71% of Fortune 500 companies have implemented a mentoring program for their employees. What are the benefits of a Mentoring program and can we use it in ballet? Mentoring is a proven method to improve skills and competences. In addition, mentoring enhances the sense of community between different generations and experience levels.
Core de ballet hopes that in a near future all ballet companies in the world will implement a mentoring program. In the meantime, and to pave the way, we have created Mentor de ballet. Mentor de ballet is a unique opportunity for young dancers in training, and in their first years of work, to be mentored by professional dancers and leverage their experience and wisdom to have a successful, happy and long career.
Why do Mentoring programs work?
Mentoring programs are one of the most effective and valuable development tool for an organisation. A Mentoring program offers to employees the guidance, encouragement and support of a dedicated and experienced mentor necessary to quickly develop personal and professional skills leading to improved performance.
The key to a successful Mentoring program resides in the qualities and personal traits of the Mentor. A fixed mindset will reduce the benefits of a mentoring program. A rude communication style will inhibit the Mentee’s development. A one-size-fits-all approach will prevent knowledge transfer from happening.
Benefits of a mentoring program in the ballet world
A good mentoring program improves the mentee’s confidence in their abilities, enhance their communication skills and give the mentees an opportunity to practice effective acceptance of feedback. A successful ballet dancer needs to be able to develop their athletic and artistic skills at once. Ballet is a very demanding and high-performance environment. Traditionally it was thought that only the toughest ones will manage and succeed.
Mentoring program in ballet boosts confidence levels
However, Modern psychology, demonstrates that mental skills can be learned and acquired and are not innate. As such, a Mentoring program is an excellent tool – among others – to help the next generations develop the mental skills required to be a successful dancers instead of passively watching who passes and fails. Once a dancer knows how to manage their confidence level, their performance can improve to another level and reveal more of their true capabilities.
Improve communication skills in ballet with a mentoring program
The ballet world is filled with unwritten rules, especially in the area of communication. When to speak, how to answer your ballet teacher, when and how to ask for help with a choreography, how to express your desire to be casted for a specific role and how to demonstrate your ambition without being difficult. A Mentoring program in ballet, such as Mentor de ballet, helps dancer develop their communication skills in accordance with the expectations of the industry. With this mentoring, we also aim at enhancing the communication in the ballet world by introducing new and healthier practices.
Effective acceptance of feedback through a mentoring program
The ballet world relies traditionally on a teacher giving feedback and the students applying it. This is efficient during the first training years to ensure maximum knowledge transfer. As the dancer grows older, they start understanding how their own body works best and they need to develop a unique skill: critical acceptance of the feedback. Dancers have to remain alert to the feedback received and at the same analysis what is useful to them or not. This is much much harder than it seems.
Prepare for ballet company life with a mentoring program
One more benefit of a mentoring program in the ballet world is to prepare students to the reality of company life and being a professional dancer. Many dancers report that the transition from school to company was challenging and they did not feel prepared for it. The schedule, the culture, the unwritten rules were very different from their school life and came as a shock. It is highly probable that many careers are shorten because of that.
Introducing a Mentoring program in the ballet world
There are many more benefits to implementing a Mentoring program in the ballet world, and Core de ballet will share best practices in future articles. The Mentor de ballet program runs during the whole season and candidates and welcome to apply or sign-up for the waiting list.
