Starting ballet - or anything new, for that matter - is daunting enough, as it is. For starters, you have to start at the very beginning, a place most of us haven't seen since childhood; there is this thing called 'coordination' you have to grapple with while attempting to do so with 'grace'; and on top of that, whilst cathartic, dancing as an adult can also be an emotionally loaded experience and we sometimes unexpectedly come face to face with our inner demons (hello, depression and anxiety, my old friends).
In other words, dance as an adults is hard; physically, mentally and emotionally. Yet, we come back to it, over and over again because despite everything, there is an in describable JOY we can gain from dance, when we open ourselves to the experience.
So, given the hard-earned joy of dance, why on earth would nine adults put themselves through the not-so-light-hearted experience of undergoing a ballet exam?
That's exactly what we set out to discover in Episode 15 of We are 6th Position, Taking a Ballet Exam as an Adult. We sit down with five of our adults - Ami, Casey, Cecilia, Gino and Mariette - who begun the learning the Royal Academy of Dance Grade 6 syllabus in January 2018 and sat the exam in May and July 2019. For most, a highlight of this experience was sharing this experience with other adults only - a perk of being an adult exclusive dance studio! Fun fact: the average age of our exam entrants was 44.
Grab a cuppa and settle in to hear this frank and no frills discussion of taking a ballet exam as an adult. Click play or download to hear their story.