Task 4B/C Question 6

6: What are the benefits of the different schools of training used across the world and what are the results?  Is one producing a more rounded dancer than the others?

Teacher 1

Different training in what styles?  

Ballet - Russian training, Italian/french, british, danish, American - all worth looking at.

British from Ashton - British style, very precise technique, developed slowly through careful training.

Whereas Russian - teach tricks and turns etc first and technique develops with the trick.  Little children do things very early.

Danish - Bournonville influence - strong male dancer, elevation.

Some schools not so exam based.  More competitive within training.  Some pulled out because of their physique and developed in a career from young age.

Teacher 2
No response

Teacher 3
I think that all depends on the student themselves, obviously if u train 5/6 days a week your gonna be better and achieve more therefore increasing standards of the school

Teacher 4
I think it depends on the student and their needs. I think this related to your first question on generic weaknesses and really connects with genetics. Americans create very athletic dancers, however, with a body type that has the wrong musicle fibres this type of training is lost. The americans work very well with Asian body type!!
Russians, personally, create very weak dancers who have fabulous pyrotechnics but no quality of movement or true line. They are over stretched and have no control in their movements- leg lowerings, hight of jumps.

Feedback from Tutor 

...This one is far harder to answer:

 What are the benefits of the different schools of training used across the world and what are the results?  Is one producing a more rounded dancer than the others?

This is far harder to answer because the question sets out a some difficult preconceptions: that there is such a thing as a ‘more rounded dancer’ ... that a ‘more rounded dancer’ is better than some other type of dancer, that schools of training are the only thing to effect this … etc. This question implies strongly that there is a correlation between cause (schooling) and effect (result = rounded or non-rounded dancer). This is a difficult question to answer because it is laden with preconceptions that get in the way.

This type of question could be better tackled by thinking in terms of where the insights lay, e.g.:

What qualities do established professional contemporary dance practitioners attribute specifically to their training, experiential and other factors?

This type of question does not imply that ‘specific type of training = rounded dancers (as something of value) rather seeks to understand how different qualities of their experiences and how the dancers feel this links to their capabilities.