Most dancers start out at a dance school in their community taking one or two classes per week. Then they may audition for a place in a professional program. However, if a person is very young, (probably less than twelve years old), he or she can audition without any previous dance experience. If a dancer is not dancing in a professional program he or she will still advance and become a very good dancer. By the time a dancer is thirteen he or she may be taking ten classes per week.
If a dancer does enter a professional program, (such as those offered at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School, the National Ballet School of Canada, the Kirov Academy, the Vaganova Academy, and the Royal Ballet School, just to mention a few), he or she will do as many as six or seven classes per day depending on level of dance training and academic schooling.
Attending a professional program usually means moving away from home. Some ballet schools have residences that their students can live in while attending the ballet school, others require the dancers to find their own lodgings. Wherever dancers live away from home, ballet school can be one of the hardest, yet most fun times in their lives.
