....anyone you recognise? Amy has been a student at ARTS for many years, she says she loves dancing and her life at ARTS more than anything else in the world! Earlier this year she applied for one of the coveted places at The Britt School and was accepted straight away. Hearing this wonderful news I asked her to write about her experience when trying gain her place and to help other potential students follow in her footsteps. I'm sure we will be hearing much more from Amy in the future but for now here's what she had to say...... |
|
| My Brit School Experience
On January 15th I traveled to London with my Mum to an audition for The Brit School of Performing Arts. That night I barely got any sleep, so getting up at 5am was truly quite an ordeal! But even so, I got ready in a dazed state and was anxiously on my way. When we got there – after driving around for rather a while trying to find the right entrance! – We sat in the car debating what time would be acceptable to arrive. Walking past all the older college students that were dancing, singing and staring was quite intimidating so I chose that looking at my feet was the best alternative so I could actually handle my nerves! Waiting before the audition was, to be honest, one of the scariest things ever. As this was my number one choice I knew everything was riding on this one audition, it was literally all or nothing. But once I got into the studio, they made me feel so welcome and at ease and the dancing part of the audition seemed to fly by. After quite a vigorous warm up and stretch we did some things from the corner and exercises in the middle – which was shown to you 2 times, if you were lucky, and then you had to perform them in front of the panel of 5 judges and the dance teacher, once we had done that we then did a longer routine. We got shown a count of eight at a time and then had to do the routine over and over again to see how long we could go for and still perform. After that, we were put into groups of 3 or 4 and had to do it again, but this time we had 2 minutes to make it into a group routine, which meant changing positions during the dance and working as a team. Once we had shown that we had to go back to doing it on our own, but this time we had another 2 minutes to make up another 4 counts of eight on the end! By this point, I thought I was going to fail completely; my brain was so overloaded I couldn’t think straight. To be honest I can’t really remember what I did, because I think my body went into autopilot or something. When Mum asked later how it went, my answer was “I think it was okay, I can’t remember”, which my family took to meaning “Oh no, something went wrong!” So, after hours of dancing, the group of 15-20 people were sat down in a circle and one of the panel came up to us and said that the people’s numbers I call out next haven’t made it through to the next round and were to leave in a minute. The dancers that I had picked out to be amazing, were being sent away so at that point I already had my hand on my bag and was ready to get up and leave but the list ended and my number hadn’t been called out which was a complete shock to my system. That was simply the worst part of the day seeing peoples dreams being shattered, and watch then fall to pieces as they walk out the room, but even though I had by some miracle made it through to the next round, there was no guarantee what so ever that any of the 5 people that were left had made it through, which they pointed out many, many times. We left the studio, all pretty shocked, and I had no idea what was going to happen when I went back there, other than I was going to get questions fired at me from all directions – which turned out to be very true. I was the last person to go back into the studio where there was a panel of 3 sitting in the far corner of the room. Walking through the massive studio to the table felt like a lifetime! Although I did get asked a lot of questions, such as where I have performed, what I’m like as a dancer (which was a hard question as they told you to summaries yourself in 3 words) and what I do to help around the dance school, they weren’t as intimidating as I first thought, and definitely no where near as intimidating as some of the other places I had been previously! The interview seemed to go on forever but I came out at least thinking I had done all I could have, so whatever the outcome I knew I had tried my best. The whole process was a very good experience, I learnt a lot and I am now a lot more confident than I was before. It definitely improved my patience as from being told in the interview I would only have to wait 2-3 weeks for the outcome was a very big difference to then having to actually wait 2 months for the letter and receiving it just a day before ARTS went to Barcelona for a week was certainly a close call. But it was all worth it in the end, when I received the letter I ran to my room and opened it shaking like a leaf and then just screamed and jumped around the room. I am going to miss ARTS more than anything in my life, and being so close to the end of term is really putting everything into perspective now. That day, which was nearly 6 months ago, seems like quite a long time for your life to change, but it just seems to have passed in a blur. But I would recommend it for anyone that wants to take their career in the performing arts further, because even just the audition process makes you much more prepared. And if you’re serious about what you want to do, then follow it because even though it really scared me at the time, I’m really glad that I just went for it when I had the chance, and anything you do is never half as bad as you think it is when you actually do it, and you could come out with something even better because of it. But, I thank ARTS with everything I have, as they have made me into the person and dancer I am today, and I would never have even dreamed of doing this if I hadn’t fallen in love with performing and that’s because they have given me so much. ARTS is an amazing place, and some people don’t realise how good it actually is and how lucky we are to have all that we do, our shows are so professional and the performance experience a lot of us have is extraordinary and I am so lucky to have ARTS as a school. So, thank you, and I will miss you all so much. |
"Waiting before the audition was, to be honest, one of the scariest things ever."
written by: |
