Northern Ballet School

As a child ballet dancer, and let’s face it, many girls were, I donned my pink leotard and flexed my legs and as a result I have cyclist’s calves. I spun in my tutu and allowed my mother to scrape my hair back into a bun so severe it looked like my fat baby cheeks had been liposucked. But when puberty hit and the next step was to go up on points, I saw those shoes with the wooden blocks in the toes and I got a severe case of cold feet. Wait, scratch that. Make that TERRIFIED feet. Make that my feet realised how much my toes would bleed and nails would crack and went running in the opposite direction before my head could even make a decision.
So a ballet dancer’s life was not for me, but I was pretty good back in the day. Had I wished to continue into the competitive and bulimia-​stricken world of professional ballet, I might have found myself here hoping to be the next Darcey Bussell. And don’t start whinging at me for making blackly comical jokes about dancers with eating disorders because I was ABOUT to point out that here at the Northern Ballet School, they’ve adopted a very important preoccupation with the ‘physical and mental wellbeing of students’. Dance injury records are kept, lectures on dancer nutrition are mandatory, trained and experienced counsellors are on hand because let’s face it, if you’re going into ballet this seriously both your body and your brain are likely to encounter hard times. Physiotherapists are even in practice near the school and medical insurance is advised, but more so than anything, student welfare is the priority.
The courses on offer here are the NBS Diploma in Dance, the Jazz Theatre Dance Focus course and Classical Ballet Focus. Performance experience takes place at the school’s home, the Dancehouse Theatre, and scholarships are awarded to students who show the most potential. All in all the whole thing makes me feel whimsical; I think of Fame, I think of legwarmers, I think of Jennifer Beals in an off-​shoulder sweater auditioning for Juilliard. I try not to think of that rather racist film about gang culture juxtaposed with the joy of dance with Julia Stiles in it. How many copies of that have been done now?
All in all this is one of the most prestigious schools for creative talent in Manchester and I for one get excited every time I think about it. Maybe there’s still something of that ballet dancer in me that just won’t go away…