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Peter Stark, president and director of The Rock School for Dance Education, has spent 26 years running ballet schools and knows the recruiting process from both sides of the table.

We talk with him about how he evaluates students for recruitment. We also cover how his approach has changed over the years, including how he now weighs student conduct and how his views on age and late starters have shifted. Stark discusses what full-time training requires of a teenager beyond technical preparation, including conversations about consent, hygiene, and roommate dynamics that families need to have before their dancer moves away from home.

Stark also discusses what "fitting in" means at the corps de ballet level and why understudying matters at every stage of a dancer's career, not just early on.