Keren Smail, a first year BA student, talks about her audition and first year at London Contemporary Dance School:
"I attended baby ballet classes when I was four and was introduced to contemporary dance at school, aged 14. I auditioned for the Centre for Advanced Training at The Place and it was sort of my saving moment; I'd got to the age where I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue dancing, when I joined CAT I just loved it. I attended CAT from age 15 - 18 and it was then I auditioned for London Contemporary Dance School.
I was very nervous about the audition because I didn't really have a back-up plan, I knew that if I didn't get in I didn't want to go elsewhere as it would be second best. We did half an hour of ballet barre which was good because it wasn't too long; then we did some Cunningham based contemporary work; this was followed by our solos which was probably the hardest part. I felt the audition enabled us to show our potential rather than to see if we were doing the class wrong. I was kept behind with a few other people for an interview and body conditioning. It felt quite natural and homely here, everyone was really nice and the audition assistants were really talkative and positive which was great. They talked about their working week, discussed the teachers and were really honest; it was nice to get a real feel of the School.
Having danced since the age of four, some dance teachers can be really horrible, scary people. I chose LCDS because the atmosphere was so positive, the people are just so lovely. As I'm here all the time it's nice that it's somewhere I want to be and like to be, rather than a big scary building with just dance studios. There's a lot of stuff going on: adult classes in the evenings, at the weekends there's children's classes, CAT and the theatre shows too. But it doesn't feel too much, there's always something going on and it always feels alive, it's not just the School.
The first year has gone ridiculously fast, I expected it to be really hard work and a lot of pressure. I'm really tired most of the time but it's a good tired, it's a hard course but it's a good hard: expectations are high but they are fair. It's been pretty crazy, sometimes I get to school at 8am and don't leave until 10pm, this normally happens towards the end of term, most days we finish at 6pm and I work for the Classes & Courses department for a couple of hours in the evening. It's been pretty full-on but good; the first year is there for you to try everything out, you get thrown into it and do everything you can do. I feel like I'm meant to be here."
Keren Smail