My daughter has been passionate about dancing from an early age. She began having tap and modern classes at the age of 3 then moved to a different school of dance 2 years ago where she attends ballet tap and modern classes plus festival troupe on a different day.
They do a spectacular show every year and have also taken the festival troupe to Disneyland Paris. Last week, out of the blue the classes where split and my daughter was told she's not ready to take grade1 ballet next Feb. Some of the younger students are now in the same class so essentially they feel she hasn't progressed in 2 years.
My daughter was distraught, said she felt angrry with herself for not being good enough. We have invested so much time and money into her classes and hoped by doing this she would be able to fulfil her ambition to study dancing post 16-18.
She is very settled at the school and has made friends but I'm also concerned that it appears only the Principal has A.I.D.T.A, one of the other teaches is Pre Associate but at present my daughter isn't being taught by the Principal or the Pre-Associate.
It will be a huge wrench to move her but if we don't do it now we fear she will always be behind compared to other dance schools.
One of my friends at Zumba said her daughter was on pointe at age 12.
I'm actually finding this more stressful than my son's secondary school application! I'm not belittling that process but where we live it's very straightforward . I would like to hear from other parents who have been in this situation and also from parents of children who continued with dance after leaving school.