We don’t have Junior Elites!

We don’t have (or probably will never have) Junior Elites as our junior age group level is upto 8 years(3.5 to 8yrs). And batches below 5 yrs were/are rare or most of them are our own students younger siblings classes.

Until 2019, this was Hetal Nagaraj Dance‘s part time and so all batches were limited to availability of Hetal Nagaraj Dance.

Hetal Nagaraj Dance specializes in youth education predominently and that means 8+, youth, pre.teens, teens, active adults. However, Hetal Nagaraj Dance has worked with several private montessories, early education schools for wellness & performing arts recreation programs where it was required to monitor a normal day for the case to rule the behavior patterns(some work w/education lawyers).

But other than that, we have never had anything like Junior Elites!

Only standard levels Pre.Competition, Competition/Performing Levels, Pre.Elites, Elites by genre/category/or by city-levels/nationals or international. Level of degree depends on skills that are mastered to tally with universities or colleges if student chooses to opt for universities with performing arts or as one of the subjects. If a student has not taken any classes or has not mastered 9-12 weeks skill level benchmarks then we cannot provide this level or any such confirmation without legitimacy. We are training school. We cannot do so. Since we do not have substantial number of kids in this age group or we were limited to taking these age groups, obviously we don’t have Junior Elites.

We do have several students that are below 8 years and have won competitions but they are/were not Elites! Youngest Elite was Nirja Setty just 2 months before 8th bday for a national program-folk, bharatanatyam and drama with a full routine of bollywood and yet, Nirja Setty was not provided the title of “Elite” at that time.

Elite : This level is pretty much next to flawless execution of any genre or category or by request without any excuses and this includes having full knowledge of subject matter/or that dance in particular, differenciate between concept/theme/dance genre/category/styles/skills understanding/requirements of technique showcase if that is asked and so onn and thus are priced for commercial artists. Some of our artists are under contracts from very young age due to their own exposure/experience in the field that started earlier at age of 8 to 10months. It was because of their “in-born ability to handle all that stress“.

These artists have parents that fully aware of legal protocols to follow through as well and family’s overall ability to handle all that stress of these activities from younger age is phenominal! Some are so particular that these families follow through a schedule which includes balance of all the activities with several kids/playdates and own family get togethers with a well-knit support system of their own. Because it is about money, time, value of these opportunities and with that goes in mental stress/mental health! These families balance it really well and it fits their own lifestyle and so we welcome these “full blown contract artists that started very early in life” and are willing to groom in other areas of performing arts fields. Thus, their recruitment to our programs was right off the bat. We would rather be cautious and slow for minors than to allow just anybody in this level. We have several of these and one such have their site too. www.thesettys.com, and several others are one of these example!

Thus, we rarely have kids below 5 yrs. And then we have probably 1-2 batch that are from 3.5/4.5yrs only b’coz of their older siblings or these kids joined together as a large group to qualify for group packages and so we conducted their classes! Min 10 required to start a batch of this age and at this moment, Hetal Nagaraj Dance hands are full with several backlogs and so we don’t have instructor in this age group at any location. This is exactly why most of our commercial projects (by contracts) usually start from age of 13 under leadership of Hetal Nagaraj (due to stress involved in these areas and demographics/lifestlye of the candidate or basic support system to be self-reliant).

We have freezed all our hiring at this point and also reduced several batches due to recent delays in several projects, backlogs and criminal fraud!

We don’t have Junior Elites Or Junior Pre.Elites and we will never have those atleast until futher notice because of delays/damages by recent criminal frau/theft and so several projects are at stake.

All In-house Pre.Elites or Elites students that are below 13 years of age – will achieve Pre.Elites or Elites Only IF :

• these in-house students attend regularly all the number of classes required by skill sets.
• rehearsals and practices as required.
• technique classes as required with full recognisition and creative classes
• participations, auditions, submissions by techniques and in multiple genres.
• performances & company productions that these students are trained to do so by each class.
• It is required to perform at that level to leverage the benefits of being a Pre.Elite/Elite.
• Example of Pre.Elites/Elites below age 13 years : Audrey, Aayan, The Settys, and many more.

Fun facts : Hetal Nagaraj has never worked for anybody in this performing arts field throughout or was direct under contract of artist managment company that was run by Jinal Shah and her Hyderabad partners. Although for several of temple/spiritual/non profit/religious groups and org, Hetal Nagaraj has offered programs and are very well listed! www.hetaln.com -> spiritual.