garnet

I feel pretty fortunate about the amount of arts education I received as a child. This keeps turning out really long every time I write it... so please bear with me! Outside of school - my first real exposure to music came when my parents took me to an orchestra concert when I was 3. I have no memory of this event... but what came out of it was me begging to be allowed to play the violin. No teacher would take me until I was 4 and I was too small to even play a 32nd size instrument (!) so someone recommended that my parents construct a 'saltbox' violin for me... yes, a saltbox with a ruler for a fingerboard and a line of colored tape for the bridge. I spent the next decade of my life in what would probably be termed a 'pre-pro' track of music training but ended up stopping due to various reasons which I will spare the details of here. Although some people have said that I 'lost' my childhood due to this serious study of music... I would instead say that I gained so much more in terms of dedication, work ethic, and appreciation for the arts... skills that I hope to use for the rest of my life. I never remember being devoid of friends, books, or playtime, either - perhaps my time was just well-organized (?) maybe I didn't watch enough TV . I attended public school (in Canada) and I think the arts education was fairly good. I remember the teachers always were complaining about funding cuts and lack of supplies... but I think they did a good job anyhow. Art was once a week until grade 6 and was a lot of drawing and painting but also things like batik and printmaking. I think there was the option to take extracurricular art classes over the lunch hour some years too. After grade 6 art became an 'option' but was several times a week if you chose to take it. In the later years of high school art history was included. In the earlier years, art history was a sub-unit of social studies. Music was also taught fairly regularly until grade 6 - mainly singing and theory but also handbells and other basic instuments. After this music became either band or choir. I always wished there was an option for string players. Band was a fairly heavy commitment for students (and parents) as there were early morning practices before school in addition to class time. Choir was extracurricular - not a class. Drama was barely studied in the early years - but both the junior and senior high schools I attended had excellent programs. I remember in grade 8 we were even studying lighting design. The drama teacher at the high school (grades 10-12) was truly an inspiration. There were 2 major productions a year - one was taken on the road to both another school (for an exchange) and to the city highschool drama festival. There was a theatersports (improv) team that had weekly rehearsals and performances and we travelled to the city championships as well as other performing opportunities. In addition to this the graduating grade 12 students were required to direct a 15 minute work for performance in front of a general audience. This was a great experience for those students (I was merely an actor). It is nice to see that so many people I knew who went through this program are now working in TV, film, and stage. The one thing that was truly missing was dance! This seems depressingly common to most people's in-school education. Aside from square dancing and line dancing in gym (yee-haw) there was really nothing. I'm sad that I was not exposed to it sooner in my life... but truly happy I stumbled upon it eventually. If anyone is still reading... I was just wondering if it was common (or not) for schools to have 'assemblies'. I remember in grades 1-6 that several times a year (mainly holidays) the whole school would put together a production where each class would prepare something - a poem, a short play, a song, etc. Anyone else have this?

What a wonderful thread (and new forum). Thank you so much for this, Alexandra. So many memories... I, too, loved Madeline L'Engle's books, and C.S. Lewis, E.B. White, L.M. Montgomery, Judy Blume, Walter Farley, L. Frank Baum... so great to be reminded of all of these. My favorite book, however was "The Violin-Maker's Gift" by Donn Kushner and my favorite poem was Edward Lear's "The Jumblies".

A belated thank-you to svemaus for taking the time to translate the whole article!

From the Stuttgarter Zeitung: http://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/stz/page...tail.php/402513 Okay... my translation skills are not perfect - perhaps one of the native German speaker members has better english than I have german... As far as I can understand from the article: Only about 25% of the tickets were sold in advance of the performances in New York. Reid Anderson believes this has more to do with the current situation in the US (war, SARS scare) than with the nature of the programming. He is very sorry to not take his dancers but cannot afford to lose so much money. It is mentioned that Opera and Orchestra ticket sales are also down at the moment. The reception for Romeo and Juliet was reported as being very good with lots of standing ovations but the reaction to the mixed program was reported as being mixed. Reid Anderson is reported as not being too surprised by this as he states that the art of choreography in Europe is somewhat different (I am paraphrasing somewhat here - please do not read too much into this:)). He is happy with his dancers' performances and pleased with the public and critical response.

There seem to be a number of issues in this thread but at the moment, I just wanted to elaborate a little on what disturbed me about the article. Here is one additional quote from it to perhaps better convey the tone of the piece: "Your faculty may need a financial incentive to retain students. One school offers faculty members five dollars for every student who remains enrolled in their classes for the full season. Your bonus could be different; but what's important is to offer some sort of incentive. In most cases, nothing works better than cash!" Although, in principle I agree with Gary's statement that: "the financial side of any business is as important as the nature of the service you provide or the product you make." I think that one has to be very careful when the service you provide is the instruction of children. I worry that if the teachers that are teaching at the schools the article is aimed at need a financial incentive in order to keep students from dropping out that they will not be providing the: "Solid teaching, with a well-defined curriculum and syllabus" that Treefrog is describing. I guess that is what I found disturbing - not the suggestion of offering recreational training.

I recently discovered that I have online access to Dance Magazine through my old University's online journal collection. For anyone else out there affiliated with a University, this may also be an option for you. So, after reading the article called "Cutting Your Losses" Nov 2002 p.66 (I think this is the one discussed in this thread - if it's not, I'd like to comment anyway) I would like to add my two cents to the discussion. Wow. For an article in a section entitled "On Education" - it contains very little on "education" but a whole lot more on making money for your studio. I find the following exerpt particularly disturbing: "Developing a reputation that you train professional dancers is not always good for business. Producing good dancers is important, but having a neighborhood school where everyone can learn to dance--and enjoy it--is the way to go financially." I definately appreciate (and totally support!) the need for studio owners to make a living. It just seemed really strange to read an article that was focussed more on the loss of income an unhappy child could result in - rather than focussing on improving the emotional state of the child. If someone is only running a studio as a money-making scheme - I think I would try to stay far, far away. I agree with the other opinions on this thread that the difference between professional and non-professional track training should be in the intensity and not the quality of training. I have witnessed this being carried out - and it seems to work quite well.

Thanks to everyone for your help! Thanks to cygneblanc for the additional websites. I knew about abebooks (also have used amazon.co.uk and amazon.de) but the others were new (just what I need... more places to spend money on books!). Although I didn't find a european bookseller that had the book I was looking for... I did find a place in the USA that had the book for a better price using sfb.at. Buying books online does not quite compare to the feeling of browsing through a charming real-life collectible/antiquarian book store and finding that unexpected gem... but it is amazing what you can find online now. Ari - thanks for the link. I checked for import tariffs on books through that site and I think it says there are none - but I'm afraid a legal degree must be a prerequisite for understanding those pages! I think I'm just going to go ahead and order the book. It sounds like the extra charges won't be as bad as when I ordered ballet supplies (order cost was ca. 100 USD, shipping was ca. 35 USD, import duties were ca. 45 EUR). Thanks again for the help. I will post details on what charges are incurred if anyone is interested. P.S. Alexandra - I know that this site has a deal going with Amazon.com so I hesitate to ask... but perhaps it would be okay to start a new thread collecting the addresses of European online used book sellers and peoples' experiences with them? I promise to use the links on this site to access Amazon.com if I ever order a book through them.

This may not be the right forum to post this question in - moderators please feel free to move to more appropriate location - but felt perhaps others with an interest in discussing and collecting ballet books may know the answer. I have recently moved to mainland Europe. There are a number of (long out of print) ballet books that I have finally located through online used book dealers. The only problem? The dealers are in the USA. I know that import duties can be frighteningly expensive (after an experiment with ordering ballet supplies not available here from a place in the US) so, my question is: Has anyone here ordered used books from the US to a location in Europe (as far as I have been told all EU countries should have the same import duties)? Do you have any idea of the percentage of the item cost the import duties were? Thanks for any help that can be provided. I have just recently joined the forum discussions after being a long-term 'lurker'. I hope I can contribute more in the future.