Todays LINKS include a long and fascinating article on the Vaganova Academy today, comparing it with the author's visit in the 1970s.

The size of the school (300 with 80 teachers) the long, demanding and competitive curriculum (which has added modern since the 70s) and the sacrifices involved are impressive. The finances are precarious; they do a lot for relatively little money nowadays.

They ask parents to come to to the school during the application process to they can get a clue as to how the young applicants may develop physically. The standards today are for taller, thinner, with better legs than in the past.

Kaiser comments on the graduation peformance: "These hardly looked like students -- they were fully formed professionals, impeccably trained and rehearsed." Yet the job market after graduation is uncertain.

How does this program compare with full-time ballet schools in the U.S. and elsewhere? What are the pros and cons of the Vaganova Academy program?

Bart I do not have enough experience to answer your questions. However, I wanted to thank you for posting this article. I found it very interesting to read.

bart, this is a very loaded question that can best be answered according to the viewpoint of whomever is answering. It is really all based upon opinion. You will find that there are varying schools of thought.

Having attended the pedagogy/methodology course at the Vaganova Academy from 1992-1995, as a foreigner, I can give you a birdseye view of what I experienced. The methodology works for me, in my school setting in the US, but it is very specialized and may be difficult to implement in some circumstances in the US. If and when implemented correctly, IMHO, it creates wonderful dancers, but any method of training is only as good as the teacher teaching it. I have found no cons what-so-ever, but our school is one of those full-time schools.

In short, my experience in Russia cannot be compared with any of my experiences in training, teaching or as a spectator in the US. Not that every single class, teacher, and performance was superb, but over all, I saw fully trained, skilled artists graduating from the Vaganova Academy and in performance. There was a total dedication to the bottomline, the training of the ballet dancer, at that time in the Academy. Money was definitely a concern, as Communism was winding down (actually did not exist, but the country was in transition at that time), but the Russian students did not suffer, accept that there were foreign students who may or may not have been up to the level of the Russians. The highest standard was demanded from all in teaching and as a student. In short it was a life changing experience in my life.

Sylphide, I train at a private school in Australia. We are the only school in Australia to do the Vaganova method. I have been at the Australian Ballet School and the teaching there is much worse than my school where we have two prestigious teachers, one of which was a famous dancer with the Kirov Ballet. Yes, we differ from Vaganova in that there are different amounts of students in each class, we aren't all the same age, we've all been learning for different amounts of time and most likely will learn longer than eight years but the actual technique and teaching that we do is Vaganova.

Where do you train MP?

One of the reasons that it might be difficult to teach the TRUE 'Vaganova,' is because the students are chosen at 10 years old and train for 8 years. In many US schools, the situation is different.

Yes, this is a very good point mohnurka. There are many aspects of Vaganova training in St. Petersburg, Russia that are different than in the West. Number of years of training can be added to the list, however many children in the US begin "ballet" much earlier than 10 (many students I question in the US say they began at 3 years of age) and finish their training at the end of high school which equals many more years of training than in Russia. Children in many professional schools internationally receive daily training from 10-18, but the results are not the same as Vaganova training. Daily training from an early age is definitely an advantage.

It is difficult to teach the Vaganova program in the US if the students do not study 6 days a week from the beginning. The results will be different, but as I was told in St. Petersburg, the program will not produce the same results in any country. National identity and culture does have an influence on the results. My teacher, Valentina Vasilievna Rumyanseva, wife of P. Gusev, had great experience in teaching the program (and training teachers) outside of Russia. She and Gusev helped to begin the schools in Cairo, Egypt and Beijing, China. People are people every where, but the culture will be reflexed in the results.

This is what seems to be the case as far as I know, but vrsfanatic and others know _a lot_ more about full-time US programs.

There are several factors at work. First, the Vaganova style is distinctive in the ways other posters have described and beyond.

But second, and critically, I think there are few or no schools in the US that "full-time" ballet schools in quite the way the Vaganova Academy is.

To begin with, they select only children whose bodies are ideally suited (or at least potentially ideally suited as far as can be seen prior to puberty) for ballet--strong, appropriately proportioned, flexible, and with good hip rotation and feet.

Once the kids with the bodies suited to very intensive training are selected, they enter a school where all revolves around their dancing: schedules are adjusted, suitable supplementary classes (eg, in music) are included, the cafeteria menu is suited to their needs, etc. Some of the kids board and others are day students.

All of this begins at age 10 or 11. As far as I know, there are no residential schools in the US for students before high school. For the high school years, there are boarding/specialized schools. However, even these (I think!) do not have quite the opportunity to choose a few perfect bodies from a multitude.

The last point reminds me of something I read once about the Paris Opera Ballet School. Some teachers were asking the director of the school how certain problems were dealt with, and whenever the problem had as its root a "problematic" body feature, the answer was basically "oh, we just don't have/take students like that."

The students are without a doubt beautifully trained and the school produces wonderful dancers. HOwever, given that the ballet world has many sucessful dancers and even stars with far-from-ideal bodies, I have no doubt that there are those who would argue that excluding all but the most perfect bodies from the get-go is not the only (or even the best) way. But that is a question for another thread.

I would also be very cautious about stating that one receives training in the Vaganova style outside the Vaganova academy in Peterburg. I have seen countless teachers stating that they teach this method, and coutless students believing this, based on the teacher having a Russian name.

There are qualified teachers of Vaganova outside of Russia. Although I understand the concerns of Mireille, teachers of any methodology (Vaganova is a method of teaching, not a produced style) can be catagorized as good or bad. The dance education in the US does not allow for, at this time, the hours necessary to achieve the results as one may have in Russia, but that does not mean that the "formula" is not being administered correctly. In our school, we are two teachers trained in St. Petersburg, to teach and certified by the Vaganova Academy to teach the Vaganova method. Although our circumstances are not as in Russia, we do teach the method as we were taught and examined to teach it in Russia.

As far as body selection, professional schools in the US claim to choose selected bodies. I was actually really surprised in Russia to see the vast array of bodies in the school. No one was of more ample proportions/height/weight, this is true. No one had short legs or arms. Some had more turn out than others, some had bigger insteps than others. All had a natural jump, flexiblily, coordination and musicality.

The only possibility is the Universal Ballet Academy (formerly "Kirov Academy") in Washington, DC. I don't know if it currently includes boarders of pre-high school age. Maybe? Can anyone confirm?

A few years back, here in DC, I was lucky enough to sit-in on part of the selection process of new pupils (9 - 10 years old) to UBA. Just as in Russia, the teachers & medical personnel scrutinized a myriad of physical qualities in the children. Initial talent & will weren't the main considerations for selection of the starting pupils. This 'drastic' method of selection does yield results: look at the number of UBA graduates who are soloists with top companies around the world, as well as the sheer number of medals & diplomas earned at top competitions, year after year. Yes, the teachers & methods are tough -- but look at the glorious results from UBA, in 14-15 years of existence!

What, I wonder, is the attrition rate at UBA? How many of its grads went through the whole curriculum, vs. how many came in as teens?

Good question, carbro. Not all of them are Michele Wileses, who start there as tiny tots. Too, they have quite a few who transfer from similar-style schools, e.g., many Koreans from the Seoul Universal Ballet Academy or some from the Russian academies (Maria Bystrova from the Vaganova Academy).

UBA no longer trains beginners, and I don't think it allows students to live there before the age of 14. SAB's dorm also houses only those 14 and up during the year.

Vaganova Academy does not house beginners either. They have not since the early 1990s. At this point, I do not think they even have Russian boarding students at all, only foreigners is the dormitory at the school, although there was another dormitory for the Russians. On my last visit to the school, 1997, I was told that they were fading the Russian boarding program out. We will have a student attending Vaganova Academy this year. The school year begins September 1. Once he/she is acclimated I will see if I can get more current information.

vrsfanatic-
I'm sure we will all be eager to hear the latest from there, and I hope your student has a wonderful year.