I love the BETM effect, let's hope the flagging audience members for the ballet also grows as part of it.
This is a very old article but the Telegraph article below shows that following the BE film, more boys than girls joined the Royal Ballet school, for the first time in the school's history:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1390792 ... allet.html
More boys than girls join the Royal Ballet
THE Royal Ballet has succumbed to the Billy Elliot effect. For the first time in its 76-year history, the establishment that spawned such stars as Dame Margot Fonteyn and Darcey Bussell has accepted more boys than girls.
Two years after the release of Billy Elliot, the story of a miner's 11-year-old son who becomes a ballet dancer, this year's intake at both the Royal Ballet's junior and senior schools will be made up of 14 boys and just 10 girls.
Last year eight boys and 12 girls joined White Lodge, the junior school for 11- to 16-year-olds to which the eponymous hero of Billy Elliot won acceptance. Girls outnumbered boys by only 13 to 12 in the first year of the senior school, which has traditionally been two-thirds female.
The new influx of boys has meant that the number of male dormitories at the schools in west London has had to be increased and new housemasters are being recruited to supervise them.
"There has been a significant increase in the numbers of boys who want full-time training and are willing to take on ballet as a vocation," said Gailene Stock, the director of the Royal Ballet School, which was founded in 1926 by Dame Ninette de Valois with six female pupils.
"The film has certainly had some effect on the younger boys. A number of the boys at the school have said Billy Elliot made them feel more comfortable about telling people they are ballet dancers."
Miss Stock added that Billy Elliot had helped change the image of male ballet dancers as sidekicks to ballerinas, as had the example of stars such as Rudolf Nureyev and the success of all-male ballets such as the Swan Lake choreographed by Matthew Bourne.
"Male dancers have become much more prominent figures - they are not just porteurs any more, carrying around the ballerinas," she said. "People have realised that male dancers can be equally stunning to watch."
Her views were echoed by Lynne Wallis, the artistic director of the Royal Academy of Dance. This year, for the first time, the school has awarded its annual Phyllis Bedells bursary for "exceptionally talented ballet dancers" to two male, rather than female, dancers.
"The benefits of dance for men are perhaps becoming more obvious to parents," she said. "Doing ballet inspires mental and physical confidence - which is a useful thing to have in life whatever you do."
John Bottomley, 12, who was brought up in Halifax and is in the first year at the Royal Ballet School, said that the hit film, which starred 14-year-old Jamie Bell alongside Julie Walters, had had for him a noticeable effect.
"I think that up until that film came out many boys had this view of a male dancer which was wrong. I love football and rugby, but when I started doing ballet I realised that doing it was more masculine than anything else."
Adam Cooper, who featured as the older Billy in the film and who trained at the Royal Ballet, said last night: "Billy Elliot has certainly helped the image of the male dancer to become very different to what it was 20 years ago - it has become a more acceptable thing to do. People now realise that ballet dancing is in fact a very physical, athletic, manly job to do."
One of the newcomers to White Lodge this autumn will be Matthew Broadbent, 11, from Newcastle-under-Lyme who - like John - was introduced to classical dance by his sister four years ago.
"My sister was showing me the steps she had learnt and I tried them and really enjoyed it. I asked my mum whether I could go to a real lesson and I really enjoyed that, too, even though I was the only boy in the class. Boys at school made fun of me, calling me "Billy" but now they're OK, I think. In fact I think they're now rather impressed."
Stephen Daldry, the director of Billy Elliot, said that he was "delighted" by the impact that his film had made. "It is astonishing," he said. "I have had feedback from dance schools up and down the country about more boys taking up dance. It's amazing the effect a film can have."
The Royal Ballet School said that it had taken on more boys because they were better than the girls. "The odd thing is that not only are the numbers of young males increasing but the standard of their dancing is much higher than ever before," said Miss Stock, adding that competition for places was tough.
"Artistic directors from Hong Kong to the US are always running around asking, 'Do you have any good boys?' and so the demand is definitely there," Miss Stock added. "It augurs very well for the future that the standard is so high and there's not going to be the shortage of boys that there has been in the past."
