“Under 5 feet 5 inches?” Forget about being a prince! How the Royal Ballet School is ditching old rules | Dance

IIt’s a perfect autumn day in London’s leafy Richmond Park, where the grand Georgian hunting lodge houses the Royal Ballet School. Enter through the classic columns and you will feel like a bubble away from the world. “I was on a video call with my son,” says Ian McKay, the school’s head coach. “He said, ‘Where are you?’ Hogwarts?!”” This is truly a magical place for children who come here, hoping to follow in the footsteps of generations of pioneering dancers. They touch the middle finger of a statue of Margot Fontaine for luck as they pass, the bronze made shiny by their superstition.

Gaining a place at the school, which was founded in 1926 by the formidable Ninette de Valois, is a major achievement. Two years ago, 40 students were accepted out of over 1,000 applications (all on merit – 90% supported by scholarships). MacKay, 45, arrived last year and is believed to bring about the biggest change in the school’s history. Students always come to stay here at White Lodge at the age of 11 – remember Billy Elliot’s London audition? – However, the decision was taken to raise the entry age to 13 years (Year 9).

It may seem simple but it is a major shift, made in order to manage the stress of a strict, rigorous and competitive career path. “The training is tough, and the mental health of our students comes first,” McKay says. (There will still be a route for younger dancers into the Royal Ballet’s Associates Programme, where they train part-time at regional centers starting at age eight.) With this change, MacKay says, “we will become better artists.”

MacKay (the school employs a data analyst) says the decision came from studying hard data and knowledge from sports science, where there has been a lot of research on early specialization. They collected information about the dancers’ trajectories and looked at burnout, injury, and the repercussions of leaving home for boarding school at the age of eleven. “That doesn’t mean what we were doing was wrong,” McKay says. “But can we do better for these young people?”

I watch a ninth-grade classroom lined up on three bars in the middle of a large, white-painted studio. They are truly incredibly prepared and professional. The skill level is amazing, McKay says. “I wouldn’t be able to do it now,” jokes the former pupil, who had a long career as a principal dancer with the Birmingham Royal Ballet. In contrast to the trope of the stern and domineering ballet master, the mood in this studio is calm and gentle. Teacher Kevin Emerton draws students’ attention to specific muscle movements, and the detailed articulation of the foot sweeping the floor. Even with the smallest movement, “you’re talking to the audience,” he tells them.

It’s the start of the semester, and while McKay encourages everyone to take time off over the holidays, “to rest and play and climb trees,” he notes, you can see that they’re all enrolled in summer intensives. When you’re as obsessed as these students are, there’s nothing else you want to do but ballet. It is a very competitive business. And based on recent figures, only two-thirds of these students are likely to go on to the Senior School (for ages 16-19, based in Covent Garden).

Previously, students were evaluated every year, and those deemed to have not made sufficient progress, or whose bodies had developed in ways unsuitable for ballet, were “assessed”. You had to take the test again to reach Year 10. So there was a possibility of constant worry about your whereabouts. Year 10 auditions have now been dropped (although you still have to sit the test for graduate school). MacKay talks about “identity lock-up,” the loss of the thing by which you define yourself: “At 10, you’re told you’re going to be a ballerina, and by 14, you’re not. What does that do to a young person? How do we mitigate that?”

A side effect of starting later is that adult bodies will have already begun to grow and develop, so when a school selects students, there will be a better sense of who will get what it takes. “But even if we take in a 13-year-old, they will change and develop, and we will support that and give them space. We are looking for excellence, technique and artistry.”

Earlier this year, former pupil Elaine Elphick, who attended the school between 2009 and 2012, reached an out-of-court settlement with the Royal Ballet School over her eating disorder (the school did not admit liability). Mackay takes his duty of care very seriously. Along with changes in teaching style, students here have access to a psychologist, mental health nurse, physiotherapist and nutritionist. (McKay says they’ve seen an increase in SEN diagnoses, and there’s additional support for that, too.)

He wants to see a greater diversity of bodies in dance. “It used to be that if you were under 5 feet 5 inches tall, you couldn’t be a prince,” he says of male dancers. “Why? Who said that?” In the studio, this obviously means diversity within a narrow range of what the industry and technique require. Certain aspects of turnout, flexibility and metatarsus are mostly due to genetics. How do you reconcile the desire for diverse bodies in ballet with the aesthetic and technical demands of the industry? “Excelling in classical ballet is not about conforming to old stereotypes of physical appearance,” McKay says. “But in terms of art, strength, music and the ability to meet the great technical and physical demands of a professional career. When we talk about a variety of bodies, our focus should be on supporting talented young people to succeed and excel in these terms, not on their appearance.”

Does MacKay think that 50 years from now we might have a different idea of ​​what a ballerina looks like? “In five years we may have a different idea!” He says. “This is the evolution of the art form.” This will not be driven by the dancer’s form, he says, but by “the energy, connection and artistry that a dancer can bring.” Each dance company and director has their own preferences; He says it’s not McKay’s job to guess that. But we can look for talent, potential and young people who have fire in their eyes.”