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Boston Conservatory at Berklee teams with London’s Royal Academy of Dance

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Cathy Young, dean of dance for Boston Conservatory at Berklee.The Priestley's Photography

Boston Conservatory at Berklee has formed an unprecedented partnership with London's Royal Academy of Dance. The Conservatory, acclaimed for its contemporary dance program, will become the first institution of higher learning in the United States to offer students the Royal Academy of Dance's internationally recognized teacher training program in ballet. In addition to developing as performers, students will have the opportunity to develop high-level skills and certification with the Royal Academy of Dance's registered teacher status.

"Our students are getting a lot of education about pedagogy at the Conservatory already," says Cathy Young, dean of dance for Boston Conservatory at Berklee. 'To get this kind of depth and expertise in ballet pedagogy through RAD gives them a full toolkit."

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For Conservatory students, many of whom will go on to performing careers, the teaching credentials offered by the Royal Academy of Dance program will allow them to extend their careers and supplement their income through teaching in countries around the globe.

"The way the field is now, every performer is teaching," says Young. "Teaching and performing are intimately wrapped around each other. You have to be continually learning. Teaching makes you a richer performer, and performing gives you more to bring to your students. It's a very complementary circle."

Part of what sets the training apart is a developmentally appropriate approach to teaching ballet, focusing on considerations of age and physical development, not just aesthetics.

"Over the past 10 or 20 years, they've not only expanded the type of dance they're training teachers to offer, they've become really engaged in best practices in terms of somatics. . . . It's not just 'Here's the classical syllabus, and here's how you do it.' "

The partnership with Boston Conservatory at Berklee, the oldest performing arts conservatory in the country, was initiated by former Boston Ballet dancer Anne Hogan, who was the Royal Academy of Dance's director of education at the time. Her institution was exploring expanding the range of its teacher training. Knowing the Conservatory's reputation for high quality training in contemporary dance, she approached Young with the idea of integrating the Royal Academy's ballet training program into the school's curriculum. Michelle Groves, the Royal Academy's current director of education, says, "We're really looking at extending our global reach, and Boston Conservatory has such a long-standing reputation that fits so well into many of the areas that the Royal Academy of Dance holds dear."

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Program offerings will begin next spring, overseen by Conservatory faculty member Gemma Williams, a Royal Academy certified teacher and tutor. The certification requires a semester-long online course plus units taught over two summer sessions.

Groves believes the program will help raise awareness in the United States for the necessity of high-quality teaching training. "Ballet teachers today have to be so versatile in how they approach and structure their dance classes. They have to be quite adaptable and perceptive to the needs of their students, particularly as the older dance market increases. It is a very different approach to teaching an older body than a young child, and you need to study to really know what you're doing. In the past, it's been one model fits all, and if you don't fit that model, you fall away. The RAD's ethos is . . . dance and ballet should be made available to everyone who wants to pursue it."

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Young concurs. "One of the things we see a lot is students coming into college programs with chronic injuries. I'm not saying they were taught badly, but I do think the more teachers have sophisticated information about the body and what's developmentally appropriate, the more students are going to be able to study dance all throughout their childhood, teenage years, college, and maybe beyond, as adults just for fun. That strengthens our field. We want to get away from that football model where you play through high school, then you're so beat up you sit in an armchair and just watch it the rest of your life."


Karen Campbell can be reached at karencampbell4@rcn.com.