Best age to go en pointe?

[metallicsnow]

Child's teacher has mentioned that my daughter (10 years) will probably be ready to begin pointe work by the end of summer. She's in Grade 5. I suspected perhaps next year when she will be 11, and starting Grade 6 and Inter foundation. Is 10 years too young?

My DD has recently started pointe work, around the same Grade and she is 12. Some start younger, some older.

It was a while ago OP but it's less about age and more about physical readiness for en pointe work. I believe RAD do not allow dancers to sit Intermediate Foundation before the age of 11, so it may be that your DD's teacher will start preparing with foot strengthening exercises (essential) in the summer.

My DD had completed IMF by end of Y6 (age 11) but only as part of a small splinter group who were deemed ready due to their experience, physique etc. Most dance teachers tend to start later, which is sensible given how tough it is. There may be more experienced posters that can provide more up to date info; mine is anecdotal based on one school's approach to pointe work, which was prescriptive by dancer, right down to the teacher accompanying them to purchase their first set of shoes.

I personally feel that 10 is too young to go en pointe although a pre-pointe class may be appropriate. Really to have the required strength a child needs to be doing around 3 ballet classes a week including around a year of pre-pointe strengthening excercises. Also young childrens bones havent ossified yet.

My daughter attended a vocational dance school from the age of 11. The children there mostly went en pointe part way through year 7 although my dd was Year 8 due to some hypermobility issues.

The pointe work in IF is minimial, mostly rises at the barre and what most schools I know do is to have the children learn the excercises on demi point first until the required strength is built up.

I would be very, very wary of a dance school that put anyone en pointe below the age of 11/12. Even the Royal Ballet School don't expect it of their Junior Associates.

The RAD quite rightly set a minimum age of 11 to take their IF exam. That means that vocational children in Year 7 whose 12th birthday falls late in the academic year can still take the IF exam with their peers (take note these children will be training 5/6 days per week and thus building strength, recreational dance school children really should be a bit older in my honest opinion.

Head over the the 'doing dance' section of Balletcoforum and search the many threads on there about the best age for starting pointe.

Thanks all for your replies. Lots to think about. Sorry I'm late back to this.

She does do two ballet classes plus junior associates. No pre pointe work yet though. Her old dance school had year 7 as a minimum age for starting pointe work.

Actually, there is no best age as such, and it irritates me that some teachers still go by the age group / cohort method when introducing pointework.
It is all down to strength, physical development, skeletal maturity, the technical standard reached and the suitability of the feet. You can have two students the same age at exactly the same standard of training and level of ability, and one will be ready for pointe and the other not. It is very uncommon to reach that stage before 11, and far more usually it would be 12+.

As she is an associate, perhaps you could ask the associate teacher for their advice.

Is she a Royal JA? If so I’d echo the advice to ask her teacher. Will she be auditioning for White Lodge next year? (Assuming she’s Year 5 now?)

Perhaps you're right, Burgundy.

Yes, she's applying for mids though rather than White Lodge. I hadn't thought about asking for advice from the associates teacher, we don't usually get chance to speak to them until almost year end.

Thanks again for all the replies.

Sorry to go off at a tangent, but there seems to be a lot of expertise on this thread.

I have a dd (nearly 11) who is desperate to go en pointe - she does 8 hours of dance a week (only about three hours of ballet, but two hours of conditioning) and working on G4 ballet. She’s really upset that her friends have been told they can go en pointe and she hasn’t - apparently she’s been told she needs to grow (but she isn’t signficantly smaller than some of them).

Can anyone link me to a good article that I could show her about the dangers of going en pointe too early, why some girls are ready sooner than others etc? My “I’m sure your teacher knows best” refrain is really not working very well - she keeps crying after lessons and worries that there’s something wrong with her, or that she’s doing wrong.

Its all about ankle strength
DDs teacher used a wobble board to test the girls
until they could hold it absolutely still for 30 seconds, they could not go up
the injury rate among her pupils is FAR lower than in my day when it was a free for all

the dangers are not the visible injuries
the true dangers are the joint strains over the years

please trust the teachers - their training has changed so much

Zooop - tell your dd that her teacher wants to keep her safe and uninjured, it is really quite dangerous to go up too soon. It isn't anything to do with talent or ability, or even hard work.

Has she learned about puberty yet, and how girls reach puberty at different ages, yet all are normal? Try and get her to relate to readiness for pointe in a similar way.

burgundy Yes, she knows about puberty in quite a bit of detail, as most of the girls in her class are ahead of her in terms of physical development, and they talk about it. Plus she’s got various books.

I suppose the thing she can’t see (and nor can I, because I know nothing about dance) is what makes pointe safe for girls who outwardly look the same as her, but not for her. Clearly there is a difference, but they all look like pre-pubescent girls of a similar height and build (some a bit taller/shorter or stockier/slighter) to me.

I’ll keep reinforcing that her teacher is keeping her safe and uninjured. Hopefully she’ll calm down a bit over Easter, when she doesn’t have any classes.

It might be down to the type of feet she has. If she has high arches and a beautiful banana shaped flexible foot then it may take her much longer to build up the strength needed for pointe.

It could be down to so many things.

I was one of the last in my class to go up because I have very bendy feet. It would have been so easy for me to injure myself by hyper-extending en pointe that my teacher, rightly, insisted that my feet needed to be even stronger than normal. I always got compliments on how beautiful my feet looked en pointe so it was so worth the wait!

Decades ago so I can’t remember what age I was, but I do remember having to wait until my feet were deemed to have stopped growing.

No doubt things have changed, but we had to prepare our feet for blocks by rubbing feet and especially toes with surgical spirit to harden the skin. Once we started block work our toes went through a cycle of blisters/popping/scabs before finally settling down.

I now have hideously ugly toes!

Oriunda it isn't quite as bad as that any more - pointe shoe manufacturing technology has moved on and they have invented decent padding!

OP - there are an awful lot of variables, and it is impossible to tell which over the internet - perhaps you could have a quiet word with the teacher (preferably not in your dd's earshot) and ask her what her thoughts are about it. It is presumably not a lack of ability, as evidenced by your dd being on an associate programme.

My dds were both 10 going en pointe. Some may say this is too young, and maybe it is, but they've suffered no ill affects from it. They both grew early and are very strong. Also their dance school introduces pointe very slowly, so while they do go en pointe, it's only for about 10 minutes a lesson at first.

Dd1 took her interfoundation exam at the end of y7 age 12 and will be taking intermediate this summer at the end of y9 age 14. DD2 will most likely take inter foundation next summer at the end of y7.

It depends on how much pointework and how soon. I've seen the x-rays of a professional dancer's feet (my own dd) and it ain't pretty.