Welshydancer

The more who join the review the better! It’s great Ballet Boost are coming to Wales, but the trouble is when you have to balance full time education, normal dance classes/syllabus, associates and the boost courses it all clashes because it’s all so spread out which is why some of us have to have look over the border. Annoyingly even then you still are likely to be met with ‘never heard of them’ when you do go on to Voc Ed. What baffles me is that even our only national conservatoire (for 18+) Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama doesn’t offer a dance course?

Thanks all for your replies. We’ve worked with Ballet Cymru and NYDC both are great companies but alas no full time provision! I never realised about Coleg Gwent … how annoying! I appreciate that the population is lower, but there are MANY vocational schools (both boarding and day schools) in England, not just for dance but for other performing arts when you consider there is RBS, Elmshurst, Hammond, Tring, Central , Northen , Conti then the likes of Arts Ed, Wilkes, Performers College, Brit School, Emil Dale etc and Wales hasn’t got one it’s a bit of a poor show really. I think we’d settle for one - maybe in Aberystwyth by the sea and so the North/South don’t fight Also unless you live pretty close to the border or are going to a central London school, live in Cardiff, travel to schools in England are pretty dire/long. Ammanford is a 7 hour return train journey to Tring with 8 trains to catch or a 9 hour return car journey whereas Aberystwyth/Cardiff is a 1.5 hour car journey each way. I have seen Arts Council Wales are conducting a dance review - details on their website, it would be really good if we could get some more voices to get across how dire it is for vocational training. I’m rather jealous of our Scottish pals’s Dance School of Scotland, I think something similar would be a great accessible option!

This is probably a bit brave for a first time post, but I’m asking in case I’m missing the obvious or there’s a hidden dance school in the mountains I’ve been oblivious to (highly possible)….. Why is there a lack of full time vocational dance training in Wales aside from FE colleges/ He institutes ? I know Rubicon dance company run a BTEC course and there are lots of local colleges who do performing arts/dance course, but there seems to be no option than to go to England for Welsh dancers at 16/18, certainly if you want to do a diploma.