On failing to get into The Royal Ballet School
Let's dance…
Dancing like no-one is watching is good for you. Spending twenty minutes a day rocking out means you’ll meet your recommended weekly exercise targets, according to a study of cardiovascular health1 reported on in The Times this week.
I love “having a dance”, so this is welcome news. But I spent my childhood wishing I could go a stage further and make it my vocation (if I wasn’t to be a writer), either by joining Pan’s People (the Top of the Pops dance troupe), or The Royal Ballet. Both clichés, I know, but in my head I was (and still am) always dancing.
My mum said she knew I’d be a natural, after she and Dad saw The Sleeping Beauty performed by The Royal Ballet at Sheffield Lyceum when she was heavily pregnant with me, and she had a lovely dream afterwards.
As a child, I’d twirl around the house to music at any opportunity. Performing my own version of The Dying Swan from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake became my party piece.
My pocket money went on Bunty, with its inspiring comic strip stories of girls who could do anything they set their mind to. That, and Dancing Times. In the October 1971 issue, there was an advert for regional auditions for The Royal Ballet’s Lower School at White Lodge. There was still time to apply.
Here’s my account of it in my junior school news book. I was ten:
Monday 4 October 1971
I want to join the Royal Ballet School. We wrote off to find out about it. We had a reply enclosing a booklet and an audition form. The lower school is in White Lodge, Richmond Park. It is a beautiful place. The fees are very expensive2, but education authorities will help. Girls do swimming and tennis, because they are the best sport to develop the right muscles. If I go, I will have to be a boarder.
We have sent off a form for an audition. I have about all the things a ballet dancer needs. They have to be musical, quite tall, artistic and interested in dancing. People usually join when they are eleven. They usually start in the Autumn. If I pass this audition, I will have to have another one. They will have to do exams of me to see if my muscles will grow to be the right height. We are hoping to go to an audition at York this Friday.
Mum took photos of me in our garden, in the requested poses, to go with the application. I pored over the school’s brochure while I awaited confirmation of the try-out, which arrived quickly.
Monday 11 October 1971
I had my audition for the Royal Ballet School last Friday. We had to go to York. There was Carol [my younger sister], my grandma, my mum and dad and me. When we arrived at York, there was still about three quarters of an hour until my audition. We went into a café and had a cup of coffee and a fresh cream cake. I had a chocolate éclair and so did Carol, but she said that hers was soggy!
After that we went to the audition. I changed into my leotard and pumps, and my mum put my hair into a bun. Most of the girls had posh satin pink ballet shoes, and one older girl had box toes. We had to have numbers pinned onto our leotards. I was number twenty.
After a while we were called into the audition room. We all did various exercises. We were split into different groups. We did different jumps, some of which I did not know, so I got mixed up quite a bit. I could tell that all of the girls had had previous training, but I hadn’t. It was mainly the jumps that I didn’t know, I also forgot which were my left and right feet.
When I arrived home and tried the exercises, I found I could do nearly all of them, quite simply. It was probably nervousness and also it was only my first time at doing some of the exercises.
I cringe at the memory, copying the other girls at the barre, trying to keep up. Remember the scene in the movie Flashdance when welder Alex drops off her application at the dance academy and runs the gauntlet of limber students who know what they’re doing? That was the feeling.
“I am sorry to inform you”
I was not surprised by The Royal Ballet School’s rejection letter, which was tactfully worded. “If we feel the slightest doubt about a child, we do not – for the child’s sake – accept her. The disappointment later on would be far more bitter.”
It was not the end of the story, though. I was defiant, knowing I’d gone into the audition unprepared. I was still sure ballet was my destiny, and we found a dance school with an excellent reputation in Rotherham, eight miles away. My sister and I were interviewed by its principal, Miss Thompson, a former ballerina with London Festival Ballet.
Carol and I went totally off-syllabus for our audition, performing a duet in which I took the male role, hoisting my sister onto my shoulders and swooping her into the fish dive pose that we’d seen on the cover of Dancing Times.
Miss Thompson looked startled and did not applaud. She asked us to sit on the floor in the “froggy position” to check our range of turnout.
My mum received the verdict: we were accepted onto the intensive course, as long as our parents could afford the fees. (They couldn’t, but they scraped it together somehow.)
The rigour of dance training was a shock, but I relished it. Four nights a week after school, Carol and I dashed from our separate schools for the same bus, with a snack of crisps and cheese for the journey, returning home at 9pm. Thursday was a night off, thank goodness – we could still watch Top of the Pops. Every Saturday morning was taken up with dancing, too. Homework was squeezed into late evenings and Sundays.
We were fast-tracked through our grades in ballet, tap and modern. I got Honours in everything, with ballet examiners noting, “Has lovely feeling. Very nice buoyancy.”
Some of the girls were selected as guest dancers for choreographed routines on Junior Showtime on TV, a show I loved. I longed to be chosen, but the roles went to boarders.
My modern dance teacher reminded us to wash our kit regularly. Mine had sat in my bag for weeks between lessons, the tights dried and crinkly. I realised that, although she was addressing everyone, she really meant me. From then on I washed my tights in the bathroom sink every night and drip dried them over the bath.
I suspected we were viewed as the “poor locals”, compared to the boarders. My dad thought the teachers snooty. My sister, still at primary school, was being teased for being “posh” because she had ballet lessons. She was gravitating towards gymnastics instead.
In the musical Billy Elliott, the miners’ strikes of 1984 mark the beginning of Billy’s dance journey. For me, the strikes of a decade earlier spelled the end. The country was reeling from the three-day working week and my dad’s wage packet had shrunk. I knew we couldn’t afford dance lessons. Schoolwork was getting harder and I wanted to keep up. Something had to give, and it was dancing. I was thirteen.
Monday 15 July 1974
I took my dancing exam today and have now finished dancing. The only thing is I’ll have to watch my figure now.
And so began the yo-yo dieting years, when I waged war on my developing body. But that’s another story.
My love of ballet has never lapsed. In the 1990s I saw the extraordinary French ballerina Sylvie Guillem dance many times with The Royal Ballet. If I could magically swap roles with any dancer in history for a few moments to see how it felt to move on stage looking so graceful and effortless, she’s the one I’d choose. And I’ve been back to dance lessons since, dipping into adult ballet classes now and again.
Most of all, though, I love to simply “have a dance”, wigging out like there’s no-one watching.
How have you dealt with “I’m sorry to inform you” moments in your life? Are you a ballet lover? Do you enjoy dancing like no-one’s watching? Do you dance for your health? Please do comment below if you can – I love to hear your thoughts.
Thank you…
to everyone who liked, shared and/or commented on last week’s piece, Which funeral music would you choose?
Your suggestions were inspired and I enjoyed listening to tracks I wasn’t already familiar with. Classical favourites included Elgar’s Nimrod and Bach’s Cello Suites. Contemporary choices ranged from Leonard Cohen to Nick Cave, Sinead O’Connor to Kate Bush, George Harrison to Bruce Springsteen. More than one person mentioned AC/DC’s Highway to Hell! (That brought back fond memories of seeing them at Sheffield City Hall when I was a teen and Bon Scott was still their lead vocalist.) And there were fascinating comments about the cultural differences around the world.
I’m sure Ian’s mum, J, would have approved of the music choices at her funeral last Wednesday. A moment of joy was my seven-year old granddaughter singing Do-Re-Mi and So Long, Farewell, from The Sound of Music at the wake. She tried to involve the littler ones, but they’re too young to know when to come in!
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Until next time!
© Wendy Varley 2025
Study published in the journal PLOS ONE, 18 November 2024: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0313144
The annual fee for Lower School boarders was £780 per year.
I wanted to be a ballerina, or failing that, work in Chelsea Girl, and started ballet lessons when I was six years old. I still remember my little white tunic with a pink belt and a pink wrap around ballet cardigan. Ballet was my life. I too twirled around in our tiny living room to my mum’s classical LPs. I knew all the ballets and dancers names. Had ballet annuals and won a ballet Ladybird book for bring third in class, which I still have. We went to watch the ballets at Bristol Hippodrome. They were such a treat. Mum made me tutus and I loved my ballet lessons. My teacher thought I showed promise and encouraged me to have some private lessons. Something my parents could barely afford.
I too attended an audition for the Royal Ballet School. I was just getting over another bout of tonsillitis and was feeling rubbish. It must have been about 1969 or 1970. I remember my feet being measured and my back looked at. I didn’t get in. I was gutted. My mum said it was because I couldn’t do my best because I was still unwell. But it was because I wasn’t good enough and was going to be too short. I never grew beyond 5feet . I carried on with my lessons, but my enthusiasm waned as I became a teenager and I stopped once I started going on points. I hated how painful it was. I think my parents were relieved. No more paying out for lessons. So I never became a ballerina, of worked in Chelsea Girl. Instead I became a nurse. So instead of wearing a leotard or tutu, I wore a uniform instead.
Other people are commenting on your ballet dreams, Wendy, but I'd like to congratulate your ten year old self on the quality of her diary-writing! Truthful, vulnerable, descriptive, unsentimental. Excellent stuff.
PS I also like the rest of the piece!