Ballet Help Desk

 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...

Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ BalletHelpDesk Every ballet company's tax return is public record. Most dancers have never seen one. Liza Yntema, founder of the Dance Data Project, and Griff Braun, National Organizing Director at the American Guild of Musical Artists, walk us through what the numbers reveal. We start with the 990, how to read it, and what a...

Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BalletHelpDesk What does ballet training look like when it's housed inside a 100-year-old university, with the Semperoper Ballet as your next-door neighbor? We sat down with Rector Prof. Katharina Christl and Vice-Rector Prof. Juliana Sabino Wilhelm of Palucca University of Dance in Dresden, Germany, for a close look at one of...

Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ BalletHelpDesk What happens when a dancer who traded pre-professional ballet training at the John Cranko School and the Joffrey Ballet Studio Company for a Harvard degree? Or when a dancer who received offers from the training programs at Joffrey, Colorado Ballet, and Philadelphia Ballet decides that college was always the pla...

Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ BalletHelpDesk Jason Beechey has spent his career shaping pre-professional ballet training. After 18 years as rector of Palucca University of Dance in Dresden, he now serves as Director of Zurich Dance Academy and Head of Dance at the Zurich University of the Arts. He walks us through how Zurich Dance Academy actually works: t...

Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ BalletHelpDesk What happens when a dancer skips the postgrad route entirely and still lands a professional contract? Paityn Lauzon, now in her fourth season as a company artist with Nevada Ballet Theatre, did exactly that. She grew up at a small competition studio in Arizona, turned down a spot at Joffrey New York at 14, and l...

Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ BalletHelpDesk Timothee Chalamet said no one cares about ballet anymore. Fran Veyette disagrees. He's back on #NoThirds, and this episode goes deep into one of the most debated questions in the ballet world right now: are the classical, full-length ballets still relevant? Swan Lake. Giselle. Sleeping Beauty. Romeo and Juliet....

Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ BalletHelpDesk How long can your dancer stay home before it starts to matter? It's one of the most common questions ballet parents face, and one of the most consequential. Jen Sommers, Director of  Houston Ballet Academy, joins us to talk through exactly that, along with everything else families need to understand about the ro...

Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ BalletHelpDesk Author, teacher, and former principal dancer Gavin Larsen has spent her post-performance life doing something she loves just as much as dancing: drawing stories out of other people. Her new book, Infinite Steps: 33 Dancers and Their Lives in Ballet, grew out of a collaboration with longtime ABT staff photographe...

Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ BalletHelpDesk What does it really take to go from pre-professional student to professional ballet dancer? Charlotte Junge, a company member with Madison Ballet, shares the unfiltered version of her journey from competition dance roots in Houston to training at Boston Ballet School through the height of COVID, to landing her c...

Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ BalletHelpDesk Madison Ballet's Ja'Malik didn't arrive to tinker around the edges. He came to change things, and four years in, it's working. He shares a journey that started with Michael Jackson's Thriller in his front yard and led him through the Joffrey Ballet School, the Ailey school, and North Carolina Dance Theater befor...

Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ BalletHelpDesk In the final episode of our four-part bullying series, we're joined again by Kelsey Fyffe, a therapist who works with pre-professional dancers, and Suzette Takei, a veteran academic school administrator and educator, as we get into the messy stuff. Lobby politics, ballet parents behaving badly, peer conflict bet...

Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ BalletHelpDesk What does it actually feel like to train at the Vaganova Academy, the school that produced some of the greatest dancers in history, and then go on to perform at one of Russia's most storied companies? Elena Kunikova has lived that story, and she's generous enough to share it. In this episode, we talk about what...

Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ BalletHelpDesk In part three of our bullying series, we tackle some of the toughest conversations ballet parents face: what to do when teachers make harmful comments about weight, body image, or use abusive language in class. Psychotherapist Kelsey Fyffe and educator Suzette Takei give parents the exact roadmap for addressing...

Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ BalletHelpDesk We sit down with Michelle Martin, Associate Artistic Director of Ballet Austin, for a refreshingly honest conversation about their complete training pipeline: the tuition-free Butler Fellowship program, Ballet Austin TWO, and the path into the main company. Michelle doesn't sugarcoat anything. She talks about wh...

Listen to Ballet Help Desk ad-free on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ BalletHelpDesk LeeAnaca "Lee" Moore (Pacific Northwest Ballet) and Natalie Bowman (St. Louis Ballet) are the duo behind Tights Under, the popular social media account showcasing the realities of pre-professional and professional ballet life. In this episode, Lee and Natalie get candid about their journeys from training to land...