Ballet Help Desk

Get early access to ad-free episodes and exclusive panel discussions by joining our  Patreon This week, it's just us! We're talking all things postgraduate ballet training. We spend some time going over our most recent iteration of the  Ballet Help Desk Postgrad Directory , including some trends we've observed over the last few years. There are some new pieces of data we've added for this year and...

Get early access to ad-free episodes and exclusive panel discussions by joining our  Patreon There's one body type for ballet. We asked Peter LeBreton Merz, artistic director of Eglevsky Ballet and former director of Ballet West Academy, and Racheal Nye, director of Oklahoma City Ballet's Yvonne Chouteau School and Studio Company, whether that's true. In Part 2, they also answer your questions abo...

Get early access to ad-free episodes and exclusive panel discussions by joining our Patreon Turn down School of American Ballet once and you'll never get back in. Most ballet parents have heard some version of that, along with plenty of other myths. So we collected your questions and took them to Peter LeBreton Merz, artistic director of Eglevsky Ballet and former director of Ballet West Academy,...

Get early access to ad-free episodes and exclusive panel discussions by joining our Patreon Lily Peta and Emma Wheeler did everything the traditional ballet path asks of young dancers and still found themselves waiting for the right job to come along. Then, they stopped waiting. This past summer they launched Midsommardans, an outdoor ballet festival on Grinda, an island in the Stockholm archipela...

Get early access to ad-free episodes and exclusive panel discussions by joining our Patreon We sit down with Ayisha McMillan Cravotta and Alicia Delgadillo of Charlotte Ballet to talk about what the road from trainee to professional looks like there. Alicia recently became associate director of CB2, the second company. The pre-professional trainee program is small, capped at 30 dancers, and starts...

Get early access to ad-free episodes and exclusive panel discussions by joining our  Patreon We're back with part 2 of our conversation with former New York City Ballet and Miami City Ballet soloist Kathryn Morgan. This half covers what happens behind the scenes of judging, including why some score sheets come back without comments and what judges actually talk about when they're not watching danc...

Get early access to ad-free episodes and exclusive panel discussions by joining our  Patreon In part one of this two-part episode, we're joined by former New York City Ballet and Miami City Ballet soloist Kathryn Morgan for an honest conversation about what really goes on inside ballet competitions. She talks about how scoring and judging works, why she believes the real evaluation at YAGP finals...

Get early access to ad-free episodes and exclusive panel discussions by joining our  Patreon We're back for part 2 of our parent panel. Stephanie Lombardo, Jen Petersen-Hull, and Lisa Lecamu get specific about what it's like sending your American kid abroad for full-time ballet training. Drop-off day was harder than any of them expected. Lisa now wishes she'd stayed a few extra days to help her so...

Get early access to ad-free episodes and exclusive panel discussions by joining our Patreon Did you ever wonder what it's like to send your dancer off to full-time training? Now, ask yourself what it's like to send them to another continent. In part one of this two-part series, we sat down with three parents who, collectively, had four kids attend ballet programs in Europe. One went to Academie Pr...

Get early access to ad-free episodes and exclusive panel discussions by joining our Patreon As we all know, the ballet job market is incredibly competitive. But, not all ballet careers involve signing a year-long contract with a company. Some dancers choose other paths and we sat down with Linnea Swarting to hear from a dancer who traded the security of a company contract to pursue a freelance car...

Get early access to ad-free episodes and exclusive panel discussions by joining our  Patreon Fran is back for a conversation about respect in the ballet studio. We get into the mechanics of a real ballet class. A teacher giving thirty corrections in ninety minutes doesn't have room to let one go unanswered, and Fran talks about why trying a correction immediately signals something different than t...

Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon   Ever wonder what it actually takes to move up through the ranks at a major ballet company's school, and what happens once your dancer gets there? We sat down with Adam Sklute, artistic director of Ballet West, and Evelyn Cisneros-Legate, who runs Ballet West Academy, to find out. They walk us through how the academy trains dancers from age three all...

 Listen to Ballet Help Desk Podcast ad-free on Patreon We sit down with Carter Alexander, Chair of the Division of Dance at Southern Methodist University, to find out what sets the program apart from the more ballet-specific schools. Carter walks us through the conservatory-within-a-liberal-arts structure: required training in ballet, modern, and jazz, a newly added Afro modern component, and how...

 Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon Shane Jewell, executive director of Oregon Ballet Theatre, was kind enough to sit down with us to explain how ballet companies actually run as businesses. He takes us through the nonprofit structure, including what makes up the primary revenue streams. We also discussed what goes into building a season budget and how that impacts dancer compensation,...

 Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon Peter Stark, president and director of The Rock School for Dance Education, has spent 26 years running ballet schools and knows the recruiting process from both sides of the table. We talk with him about how he evaluates students for recruitment. We also cover how his approach has changed over the years, including how he now weighs student conduct and...

 Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon Our parent panel is back for part two, picking up right where we left off. In this half of the conversation, Erin, Sarah, and Sue cover the topics that come up most for families navigating full-time residential training: how a highly competitive environment can affect a dancer's confidence, how SAB, Houston Ballet Academy, and Canada's National Ballet...

Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon We are so excited to be publishing part 1 of this 2 part interview. It's something we've wanted to do for a long time. Three parents of dancers who attended some of the largest full-time training programs in North America joined us for an in-depth and candid conversation about what it was like, from the family's perspective, to allow their teenagers to...

Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/ BalletHelpDesk Riley Weber is back on the podcast. Since leaving a corporate dance brand job,  Riley has been speaking more openly about how the influencer side of the dance industry actually works. In this episode, we talk about how influencer income works, from per view payouts to brand collabs, and what actually happens be...

Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/ BalletHelpDesk Jenny and I are taking a much needed vacation with our families so we're rereleasing one of our most popular episodes. We sat down with Francis Veyette, former principal dancer with Pennsylvania (now Philadelphia) Ballet, Co-Founder of the Veyette Virtual Ballet School and Rehearsal Director & Outreach Manager...

Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/ BalletHelpDesk If you've been paying attention, you've noticed: Japanese dancers are everywhere. Winning competitions, yes, but also filling the upper ranks of major ballet companies around the world. We've been wondering for a while now what is actually going on over there. Turns out, Kenta Kura has some answers. Kura spent...

Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/ BalletHelpDesk Your dancer has decided to pursue the college path. But which program is the right fit? What's the real difference between a BFA and a BA? What does a video pre-screen actually need to accomplish? And when tuition can tip into six figures, how do families make smart financial decisions? Francisco Gella and Juli...

Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/ BalletHelpDesk Does your dancer need elite training to have a shot at a top college? But what does elite actually mean? Is it competition wins? A company-affiliated school? The right summer intensives? And does the answer look the same whether your dancer is pursuing a BFA or a non-dance degree? College and career specialists...

Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/ BalletHelpDesk In this host-only episode, we draw on our combined years of navigating ballet summer intensives to break down how to make the most of every program -- for your dancer and for you. We talk through what to do before your dancer leaves, how to handle drop-off day, and what to expect once they're there. We also get...

Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/ BalletHelpDesk American Reportory Ballet Artistic Director Samantha Dunster and Executive Director Julie Diana Hench join us for a conversation that gets refreshingly honest about the post-graduate pipeline, the job market, and what it means to truly prepare dancers for professional life.  We dig into the structure of Princet...

Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/ BalletHelpDesk The corrections never stop. The casting is always uncertain. And somewhere along the way, many dancers learn to keep all of it behind a smile, because showing weakness feels like handing someone a reason to replace you. Josh Spell, Kari Brunson Wright, and Rachel Coates have all been in that studio. As former p...