Any Ballet Mums here?

[propelusagain]

ISTD/RAD Inter foundation- what are the differences?

My DD passed her RAD Intermediate Foundation in April, ( distinction) the whole class of 7 students found it fairly easy. They have been studying ISTD grades for 9 or 10 years prior to this.
Now working hard to take the ISTD Intermediate foundation in June, but finding the work much harder than the RAD syllabus. So much that a few of the students want to approach the teacher and ask her to postpone the whole class exam until later in the year. I am slightly surprised as thay all passed the RAD inter foundation with flying colours.
Is there a big difference in the two exams/

My dd did RAD ballet, but we know a teacher locally whose school does ISTD (dd did tap and modern there). She said that the ISTD syllabus contains a lot more free work rather than set exercises, and the dancers are set different exercises all the time, which some students prefer, but others find much more challenging.

How old is your dd? Is she now working on RAD intermediate as well as the ISTD IF?

DD is 14. Not working on the RAD Intermediate atm, focussing on the ISTD inter foundation. Not sure why the teacher decided to do the RAD inter foundation at all. All exams up to this point have been ISTD.

The girls are finding the ISTD work far more difficult than the RAD.
THey will continute on to do foundation, but not sure whether it will be ISTD or RAD.

I think there might be more pointework in ISTD as well, come to think of it.

How many hours/classes a week does she do?

She does 10 hours of ballet, but also tap, modern, street and musical theatre- so around 18-20 hours.

My guess (I play piano for dance lessons) is that the girls are finding the free work difficult. In ISTD, they really need to know what everything is called and be able to put together enchainements at a moment's notice, figure out how to do the second side or even potentially reverse it for themselves etc. Our 'vocational' girls usually do the same classes for a couple of years before they take the exam, along side their grades, and the intermediates usually do at least one Adv. 1 class, etc.

Also - are we talking RAD interfoundation this April? In which case they would be learning a whole syllabus in a few months? No way...

THey sat the RAD interfoundation at the beginning of April and will sit the ISTD interfoundation beginning of June.

Well, she's doing a lot of ballet classes, so it isn't likely to be a strength issue - which is sometimes the case with the vocational grades if people are only doing one grade and one vocational class a week. How much time does she spend on pointe a week?

Maybe it might be worth having a chat with the teacher and see what they say.

I agree with Julie about the free work. Does she do any associate programmes anywhere, or go to workshops etc? They can be very helpful as they're usually unset work which gets them used to picking things up quickly and doing different combinations.

I don't have any experience of ISTD ballet, only their tap & modern grades.

Dd is at vocational school & has passed RAD IF. she's now started on Inter
In ISTD modern they skip IF & go straight to Inter.

However they only do 2 90 min syllabus classes a week in ballet, the other 4 classes are non syllabus.

No insight into RAD vs ISTD.

However, DD goes to an 'all ISTD' school, and will have been doing IF work, alongside grade work, for c. 2.5 years depending on when she does her exam.

She started going to IF when she started Grade 5. She did Grade 5 in 2 terms, and is now doing Grade 6 a year later. She may or may not do IF next (usually they do Grade 6 OR IF, but this cohort is very young, so they may end up doing both), but if so it won't be for at least another couple of terms, so 7-8 terms of IF befopre doing the exam.

She is very, very used to free work due to all the previous exams, but a full nerw syllabus in a couple of months seems quite an ask...

Has she done e.g. the ISTD ballet awards? DD has done those for the last few grades, down in Crawley, and it gave me a real insight into what is really required in terms of free work and how quickly they have to produce a perfect enchainement.

teacherwith2kids- yes she has done and passed every ISTD ballet grade from primary to grade 6. The ISTD syllabus has been the basis of her dance work for the past 10 years.

It's not just her that is concerened, all the girls in her group have reservations, even though they have all passed their RAD Interfoundation.
I am coming to the conclusion that is is a timing issue- with only 8 weeks to learn the ISTD work.

I can see that - if she is used to 'free work' as a concept (apologies for missing that all her previous work had been ISTD) then it just sounds like there isn't enough time to do all the IF syllabus in the time. Did they literally only just start learning the work after taking the RAD exam, or have they been doing the two in parallel for some time?

I mean, DD doesn't do as much ballet as your DD - 5 hours (2x Grade 6, 1x IF, 1x Inter, 1 x pointe) but they always do 2-3 syllabuses in parallel, so although Grade 6 might be her 'true' level, she has a good knowledge of the next 2 syllabuses up. But if it literally was 'RAD done, now let's move on to the ISTD syllabus in preparation for the exam' I can see that it would be a lot to do, even if the time allotted to it was several hours a week.

TBH I dont actually know. The ballet teacher is guarded and not very communicative with us Moms, and not really up to questioning!!
Having said that the girls adore her, are very very happy at the school (520 pupils), and the team spirit is excellent.

I guess there are times just to step back.