AIBU to think overseas ballet intensives are too much for children and teens?

[Mykolo]

Hi all, so my DD is 10, she’s very into and good at ballet and we are looking at various vocational training options going forward.
A colleague of my husband works with a mother who’s daughter was a professional ballet dancer at a very well respected opera house in Europe, the mother put us in touch with this woman incase she has any useful advice.

Now her child did a different system they lived in France at the time so she did a conservatoire/regular school combination.

What surprised me was she told me that from age 10 her daughter was as going abroad for summer intensives sometimes 2 or 3 weeks in countries like Austria, The Netherlands and in her later teens (which would have been before the war and Covid) Russia.

This seems absurd to me? She said from
about age 11/12 she would just fly as an unaccompanied minor and be met by the school on the other side or they would put her on a train for the same to happen on the other side.

I really don’t feel comfortable with this, certainly willing to look at uk residential courses, but DD has said she doesn’t want to be away from home for too long.

AIBU to think this is ridiculous? Having looked at the same courses they don’t even offer an option where the whole family books a hotel and we take DD each day, surely there has to be a better system than 10/11/12 year olds being away from home for so long? And bloody reckless of parents who were letting their children fly all over Europe alone including to Russia at 16?! (Even if this was before the war!)

Noones asking you to do it though?
I used to go abroad for a languages school every summer from my early teens onwards though for a couple of weeks and I absolutely loved it. It was my choice. I made heaps of friends from around the world and we had loads of fun together.

It's not mandatory. Do what works for your family, and others will do what works for them.

Something isn’t ridiculous for other families just because it doesn’t suit you.

And bloody reckless of parents who were letting their children fly all over Europe alone including to Russia at 16?!

Do you realise many teenagers that age go on holidays with their friends?

None of this really has anything to do with you.

Different sport but I'm sure one of my kids would jump at the chance to do a week or 2 of intensive training/coaching in a different country!

My other kid would absolutely hate it

Well if you live in England you would likely get fined for having her out of school to do anything else during term time anyway. Seems unlikely that a head would approve that time off regardless of whether it was relevant to a future career. So it would be a total non starter in England these days.

It doesn't sound like it's term time.

Plenty of kids go to camp at that age. I get you don’t want to send her and that’s fine, but it’s not weird or unusual, especially if the child is skilled or has been identified as having high potential.

My kids did this for a different activity. It took them all over the world. Europe, Asia and North America mostly. From 12 there were intensives in Russia, Germany and USA, these lasted anywhere from 2-8 weeks. Three of them now work professionally in the same field, they've made nice careers out of it. I'm being deliberately vague about what it was, but there were many parallels to the world of ballet.

The truth was, at home, they were middle sized fish in a small pond. They needed the intensives with others from around the world so they could see what was possible and push themselves to the next level if that's what they wanted.

It's not for everyone though. At 12, she's old enough to be fine for two weeks and if she hates it, old enough to contact you to come home.

Hmmmm it really depends. I don't come from the world of ballet, but from another high performance endeavour where you have to invest a lot of time in your teens.

If your child wants to do ballet just as a hobby, then of course it is probably too much.

If your child wants to excel... Any child that I have known to excel, unless they are lucky to live in one of the relevant performance hubs, they have travelled extensively around the world and done long camps with the training group from age 12 onwards. Many I know have moved away from their family before age 16 to live with another family permanently and pursue their activity. Alternatively the whole family has relocated, e.g. from the US to Italy. One of the kids I was with moved from Korea to Europe at 11, she is now one of the best in the world. Elite performance really does require commitment and sacrifice, total dedication to the craft.

Ultimately if you want to be world class, you have to find the best coaches/teachers and conditions. This is why, for example, you do not see many people from obscure countries excel in the olympics unless the country is a performance hub for that sport. If you do, their parents are obsessive, e.g. Williams sisters.

You may find this useful: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-gold-mine-effect/rasmus-ankersen/9781848317109

Look at the former principal dancers of the RBO or National... A lot of them left home at 12-16.

A ballet 'camp' would be total immersion. Intensive classes, sharing with other students, learning about recovery, fitness, nutrition, traditions, mindfulness... It's also exciting to meet other high performers... To be honest time with family at the end of every day would be a massive distraction to performance, and even learning about other cultures.

Generally though, don't kids leave home for long periods of time anymore? During my upbringing, it was normal to be away from your home and parents several weeks a year for various reasons, e.g. sport camps, fun summer camps, school trips away or abroad, away with your sports team, study abroad, visiting family etc, from age 8. Nearly everyone from my family did this, some even went away for 3-6 months, or even longer.

Do i sound like a Russian performance coach yet? 😆I'm not, but for all the talk about 'treating children like children', the ones that do excel at the highest levels unfortunately still do display an extreme dedication.

If you want your child to have a normal childhood and stay close to home, it's better to keep ballet as a fun hobby and focus on education.

Your daughter doesn’t have to go but if she wants to then I don’t see anything wrong with it.

You might not feel comfortable with it but it is very standard and a lot of people do it.

even PGL offer weeks abroad for kids in France and the like.

If she wants to have much hope of dancing professional ballet to any level, she'll usually need to be boarding from 11. It's very rare that girls would start fulltime training much later than this, and they'll be expected to be independent enough to cope. Intensives will help with this. I doubt she'll even really notice that she's abroad as she'll be kept pretty busy! If it's a good, reputable event they'll be bringing in children from all over the world, and will be very well practiced at looking after them. But she should definitely have attended local intensives first, in case she hates them. Ballet's kinda brutal, and intensives are a huge step up from usual class. And whilst British ballet has worked on being a bit less psycho, that's not necessarily the case everywhere...

Having someone who has taken ballet intensives in the UK, from around 15, and later a European intensive, I would research and think very VERY carefully about the culture surrounding ballet and the particular company your child would be going to. They do need to start very early, but it is such a massively impressionable age, and there still exists a fair amount of unhealthy attitudes.
That said, I also know someone who went to the US to live on their own at 16 to attend ballet school there and have been subsequently employed by several companies.
Perhaps start with one in the UK that is reachable and see how that goes?

Other countries/cultures have different expectations of children. In some countries it would be unremarkable that an 11/12 year old would be able to navigate trains and public transport and take a flight as an unaccompanied child whereas in the UK a lot of parents would consider this to be unusual. In some countries going to school unaccompanied from age 6 is the norm, in others it would be grounds for a safeguarding intervention.

At 15 I was travelling on my own. Unaccompanied flight, bus from airport to train station, train to final destination. All in a foreign language. My son did exactly the same last summer. Parents seem to have much lower expectations of kids nowadays.

What @dabdab said - a close friend has a dd in this world and we’ve talked a lot about the best way to support her dd. It’s a brutal culture and there have been quite a few massive safeguarding fails that I know of in the UK. Abroad with no family nearby is an even higher risk.

There is a pipeline pumping out many more from the vocational schools than there are professional ballet jobs. I worry that all the intensives do is provide a huge income stream to schools, and false hope to parents trying to do their best for their DCs.

There are two separate issues - the courses themselves and the travelling. As pp's have said, even if a course is 'too much' for 90% of children, 90% wouldn't 'make it' into a full time career anyway. The 10% for whom it's not too much are likely going to be the ones who would have the determination, drive, focus, etc. to go beyond 'enjoyable hobby' to 'my life's passion.' There's nothing wrong with being either but there is a difference.

Travelling there's probably less likelihood of something going wrong in a plane than in a train station. Presuming travelling as an unaccompanied minor means someone takes them through boarding etc and then the same the other side, then they literally have to sit through a flight. Some teens might not like the idea, others might love it, but it's not hard or complicated. If, for example they've been used to navigating the tube alone since they were 11 then they might not bat an eye at an unaccompanied plane journey.

Americans are big in summer camp - many kids live these and spend weeks there.

horses for courses.

if she and you want to do ballet summer school - that’s great.

if not, it’s not compulsory.

Each to their own

Kids in elite sports (football, tennis, skiing) and musicians also do this. If you are properly elite and going to make a career of it then you do need the best training from an early age.

It’s very common in the ballet world and not ridiculous at all! I went to ballet school with 15 year olds from Japan, Brazil, China etc and all of them were living independently in a foreign country when they only had basic English! These summer intensives are a very good training for that. And also to experience other style of ballet and different teachers. Less at 10 but definitely later they are also informal auditions for entry into the full time school.

Maybe start with a UK summer school next year and see what happens? If your daughter likes performing you could look at NYB. You audition in Feb time, 10 day summer intensive and then performances at places like Sadlers Wells, Birmingham Hippodrome etc. All great experience.

Or see if there are any teachers/ schools she would like to work with and apply for those? RBS/ Elmhurst/ Tring etc, all run summer programmes and there are several very good ones not connected to schools too.

While we are aware of this, there are options in other countries which seem to allow the child to stay with parents and still achieve success, such as the woman I was talking to, her child never had to leave home, as living in Paris they had access to many routes into ballet.

In Europe, fulltime residential school is the norm. The POB school is definitely also boarding, and they start at 8! In America, it's much more usual to live at home and attend a local studio until mid teens. It's also probably a lot more doable here than it once was, especially as White Lodge had just announced they're going to delay admissions to 13, which is huge. If you're local to London and happy to take her to a variety of classes in the week, plus weekend workshops and intensives, it may well be possible to keep her at home longer. But it will be exhausting for her, as she'll be doing a full school day, then have to travel to completely different locations afterwards to train. So she'll be getting next to no downtime. With a residential school, she'd only be doing a half day of school, and her training will be in the same place.

However, this is all dependent on whether ballet is just something she rather enjoys and wants to carry on in her spare time, or whether she's aiming to be the next Marianela Nunez. All the above is what's required to get to the very top, but loads of people dance to a really high standard through their teens just as a hobby. It's also very possible to go to dance college at 16, and though it's pretty unlikely she'll end up in the RB*, there are obviously many other possible routes for dancers than just top tier ballet.

The most important thing is to speak with her ballet teachers, especially before you sign her up for any intensives etc. They'll know much better what to advise for your daughter than anyone else.

*But not impossible - see Melissa Hamilton!

If you have a 12 year old doing national childrens orchestra (for example), they go on regular residentials, the same is likely true generally of secondary age DC focussing on a specific hobby to a high standard

Yeah this is very much the norm. My daughter does a lot of dance but is not either good enough or dedicated enough for a career in it. It’s obvious by her age (13) as the children around her who have any sort of shot are doing these sorts of things regularly. She didn’t want to focus just on dance and would not have been up for these sorts of experiences so she will do something else with her life. Dance is brutal, ballet even more so and dancing career peak really young so you need to be 100% dedicated before you hit your teens.

This is the problem with the UK and why we are fucked.

Everyone else in the world wants to succeed and will suffer for that ambition.

Brits are so soft and entitled. That's far too much work to fit my precious daughter! No ambition. We have become a nation of soft, self indulgent losers...

So sad.