To be quite disgruntled that it seems I haven't grown up to be a ballerina.

[Slubberdegullion]

I just think it's quite unfair really.

I did ballet for like 4 or 5 years when I was quite small. Good toes, naughty toes etc etc.

I really REALLY wanted hard to be a ballerina, and I still do, so imagine my shock and dismay when I realise last night that some lovely, bendy, pointy-toes Russian lady is dancing Giselle partnered by Carlos Acosta at the Royal Opera House and I'm just WATCHING her do it at the cinema in Ellesmere Port.

Who can I complain to about this please? There's just no ballet justice in this world

Another frustrated ballerina here - I even started to write a book called "the secret ballet" when I was 8 about a girl who was denied her chance but practised in secret and was somehow discovered (think that owes a lot to the Bella Barlow gymnast stories in Mandy or Bunty!)
All my 3 girls are having or have had dance lessons - DD1 did ballet until 15, modern 16 and stopped tap at 17 (didn't want to do Advanced exam and needed to concentrate on A levels) - she's now nearly 21 and has a fab figure. I could have been like that too!! I was crap at sport - couldn't hit or catch a ball - but I do have a good sense of rhythm and music so surely I could have danced :)

However, I wish I could persuade DD2 to stop or at least switch to a fun class (there is a local mixed ballet/tap/modern school locally that just works towards shows and informal awards) rather than the ISTD/RAD lessons she does now. She is on G2 tap at 11 years old, if her 6yo sister does her Primary Tap next term (has just done her pre-primary tap and primary modern) she'll only be one grade behind. That would make me want to stop!

I'm quite upset that despite practicing religiously for 4 years on the violin between the ages of 11-15, doing the vibrato thing and everything , I'm not a feted solo violinist what gets to wear glamorous frocks and travel the world and basically be Vanessa-Mae (only larger and in glasses).

Who I see is also skiing in the winter olympics. FFS, woman, is one career not enough??

There was a book called Thursday's Children by Rumer Godden that took over right where Posy Fossil left off. I have never met anyone else who has read it, but you lot sound like possibles.

Read it, read it, read it!

Please

just sneaking in to boast that my DD like katymac's is off to dance school in September - ballet, ballet, ballet all the way!

as a child I was never allowed anything so frivolous as ballet lessons, so when DD asked to go at age 3 I said yes. 12 years later and she is still at it! I on the other hand am like an elephant....

Ooh nigella where is she off to?

Barbarian, I gave it to dd1 for Christmas

Ballet West, pictures

As a student Podiatrist, I treated a lady who, when I saw her feet , my brain was shouting "What the Feck has happened to your feet Missus"?

But IRL , I asked nicely "have you had an injury or surgery"?

She was a long career ballet dancer, now retired.

The beauty and grace of those dancers (DD and I go to see a ballet every Christmas) can't brain bleach that image

Fabulous, well done to her

I am so glad my dream went up in smoke. Leave school at 16, work in a factory and buy a Mini. I did it for 2 weeks and then slunk back to school and begged to be allowed into the 6th firm

The trouble with ballet is that it has less to do with talent and ability, and more to do with parental willingness to pay. A lot. And your natural shape.

To put it in day-to-day economic terms, with so many willing and so few jobs in it, it is most definitely an employers market!

I am reluctant to allow my dd to start (not that she's asked yet, she's only 3 and hasn't seen it, deliberately, but we do like to worry ahead), because doubtless she would want to continue and cue one big life-long disappointment. But it is good exercise for a youngster, if taught right.

It's not even something you can carry on as a hobby in adulthood. My sister did Morris dancing instead and has trophies to show, plus is still going at nearly 30.

Hope those on the stage are aware of how lucky and privileged they are. Doubt it though. We never are, are we.

Oops, , remember to check the no of pages at bottom before weighing in with embittered ten penn'orth... New iPad probs.

But seriously, I would be interested in hearing of other dance activities that can be continued as adult hobbies. There seem to be a few on this board for ballet, but I never found adult classes in Years of looking and this while living in an inner city for Pete's sake...

there are tons of adult ballet classes around, Sleep. Not so many as for children but there are. Well done to your sister for her Morris dancing! I'm afraid my DD would not be interested in that. I agree ballet gets very very expensive. it is highly competitive. happily where my DD is going to vocational training she can use her student grant.
sorry to hijack, OP

Slubber, did she like it?

You seem to have lost your touch on the weather this year. Where is the snow you demanded (and got) for the past three winters? I am tired of this marshwiggle life. Please get a grip.

Sleep, I would say ballroom/Latin is definitely one. Where I am at the moment the busiest category is Senior 2 - the over fifties.

But there's a big drop off at around 25-30, if people marry non-dancers they usually stop competing, although I know one or two couples who went along for wedding dance lessons and subsequently started.

It might be different if you go to a place that focusses more on medal tests rather than competitions though.

Thank you! Was wondering about ballroom. Sorry for the hijack.

Barbarian - I read it years ago and remember liking it. Its been reprinted recently along with another one by Rumer Godden with some of the same characters called 'Listen to the Nightingale'. Set in the Royal Ballet School (with a different name) too.

Barbarian, I've read it. I love Rumer Godden.

When I grow up I'm going to marry an Austrian baron who lives in a castle, like Marie Von Eschenau (don't think that's spelt rite) in the Chalet School. Hopefully he'll hurry up and sweep me off my girlishly pretty feet before my 50th birthday which is not far off.

Failing that, are there any vacancies for disguised Ruritanian princesses who while away their time rescuing orphans from the London slums? How does one apply?

Or, to stay with the Rumer Godden theme, I could always be a nun. Preferably the In This House of Brede type of nun, not Five for Sorrow Ten for Joy which is deeply disturbing.

Deeply disturbing, Doris, I agree. I never quite understood what she was getting at there. The Dark Horse also has nuns (in India) they have quite a jolly time except for all the cooking.

In This House of Brede sounds wonderfully peaceful. I might come and join you.

Beatrice, I haven't read the Nightingale one. Thank you!

I was never going to be one of the performing children from Noel Streatfeild's many tales that I loved reading as a child, but today DD1 announced that she is going to school as Posy Fossil for World Book Day. Except that she won't be going to school at all on WBD because she'll be at the RAD HQ taking a ballet exam - an absent Posy Fossil!

Reading this thread has reminded me that apart from my desire to be Darrell at Malory Towers (later translated to a desire to go to boarding school), I keep meaning to look into adult ballet classes again. For a couple of years before DD1 was born, and a year or so afterwards, I went to an adult beginners class at the Laban Centre in SE London. It was wonderful...in spite of some rather bemused looks from the rather more slimline dancers who glanced into the studio that contained an 8-months-pregnant me in the adult beginners group!

I would LOVE to be a dancer. Have to settle for an ice dancer though as I have fallen in love with learning to figure skate. I actually do ice dance once a week and love it.

I'm starting to get skater's thighs.