@SLparent let me start with LA…Rhonda began the school year in September telling the junior class that instead of going to LA for three weeks during winter break as they usually do, that they would be spending their entire fall semester in LA. My D was beyond thrilled! Unfortunately Rhonda should never have said anything to them because she didn’t have the logistics planned out yet and she couldn’t get it to work. I can’t remember all the details but it had to do with scheduling classes. (There was also the issue of the students who were renting apartments…they would either have to give up their apartment (but if they had a lease that wasn’t possible) or continue paying rent while they were in LA because they would still need it when they got back after the fall semester). When she couldn’t get that to work on time she changed it to the spring semester…but told them that they would have to miss their graduation! And she didn’t think this was a big deal! In the end the current juniors lost out on the opportunity and now it’s back to three weeks in the winter. She will probably get it all to work out in the next couple of years but not soon enough for my D unfortunately. As far as her training my daughter went to a pre-professional ballet school from age 4-13 and also went to a traditional competition studio (tap, jazz, ballet, lyrical, hiphop) starting at age 10 through senior year. For three years it overlapped and she went to both schools. So she was very well trained in her younger years (took the R.A.D. exam once) but ended up loving the other disciplines more and quit the ballet school. It was a very serious school and she wasn’t really cut out for that and she didn’t have the banana foot so she wasn’t one of their favorites. Her solos were always in lyrical or contemporary. She went to a Catholic HS that had a small dance program run by a woman who graduated from UArts so that was a nice addition to her education. When I said she would like a concert tour I meant as a back up dancer (commercial dance). Also FYI she told me that only one person at Pace attempted to double major along with the dance BFA and just dropped out of the dance program this year going into junior year.