At what age did you start ballet?

[Balletgirl19892003]

What age did you start taking ballet? I was 4 when i started but i didn't start dancing at a professional school until I was 11! Do you think that when i go to auditions i should say i have been dancing for 3 years since my first 6 years where at a really bad studio with concrete floors and really bad teachers? Thanks in advance for your repsonse!

 

 

~C~

Edited December 6, 2003 by Balletgirl19892003

[Guest Terin]

Well, I didn't start dancing at all until I was about to turn 11 (this winter will mark my fourth year). But if I were you I would (if possible) explain to them your experience. However, I don't know much about auditions, so you probably shouldn't take my word alone on this.

[Guest smileybattina]

I started dancing when I was 3...hehe....

[Victoria Leigh]

The point of this topic is not what age you started, but how many actual years you have had IF the first several years were pre-ballet or classes at a poor quality school. One needs to know for most audition registration forms. So, PLEASE everyone, DO NOT just get on here and post I started at 3. That is not a helpful response.

 

Balletgirl, I think you could probably count the first six years as maybe the equivalent of two at the most. That would give you 5 years, which looks better than three. Usually there is a place to list where you train, and you could say there that the first couple of years were not professional quality training.

 

To ALL of you.....the first years, if they are at age 4-7, are basically irrelevant. You did not start "real" ballet until later.

 

And, since I'm here, please let me remind you that teenspeak is not allowed on this board. It has been explained a gazillion times. I'm not doing it again. We'll start deleting posts that use it. It would be enormously helpful if you would also use punctuation, and PLEASE, at least use upper case for the personal pronoun "I", and for the beginning of sentences and proper names! It is very disconcerting to look at names starting with lower case letters, especially if it is someone well known. I feel it is disrespectful. Sometimes your sentences are impossible to read because, with no capital letters and no punctuation, who knows where the sentences are.

 

The above paragraph is for ALL of the teens on the board, not at all limited to the above posts, although the first one did trigger this reaction.

[Balletgirl19892003]

Thanks for the advice Ms. Victoria! It really helped me figure things out. I'm really sorry for using teenspeak on this message board. I hope you can forgive me because I didn't really mean too. I have another question though. Last year my mom insisted on filling out my audition application forms and she wrote that i had been dancing for 9 years. If I audition for some of the schools I did last year won't they be suspicious that last year I had been dancing for 9 years and this year 5? Any advice would be appreciated.

 

 

~C~

Edited December 6, 2003 by Balletgirl19892003

[Victoria Leigh]

I can't speak for every school, but as the auditioner for our program, I seriously doubt that I would remember that fact from last year! We audition hundreds of students, and those details are really not all that important. I would not worry about it. I do not keep the forms of the students who did not come to the program.

[Balletgirl19892003]

Okay Ms. Victoria I'll take your advice. I love this board I don't know what I would do without it!

 

 

 

~C~

[Guest dancergal]

It's the same with me. I started taking classes when I was 3, but that was more like running around the room and trying to dance while a pianist played. I seriously started taking lessons when I was 7, and that's what I write on audition forms. I say that I've been taking since I was 7.

[Balletgirl19892003]

Thanks dancergal for your advice!

[Dolphingirl]

Depending on how the question is phrased, I sometimes put a year of "pre-ballet" (I started right before I turned 6) and 8/9 years of real ballet.

[Balletgirl19892003]

Thanks dophingirl! It's great to get a lot of people's opinion on the subject!