Welcome to Ballet Help Desk. We’re so glad you found us. Ten years ago, our kids said they wanted to dance professionally. 

We scratched our heads and said “well, we better figure this out!” Since then, we’ve basically gotten PhDs in how to be dance parents. So, never fear!  We are here to help bring a little more clarity to how to navigate that path.

Has it always been smooth? Absolutely not. Did we always make the right choices? Probably not. Are there things we would go back and change? Absolutely. 

But, it has been a rich and interesting experience for not only our kids, but also for us! And, some wonderful things have come out of it. Your kids will get to meet dancers from all over the world, perhaps even travel all over the world. 

And, if you play your cards right, you will end up with some amazing friendships with other parents. Enjoy the ride and we hope we can make things just a little easier for you along the way.

Before we dive into specific topics, we wanted to give you some background on how we ended up where we are. Our kids, Abbey and Sam, both started dancing when they were little. 

Abbey started dance when she was four, after seeing the Nutcracker for the first time. This normally fidgety kid did not move throughout the whole show.  At the end, she stood up on her booster seat and said “mommy, I want to do that!” She started dance with the combo classes that are so common at that age. Dance seemed to really click with her so she stuck with it. Like with many young kids, she started doing the competition circuit, performing routines in jazz, tap, hip-hop, etc. 

When she was 11, she decided she wanted to get more serious and left her competition studio to focus on ballet full time. She took ballet from a number of teachers in the San Francisco Bay Area, one of whom taught at the San Francisco Ballet School. This particular teacher encouraged her to audition and she was subsequently accepted. She joined the school at age 13 and will graduate this year. Her next move is either to a trainee program or a second company. Stay tuned for final results!

Sam started in a slightly unusual way – Irish Dance. Later, he switched to a studio where he learned jazz, tap, hip-hop and some mystery genre called lyrical. When he was ten, his studio director told him that if he ever wanted to be any good, he would have to take ballet. 

After a lot of complaining, Sam landed at a local ballet studio that was owned by two people who had taught at the San Francisco Ballet School. They whipped him into shape and suggested he do a ballet competition called Youth America Grand Prix. We thought this was crazy, but we let him do it. He did the San Francisco regional and made it to the finals in New York. That was a real turning point for him because he encountered all of these older, talented dancers who were significantly better than he was. Rather than crushing his spirit, it gave him that shot in the arm he needed. 

After that, it was off to the races with ballet. When he was 13 his ballet teacher told him he needed a program with more boys. Fortunately, we live in San Francisco so off he went to the San Francisco Ballet School. 

SFB provided fantastic training and upon graduation from SFB, Sam joined the Houston Ballet Second Company. 

As this site evolves, we’ll dig into a variety of issues related to guiding a serious ballet student. Look for blog posts and videos that cover strategies for how to approach summer intensive auditions, how to handle end of year evaluation meetings, things to consider when deciding to attend a residential program and much, much more. In the meantime, if you have any questions you’ve dying to get answers to, click here and we’ll try to address questions in future blog posts.