04/06/2026
So true 💜💚🖤
I don’t usually post about dance teaching anymore.
Most people here know me through Needle en Pointe and my tutu work, but before that, and alongside it, I’ve spent over twenty years teaching ballet. I trained through the RAD syllabus to Advanced 2 and grew up in a very traditional ballet school under my mum, who was a professional ballet dancer herself.
A conversation with her today made me think about something.
I wonder if, as a dance community, we’ve started confusing early achievement with good training.
Social media, and even our local competitions, are full of six, seven, eight, nine and ten year olds doing incredible things. Multiple pirouettes, batterie, complex allegro and advanced vocabulary that would once have been reserved for much older students.
And they are genuinely incredible.
The hours they put in and the dedication they show should never be underestimated.
But I don’t think the best training is necessarily the training that produces the most impressive young children.
I think it’s the training that lays the foundations for the strongest older dancers.
A young child can be taught to reproduce movement. They can learn the shapes, the steps and even very advanced ballet vocabulary. I’ve seen six year olds perform posé turns, pas de chat and beaten jumps beautifully.
But performing something and truly understanding it are not always the same thing.
Real technique, artistry and musicality are built over years. Children’s bodies mature. Their minds mature. Their understanding matures.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with success at a young age, and I think competitions can be a wonderful experience for children. The question, for me, is whether that success is being built on foundations that will still support the dancer years from now.
After a lifetime in dance, I’ve come to believe that the goal isn’t to create extraordinary children.
It’s to nurture extraordinary adults.
So if your child is in a school where the focus is on solid foundations, good values and longterm development, don’t lose heart when you look at social media or the local competition circuit.
Trust the process - you might be exactly where you’re meant to be 💕
