starting at grade 5 or 6 don't you miss out on learning the basics. Most steps used in grade 5 and 6 are taught and mastered in the previous grades. I feel that adults can skip the pre-[rimary and primary but must at least fo through the other previous grades to learn the basics. It is like skipping primary school and starting high school.

 

Any opinions would be apreciated.

 

Freddie

[Guest beckster]

I was thinking about this last night, after a dreadful class. I started with grade 6 and took the exam after two years. I had done some non-syllabus work and some of grade 5 and intermediate, but not much. When I started open classes after moving house, I had to start right again at the beginning, because although I knew a lot of the basic steps I found it very hard to put them together in non-grade 6 combinations. I have now caught up a bit, but I still struggle with classes which are of "grade 6 standard". It is very disappointing!

[Fred]

To Beckster

 

Here in SA classes are hard to find and you basicaly have to take what ypu can get. In Febuary I ffound a teacher who started with a beginners group. She taches Russian. Because she canceled one of her classes I started looking for another teacher. Luckely I find one that was kind enough to tak me onto her class. SHe teaches RAD grade 6. Seeing that I am a male student grade 6 meens nothing examwise but it is still nice to learn. I only take ballet as a hobby so I do not really need like serious classes. WHat makes grade 6 a bit difficult is as you said alot of the steps they use was taught in earlier grades. What helped me a bit is tha fact that alot of the basic steps I had learned in my Russian class. But still it feels if I missed out on alot of basic stuff. Wgat also helped is I've got a book calles Step Step Class that covers alot of all the grades up to 5 and then I also got the vidoes from grade 4 to 7 at the moment.

[Guest Elisa]

I'm currently taking grade 6 (have done ballet for two years but done an awful lot of other dancing prior to that) and at the first class the teacher said it wouldn't be much technique work, rather presentation and expression. In the beginning I found the class quite challenging and a wee bit hard to keep up with, but now I tend to find most of the stuff quite easy.

[Kate B]

I don't think you need to do a syllabus class at all to learn the basics of ballet, provided you have a teacher that has a plan of how to teach all the different steps and lets you practice them until you get them right in lots of different combinations.

 

HOWEVER not many teachers for adults have this kind of programme because they teach different people all the time or their classes are full of lots of people from different levels and so on, which I guess is why we want to go to syllabus classes...

 

I started on grade 6 after a year of beginners classes which were a little bit like the ideal ones. I didn't have the confidence to do it very well, but when I finished I went into what was then called Elementary.

 

After 2 years of Elementary 3 times a week I knew what all the steps were meant to be done like... and I was a lot more confident. But I think the important thing about it wasn't that it was a RAD syllabus class, it was that we practised things until we could do them in our sleep, really worked on every element of the step, the placement, turnout, everything else, before we moved on to something else. We did different combinations every week, because they had introduced a lot of free work into the exam when I was studying for it.

 

It's annoying but it is true. It doesn't matter what grade you start on. You just need to keep doing the same things in different combinations until you get confident. And get decent corrections that you can work with.

 

Difficult to do when we're faced with a bunch of disjointed, overcrowded open classes, or we're too busy to get to class as much as we'd like to, but there you go...

[Fred]

Thanks for all the replaies

 

Fred

[Fred]

Spoken to my teacher today and she also said that if you start at grade 5/6 you miss out on alot of the basics done in previous grades.

 

Fred

[Mel Johnson]

Fred, I think that your teacher has a correct view there. Would that the Academy, as they continue to develop and improve, figure out a curriculum for adult students, or at least provide guidelines for developing free classes for same, based on the present syllabi. There are more and more adult students all the time, and the ways and needs of the adult student are very different from the needs and ways of the younger student.

[Guest temple_dancer]

Fred I'm not sure if this will be of any help to you, but at my ballet school, my teacher puts late starters in a couple of different grades to begin with and then after a few months will tell the student to continue with the higher of the grades. That way the new student is given some time to become familiarised with the basics, as well as getting the challenge of the more advanced grades.

[Guest beckster]

That's exactly what I did! Grade 4 and 5 were on the same day, so I would go to both of them, then grade 6 on a different day. Eventually I stopped the lower grades. I should think that around grade 3 or 4 would be an ok place to start if you didn't want to miss out on the basics. Any lower and you would find yourself skipping around pretending to be a happy bunny or something.

[Fred]

Thanks for the informatiom. At this stage there is only one adult class a week, so everybody is basicaly throwen into one class. My teacher said that she is planning more classes next year and wants to conventrate a bot more on the basics aswell. At the moment there I think 2 or 3 girls that would like to do grade 6 exams so she gives a bit more attention to them. As for as I know the rest are there just to enjoy dancing and are not interested in exams. For me ballet is also just a hobby but allthoug am am not 100% interested in exams I would at least like to learn the basics aswell and at least grade 5.

 

Fred