In life different people do things for different reasons and different people expect different results from what they do. Some will do it for enjoyment and never aspire to greater heights of achievement and others will take it to the nth degree.
All Ballet teachers and all Ballet companies do not necessarily have the same objectives. And neither do all parents and all learners. Perhaps these are issues we should be addressing?
Educating people in general as to the benefits of ballet is where everything starts. Thereafter interest and participation will always be as a result of ability, inclination and the myriad of reasons that motivate people to do anything.
When children start learning to dance that is exactly what they want to do – dance – the excitement – the costumes. The reality is very different – the exercises that need to be repeated – the hard work. 
What parents want is often not very clear as they take the lead from the teacher. This is where that education is important as you are not only working with the child but working with the whole extended family if you choose to do so. There are enormous benefits to this if you stop and think about it. But what is the individual teacher trying to achieve with her/his teaching besides earn an income? Do they know, have they thought about it? What are their long term aims and how will they achieve it. Once that is established everything will flow from there. But they will only be selling their version of what they perceive a ballet training to be.
Teaching a child to dance needs a structure but what is that structure being aimed at? The structure one puts in place for a single story building is very different from what has to be put in place for a multi-tiered and multi-use building. So it is with our dancers training. We have to consider what individual bodies and personalities are capable of as not all training fits all people. Adaptation based on abilities and physic is what is needed. Sometimes desire exceeds ability from both dancer and teacher resulting in very stressed and pressurised people constantly trying to achieve what is simply not possible at often great personal cost to the dancer.
From a company point of view they too have requirements depending on all of the above and frustration sets in when companies are not getting dancers trained for their needs because the teachers are training for different needs and the two do not necessarily mesh.
It is a hard fact of life for a dedicated teacher to accept that even when the ability and the training is in place for someone to enter the professional dance field, the desire to do so is just not there. They might love their dancing but simply not want to do it every day all day especially with so few work opportunities and neither good or reasonable salaries. And we won’t even mention prestige of occupation. Let’s face it, `My son or daughter the doctor’, is just not in the same league as, `my son or daughter the dancer’.
We ignore perceptions and expectations at our peril in all fields of endeavour and perhaps this too should be considered and the public educated accordingly. Perhaps we should be looking to property developers and estate agents for ideas. I only need drive past a certain area in Tokai in the Western Cape that has very expensive houses sold as desirable upmarket homes in a gated security golf estate with sub-economic housing just down the road and a high security prison on the other side of the road. Now that was a public change of perception that was very financially rewarding for all involved – except – the prisoners and the very poor down the road.