Nashville Ballet

[lbella]

Hi!

 

Sorry to start a new topic but there wasn't one concerning Nashville Ballet. Please move or delete if there already is one. I was wondering if anyone had any information on this yearround program. Classes offered, class sizes would be helpful. thanks!

[swanchat]

Bump!

[tutumomma77]

DD auditioned for NB in spring 2012 and was accepted into SI and offered a trainee position. She felt the trainees were the step-children of the NB and lacked focus--too many dancers in too small studios with too few corrections and too little attention to anyone other than the select few that were already the favorites walking in the door (maybe it's this way everywhere?) Two dancers left before the fall was even halfway done. Supposedly changes were made spring 2013, but she didn't go back. It turned into our favorite word: "Next!"

[Momof3darlings]

tutumomma--if you'll let me know which program (Training or Performance) your comments are in reference to, I'll move them to our Trainee board. You've written about the Trainee program in the Pre-pro school thread so the post needs to be moved to the right place.

[suesuedressage]

Does anyone have any information about the Nashville Ballet's Academy level 7 or the pre pro day program? I see from the schedule that the Academy classes are at night and the prepro is during the day? Are there any HS age kids (16-18) in the day program? Do they let people take only 2 or 3 weeknights in the Academy level 7?

 

Thanks!

[nightowl3000]

removed

Edited September 6, 2018 by nightowl3000

[dancemaven]

Please members, contact Moderators via the Contact Us button or via PM rather than taking it upon yourselves to do moderating duties regarding other member’s posts.  If you are concerned about a post, please either contact a Moderator or Administrator or simply ‘report post’ so that we can be made aware of your concern and can handle the concerns.

We have more options to offer members than simply deleting full posts.  We always encourage our members to share their first-hand experiences with a program, whether those experiences are glowing or less than positive.  We believe our members are interested in learning about programs, warts and all.

[deltacoballet]

I trained in the Professional Training Division. This is going to be as detailed as I can make it so be prepared haha. 

 

There were 3 levels, PTD 1(7 people), PTD 2(10 people), and the Trainees(12 people).

 

Schedule:

9 am - Trainee Class, select PTD 2s as well

10:45 am- Trainee pointe

12:00 pm- Trainee Rehearsal/Contemporary

2:00 pm- All of PTD class

3:30 pm- All of PTD rehearsal

4:30 pm- PTD 1 class, PTD 2 contemporary

6:15 pm- PTD 1 and 2 Pas de deux

7:30 pm- PTD 1 and 2 Rehearsal

8:45 pm- Finished for day

It’s not an easy schedule at all. The PTD 1s, and trainees take 2 technique classes everyday, so it’s tough. Saturday class is optional, and we could take an academy class. 

 

Teachers:

The teachers are really different. Each level has a main teacher, I loved mine. She was CPYB trained, so we were taught in Balanchine. We all grew really close to her as a class. She was very hard on us, but it was obvious it was because she cared. We also had other school and company faculty. The Company’s choreographer was always so encouraging to us, and is a really nice guy. I should add however, the 2 heads of PTD, were not my favorite. I think I would just describe them as blatantly judgey. If someone messed up, or did anything they didn’t approve of they’d roll their eyes. They also tended to gossip about us, in front of us, which to me was quite rude. We only had them once a week so it was alright. This is pretty petty to be annoyed about, but they didn’t know how to spell my name which really annoyed me. It’s not that hard of a name. 

We never had any interaction with the artistic director, so I don’t know anything about his class. 

 

Performances/Opportunities:

We had a fall showcase. No costumes, each group had 2 or so pieces. The trainees had chance to do variations in that. Nutcracker was a good experience, PTD 1 danced bon bons, 2 danced Sugar Court and the trainees danced Parthenon court. 3 trainees covered waltz/snow, and 2 ended up casted in snow. We had a spring showcase. It was honestly not super well organized. 10 people were injured, probably because we didn’t get a spring break. So the piece ended up with lots of open spaces. They took trainees out of their soloist roles to learn the corps de ballet, and basically told them too bad for them. 2 students were also given chances to run NB’s Instagram.

Keep in mind that the program is 2 years old, so they are learning but that said, I would not recommend this program.