Fifteen-year-old Gearóid Solan has been accepted into the upper level of the Royal Ballet School at Covent Garden beginning with the fall term having received a waiver to the minimum entrance age requirement of sixteen.
- He’s Irish – as in born, bred, and living in Ireland. In fact, he’s the first Irish boy to be accepted by the senior school at the Royal Ballet in 30 years (per the Irish Independent online edition).
- He credits his mum with pushing him forward.
- He’s presently searching for a grant to offset the €41,000 annual cost for tuition and accommodation. He’ll have to cook for himself, though, when he gets there.
- His role models are Carlos Acosta and Ivan Vasiliev.
- Nobody at his academic school bullied him for being a ballet dancer.
We have to ask again. How did this get into the news?
Some PR agent needs to get a hold of this kid and show him the ropes on how to get his victimization some attention. There’s money to be made in complaining about the decades of discrimination that the Royal Ballet has dealt Irish artists. There’s money to be made in trashing mum for holding him back (surely there’s some incident somewhere). There’s money to be made in exaggerating the family’s downtrodden financial circumstances and suffering. There’s money to be made in complaining about how Carlos and Ivan are his role models, because there aren’t any Irish male stars in the Royal Ballet to look up to. And there is a heap, a huge heap of attention waiting for him at The New York Times if he will just think real hard and come up with an instance where the kids at school teased and belittled him for dancing.
Judging from the attention to form and detail that the young Mr. Solan shows in his port de bras in the brief clip of an early performance with the Irish National Youth Ballet attached to the second link below, we think he’s going to do more than just fine over the next three years. And if anyone hears that Mr. Solan has a Go Fund Me or other such effort on the web, please let us know so that we can pop a few coins in and pass the word along. It’s always nice to support a non-complainer.
http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/stage/ireland-s-ballet-boy-1.2187743
http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/theatre-arts/irish-boy-15-first-in-30-years-to-be-accepted-by-prestigious-royal-ballet-covent-garden-london-31172359.html