<p>@bromquest – what an awful experience your son had! During my D’s audition journey, I couldn’t help but notice that some of these schools seem to expect these kids to be Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers already and emphasize dance in the audition. Guess they don’t intend to teach the kids anything, since they’re expected to know it all already! Others have no dance audition and let you know that they will place the kids in appropriate dance classes once they arrive on campus. Wish I had known this going in…we would have avoided the former and emphasized the latter. My D committed to Molloy/CAP 21, where there was no dance audition…but make no mistake, they will train her in dance…we have already been told that she will dance her little feet off.</p>
<p>I’ve been a little confused about that myself… if they are looking for already skilled and polished what does the 60k a year cover? </p>
<p>@Octaviar – I agree 100%. I think it’s terrible to tell a kid that if he’s not a skilled dancer at 17 or 18, he’s not committed to an MT career. Despite all the negative vibe about AMDA, they were one of the schools that explained to us that they intend to train their students in Broadway-style dance themselves, so they are not looking for polished dancers in their audition. I just saw Les Miz, and the actor playing Enjolras (Kyle Scatliffe) is an AMDA grad…he was amazing!</p>
<p>Just want to clarify my last post that my son really liked that audition and interview and took the comment as valuable advice. (It was an Acting program at a conservatory and not MT by the way.) I shared it because we think there was a better way to answer that question if he could go back in time and do it again. The question did surprise him though since he’s NOT MT. Maybe it further supports the argument posed by other CC’ers that even the acting majors at conservatories are placing a greater emphasis on MT skills - at least this school, this year. </p>
<p>All the more reason why the question shouldn’t have been asked in the first place, and why the auditor’s response to your son’s answer was mean and inappropriate. Aren’t these kids under enough pressure?</p>
<p>I don’t read what bromquest wrote as anything mean nor inappropriate and I’m not sure she took it that way either. It sounds like small talk in the audition room or a stock question to gauge dance level more than anything else and that line of questioning is fair play and should be answered honestly. Perhaps they were encouraging her son to take some dance this summer which is actually good advice for movers and advanced dancers even in straight acting programs.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how many schools are still looking exclusively year after year for the highly trained dancers. Maybe U of OK? Penn State? Elon? (or none of those 3… not the parent of a highly-trained dancer so it wasn’t on our radar) but I do know that schools will from time to time deliberately seek them out and some schools like NYU that changed up their dance audition last year to not pay as much attention to it, put it back in the mix this year. Rumor has it that TSU really sought out dancers in particular this year to compliment their already overflowing wealth of leading ladies. </p>
<p>College programs will certainly endeavor to train you and will work with whatever you bring to the table. But as far as dance goes, if you are an untrained dancer when you get to their program, in 4 years you will leave their program as a better trained dancer. That is always valuable, but you will probably never book chorus work in the most competitive markets (like NYC) that requires the far superior dance skills with a line out the door willing and able to take those jobs. That’s just the reality for major markets. In some regional markets you might discover that hey surprise, I’m the dancer even though I didn’t start until college. </p>
<p>I think the auditors were giving bromquest’s son advice, not an admonition. My son, who primarily auditioned for MT but will be a BFA Acting major, will have a fixed freshman schedule that includes a dance class first thing every morning. </p>
<p>never mind</p>
I miss our year. Great great people. Wonderful journeys. And I kind of wonder what and why Bisouu said “never mind” on 07-06-2014. I’m fashioning a play based on characters on CC. Having a ton of fun writing it! Bisouu’s line would make a great ending….oh, I love it!
Haha me too @puma69
Hope it’s a musical, LOL! Bisouu and I will sing a rousing chorus of “We Shall Overcome.”
Bumping!