Reply to Competitive gymnastics or ballet?

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[quote=Anonymous]To posters asking about WSB, I am the long ballet poster with teen dancer who is actually at WBS now. DD started at a local studio near our house because she was crazy for ballet. Little did we know how much she would want to do it or how great the teaching was she received. She ended up deciding to try WSB as she entered her teens and figured that is where she needed to be in her training. Truth be told we found out that only say 1-2 kids per year are invited into the pre pro track. I consider levels 1-7 the lower school. I do not know if they formally cut students from year to year but it does happen at big name schools.

However, a good way to look at it is that if your child is ever cut, but still has passion for the art, then she hasn't found her dance home yet. There is always a studio that will be a match for a passionate dancer.  As parents we have to educate ourselves on the realities of dance particularly as our dancers get older and it becomes all-consuming for them, us, our cars and our pocketbooks!

I say do not change your DD if it is close and she is enjoying it. The training there is fine but know that very, very few are ever chosen from the school for the pre-pro program, which is mainly Asians, some intl (Latino/Russian etc) and some hand picked dancers from other areas of the US and even the local DC area. There are actually many excellent smaller studios that offer high level training and smaller classes than WSB.

Regarding the "middle of the pack dancer"  - this is nothing to be concerned about ever.  All kids grow, learn, and hit puberty at different rates. Most dancers have at least 1 year of difficult dancing, and also have to retrain their bodies to be flexible etc at various points after growth spurts. It's really a long, slow process that takes many years. Many a professional say in interviews that they were never the "favored" one but through hard work and never giving up they acheived their goal. There will be always be prodigies and favored ones but many don't end up pushing themselves enough with training and eventually are overtaken by those middle of the road dancers.

Finally, we have been at several schools and WSB has definitely been the worst in terms of playing favorites and it's not always about the dancer's abilities. Dancers need to learn to concern themselves with their training and not what's going on with others which can be a tough lesson to learn but ultimately is probably quite valuable later in life.

Ballet is something I never had much interest in prior to having a dancing DC but now I have such respect for many aspects of it - the history, the training, the oral traditions, the classical music, the way these kids memorize different combinations every day, the continuity through the years in the basic technique class and last but not least the amazing bodies I see at the adult classes of the much older women (70s?) who continue to dance throughout their lives.  [/quote]

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