Ballet starts off in 2016 with lots of good news! Our December 6th examination results arrived this week and are listed here. Congratulations to all of these girls for obtaining such glorious results at the end of a very busy winter term.

Lessons have started and we had a fabulous first week enjoying our wonderful new pianist, Miss Reet, who having now moved to London, is with us full time. She is to be treasured! An experienced ballet pianist, she comes to us from Estonia where she played for the Estonian National Ballet Company, Artistic Director, Thomas Edur. Many of you will have heard of the famed partnership of Thomas Edur and Agnes Oakes. Guest dancers all over the world but here in England they were most often seen dancing with English National Ballet and both received the Queen’s CBE in recognition of their services to the arts in the UK and UK-Estonia cultural relations.

You can watch Miss Reet playing for Company class on Youtube here

Of course, there is never just one ballet class happening at school so new portograms have been purchased thanks to the generosity of the Friends of Francis Holland and both of these have already made our lives and our ballet much easier. Believe it or not, we had worn out our last portograms completely and had had to put up with much cutting out or ‘screeching’ in the middle of important exercises or dances. Thank you, thank you to the Friends!

Luisa Lafontaine successfully completed her first term as a Junior Associate of The Royal Ballet School and will now continue to complete a full year of training. Assessed again in the summer our fingers will be crossed for her to have a second year at this prestigious school.

Luisa, My-Anh and Margarita from Year 4 together with Lauren Carroll from the Senior School successfully auditioned for London Junior Ballet’s Sunday classes so weekends are very busy for some of our dancers at the moment.

Clara Hollants van Loocke, alumni, can be seen here after receiving her Diploma at Canterbury Cathedral. She received a First Class Degree from Central School of Ballet and is now continuing her training at the International Ballet Academy in Brussels. We hope she will make it back to school for the Princess Margaret Competition on June 20th.