London Studio Centre Audition

Feelings on Thursday night: I can't believe I'm doing this. This is crazy. Ahh! Am I shooting myself in the foot? You've just got to throw yourself into this or you'll regret it. I still can't believe this!

So I had my first vocational school audition yesterday and I'm just so proud of myself. I've wanted for song long to go to a vocational school but in a way couldn't ever see the day that I'd audition as it was always an 'in the future' thing. Overall my experience at London Studio Centre was very positive.

My audition started at one so I had to be there for 12:30 which I was happy about as it meant I didn't have to get an early train as LSC is quite far even though it's in London. After one train, 3 tubes and a 20-minute walk I arrived. We had to wait in the cafe until a student came to get as. While waiting, another girl and her mother sat down at my table and we chatted about dance and school which was nice. A student came to get us all (there was 19 of us) and took us into a room where we were put all our stuff. We got ready for ballet (black leo, tights, shoes and neat bun) while talking to each other. Everyone was really friendly. It makes you feel so much calmer if people aren't giving you icy stares! We were shown to the studio next door and introduced to the man who was in charge. He gave us a small talk about the afternoon and the course then introduced us to the ballet teacher. I was very lucky that at the barre I got onto the one in the centre as I was in the last 3 and got a side to myself - perfect for my long legs and to be seen. The class was really good and the excerises were easy to pick up. During the adage at the barre, while facing the barre in an arabesque, the teacher came up to me and pulled my leg up and away which I took as a huge compliment. This is because it meant she was definitley watching me and thought I was worth pushing harder. For the pirouettes we got to just do our good side - yay! I really enjoyed the class. We then took a short break in which we took our hair out of buns into ponytails and put on black tights/leggings for contemporary.

The contemporary class was Graham based and fast paced. We did a few short exercises before learning a long combination in stages. After we learnt the whole combination we showed it in our lines. I got lost in the middle of it and forgot a bit but just carried on and picked up at a point I remembered. Really hoping it doesn't effect my result. After that we did some work form the corner including triplets - thankfully in my A Level class we'd done some Graham so I already knew what these were. I did enjoy the class but not as much as ballet and jazz, weird as jazz isn't really my forte.

For jazz we all changed into coloured leotards and some people put on red lipstick. So many changes! I was a bit worried for jazz in terms of the fact that I'd only taken it ever at the London Children's Ballet summer school and the last one of those I did was over a year ago. To my surprise, I felt very happy in the class, not at all naive. To start we did a little warm up with stretches. This included splits - what I found quite funny was at this point all of the panel (the three teachers and the head) stood up and were looking over the top of us to see how good are splits were! After this, we did some corner work including kicks (yay!) and jazz turns (eugh - not my best). Finally, we learnt a jazz combination that was very stylish and sassy. Again we performed in our lines and had to improv at the start and end. My mind panicked trying to think of jazz improv but in the end I thought 'just let go of inhibitions and have fun with it!'

After all the classes the head talked to us a bit more about the course and the three outcomes we could get from the audition. You could get an offer for a final audition which is specific to your specialism, so for me ballet. The next outcome is an offer for their foundation year which is if they see potential in you for their degree course but think that you could develop more before you're ready for it. The final outcome is a 'no'. What I appreciated was that he made a point of us understanding that just because we got a 'no' from LSC doesn't mean we don't have a future in dance, it just means we didn't fit what they were looking for in students at this time. The lady in charge of admin then took in our numbers and told us the results should be out by the end of next week.

I honestly came out of the audition feeling good. It was so much more enjoyable and relaxed than I had expected. I was very proud of myself for doing the audition as applying was scary enough when I know that not everyone thinks I can make it into a school. Oh, and I wasn't shaking from nerves! That is a big achievement as I always do in things like this and exams. I felt it went well but with these things I feel like you can only ever really tell if it went horribly wrong and other than that even if you felt good they might not have seen in you what they were looking for. Not sure I can stand the Schrodinger's cat wait!

Bath Spa Uni update: conditional offer for BBC inc. B in Dance