The Styles of Ballet in South Africa: A Dancer's Guide to the Methods and Syllabi

Walk into a dance studio’s foyer and you will likely meet a wall of names: RAD, Cecchetti, DASA, Vaganova, perhaps simply “Russian school”. They sound like rival brands, and a parent or a returning adult is left guessing what genuinely separates them and which of the differences matter for a dancer.

Here is the clarifier that makes the whole wall legible. A studio calling itself Russian is almost always teaching Vaganova - they are the same thing, not two separate options. And Cecchetti - the Italian training tradition - is both a way of training and an exam syllabus at once, which is exactly why it slips between categories. Once you see that the names sit on different shelves, the confusion clears.

By the end of this guide you will be able to tell the main options apart, see which suits what you actually want from ballet, and work out which one the school down the road teaches.

Three Layers, Not One List

The most useful move is to stop treating these names as a flat list and sort them into three layers.

• Method or tradition - the way a dancer is trained: Cecchetti, the Russian (Vaganova) school, the English style. A method is a philosophy of how to build a dancer.
• Examination syllabus - the body a school enters dancers with for graded exams: RAD, DASA, the Cecchetti societies. A syllabus is a ladder of grades, set work, and certificates.
• Institution - the actual studio or company, which chooses a method to teach and a syllabus to examine through.

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The layers are not rivals, and a single studio sits in all three at once. More to the point, a studio commonly teaches a method underneath while entering students for a board on top: serious Russian or Cecchetti technique in the daily class, with RAD or DASA exams as the visible ladder. So when you size up a school, ask two questions, not one: what technique do they teach, and which board, if any, do they examine through?

One distinction within that picture does most of the practical work: whether the exercises a dancer is examined on are fixed in advance. A set-syllabus board - RAD, DASA, Cecchetti - publishes the exercises for each grade, an external examiner marks the same set work, and the certificate means the same thing in Cape Town as in Canada. An open-class method - Vaganova at its source - instead has the teacher choreograph each class to the method’s principles, with progression gated by a teacher’s judgement rather than an annual graded exam; it grew out of vocational academies built to feed companies, not to hand beginners a certificate. Structure and a portable qualification on one side; a longer, less commercial, more individually paced training on the other.

The Main Options in South Africa

Here are the four you are most likely to meet, at a glance. A fifth local body, the South African Dance Teachers’ Association (SADTA), turns up far less often.

Cecchetti is the method of the Italian master Enrico Cecchetti, built on anatomical logic and known for precise placement and a set of exercises grouped into a routine for each day of the week. In South Africa it is represented by the Cecchetti Society of Southern Africa, founded in 1928, affiliated to the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing in London and a founding member of Cecchetti International Classical Ballet. Its ladder runs from Class Examinations through Graded and Vocational levels to the Enrico Cecchetti Diploma. So Cecchetti is the case that breaks the tidy split: a method and a set syllabus at once.

The Royal Academy of Dance (RAD), founded in London in 1920, is the English style - precise and musical, with a famously gradual, detailed progression - and it has one of the widest global footprints of any board, active in over 80 countries, with a South African office in Johannesburg administering exams locally. Its ladder runs Pre-Primary, Primary, Grades 1 to 8, then a vocational track from Intermediate Foundation to Advanced 2. Its teachers earn Registered Teacher Status through the Academy.

The Dance Academy of South Africa (DASA) is the home-grown option. By its own account it was founded in 1991 by Mary-Jane Ford and now spans more than 100 studios across South Africa and Namibia. It positions itself around a warm, child-centred experience, built around the realities South African teachers, students, and parents face. Ballet runs from Tiny Tots through Grades 1 to 6 to Major exams, with medal dances alongside, and it examines contemporary and national dance too. Marks are percentages: a pass at 40, merit at 60, and distinction at 80. Its teachers qualify through a SAQA-registered FET Certificate in Dance Instruction, accredited by CATHSSETA, which puts the teaching standard on public record - though that registration has now reached its end date and is being phased out.

Vaganova, the Russian method, is not a local examination board but a training method, codified by Agrippina Vaganova in Leningrad, who published The Fundamentals of Classical Dance in 1934. It is known for whole-body coordination, expressive arms (port de bras) and a sculpted angling of the head and shoulders (epaulement), a strong back, and powerful jumps. In South Africa it is delivered by individual schools, such as the Russian School of Ballet in Johannesburg, whose teachers trained at the Vaganova Academy and the Bolshoi Ballet Academy. Russian school is not a regulated label, so the standard rests on a teacher’s lineage rather than on an accredited board.

Which One Suits You

Because the options genuinely differ, the better question is not which is best but which fits what you want. A few axes do most of the deciding.

• Qualifications, or simply dancing. The examination boards - RAD, DASA, Cecchetti - run a graded certificate ladder, but it is built around children and the exams are not compulsory, so an adult is rarely on that ladder by default. If the certificates matter to you, ask whether a studio actually enters adults for graded exams, rather than assuming the board on the door means an exam path for you. If you would rather just train and dance, you can at almost any studio: exams are something you opt into, not the price of entry.
• A teaching standard you can check. The boards certify teachers to a defined standard - DASA’s is a SAQA-registered, CATHSSETA-accredited qualification, RAD confers Registered Teacher Status, and Cecchetti teachers qualify through the ISTD-affiliated society - so a registered teacher has at least met that floor. Russian school is an unregulated label: a genuinely Vaganova-trained teacher can be world-class, but the term itself guarantees nothing about a particular studio. For a cautious beginner, or a parent weighing injury risk and dependable progress, that external floor is the thing to look for.
• Local reach, or a portable certificate. DASA is South African, built for local conditions, and the most widely spread; RAD and Cecchetti carry internationally recognised qualifications.
• Recreational, lifelong, or career. The boards run graded streams for the young and demanding vocational ones for the career-minded; an adult keeping fit is more often served by a studio’s general classes than by the graded ladder. Vaganova-method schools lean toward serious, pre-professional training.

The aloofness of a Russian school is not, by itself, evidence that it is better.

A word on the air some schools carry. Russian studios in particular can feel aloof, and it is worth separating where that comes from, because only one part is about quality. Some of it is a genuinely demanding, correction-heavy vocational pedagogy; some is the prestige that attaches to the Bolshoi and Mariinsky names; and some is simply the absence of an accredited floor, which reads as distance. Vaganova at the top end is highly rigorous - but rigour at the summit of the method is not the same as any given Russian studio being better than the warm neighbourhood school around the corner.

The demanding reputation is not a myth. Nikolai Tsiskaridze, rector of the Vaganova Academy, puts it bluntly: “Ballet is a very harsh discipline. You cannot be sweet and nice and tender when teaching on such a demanding level.” Yet dancers who trained there tend to describe the strictness as care rather than coldness. Tatum Sierra Shoptaugh, now a soloist with the Slovak National Theatre Ballet, says a Russian teacher “becomes your second mother,” and adds the line worth holding on to: “Strict doesn’t always equal unfeeling.”

The discipline is not the Russians’ alone. Diana Byer, who trained in the Cecchetti line, frames that method as rigour in the service of freedom: “It puts the body through rigid discipline. Then, the body is gradually freed from that discipline until it begins to dance.”

Finally, resist the folklore that brands a whole style demanding or nurturing. That character - strict or gentle, cold or warm - varies far more by the individual school and teacher than by the syllabus on the wall. Visit, watch a class, and judge the room, not the brand.

How to Tell Which One a School Follows

You can usually work it out in a few minutes.

• Read the grade names. Pre-Primary, Primary, and Grades 1 to 8 with vocational Intermediate and Advanced levels point to RAD. Tiny Tots, percentage marks, and medal dances point to DASA. Class Examinations and an Enrico Cecchetti Diploma point to Cecchetti.
• Ask the two questions. What technique do you teach, and which board do you enter students for? A good studio answers both clearly.
• Ask about the teacher. Which qualification or registration does the teacher hold, and with which body? An accredited answer is a quality floor; trained in Russia is a lineage, not a standard.
• Watch a class. The atmosphere, the level of correction, and how beginners are treated tell you more than any label.

For the rest - fees, location, timetable, and fit - see our companion guide to choosing a ballet school (forthcoming).

A Short History

The names on a studio wall are the residue of a longer story. By the late nineteenth century, ballet training had settled into distinct national schools - Italian, French, Danish, and Russian. Enrico Cecchetti (1850-1928) carried the Italian line into Russia: he danced at the Imperial Ballet in St Petersburg from 1887, teaching pupils who included Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky, until he left in 1902 to direct the imperial school in Warsaw. His method was later set down as a graded syllabus - recorded in 1922 and carried by the Cecchetti Society, which was absorbed into the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing in 1924. Agrippina Vaganova (1879-1951) was a generation younger: working at the Leningrad school from 1921, she drew Italian athleticism, French lyricism, and Russian expressiveness into one system and published it in 1934 - the method studios now call Russian. The two are less rivals than relatives, and Cecchetti, teaching in St Petersburg while Vaganova was still a child, is the older one.

The examination boards came from the same impulse to standardise. In 1920 a group of teachers in London, representing those competing national methods, founded what became the Royal Academy of Dance and blended them into what is now known as the English style. South Africa grew its own board much later: DASA dates itself to 1991. Different shelves, as the opening put it - but one family tree.

A Short Glossary

• Method: a philosophy of training, such as Cecchetti or the Russian (Vaganova) school.
• Syllabus: a body’s ladder of grades and set work, examined for certificates.
• Board: an examination body that runs a syllabus, such as RAD or DASA.
• Grade: a level within a syllabus, assessed by an external examiner.
• Vocational: the advanced syllabus levels aimed at serious or professional dancers.
• Open class: a class choreographed by the teacher rather than set by an exam syllabus.
• Registered teacher: a teacher certified to a body’s defined standard.

Where to Next

In the end no syllabus sheet chooses for you. Visit a studio, watch a class, and ask the two questions - what they teach, and which board they examine through.

This guide is part of our dance series. Once you know the style you want, our companion guide to choosing a ballet school covers fees, location, and fit; for the wider path, see training and pathways for dancers; and for forms beyond ballet, see our tour of South African dance. (Companion pieces forthcoming.)

Author’s Note

Your correspondent came to ballet later in life, around fifty, and writes as a beginner, not a former professional. He currently takes adult group classes at DanceXchange (RAD) on Mondays and JATA (DASA) on Wednesdays.

Disclosure

This guide was produced with extensive use of AI, especially for research, citation, and verification - for this article, Claude by Anthropic. A human author directs the work and is responsible for what it says.