As a professional instructor of ballet who has been either the primary teacher of or directly involved with the training of students who have gained much success with ballet up to and including becoming professional dancers, I have discovered that there are a few key things which must be done and a couple of things that absolutely should not be done if the goal of the student is to become a professional dancer.
Whether it is gaining acceptance to the School of American Ballet/New York City Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet or Boston Ballet summer dance programs, earning full scholarships to college for ballet, or getting contracts to dance professionally with Boston Ballet or San Francisco Ballet there are common denominators which are always present in the training of the student that lead to these types of successes.
There are also two things which should never ever be allowed to happen that are guaranteed to short circuit a student's progress.
The things that should always happen: 1) Regularly taking good, thorough ballet class.
There is no substitute for this.
If you are at a studio which cannot give you at least 4 days each week of good dedicated ballet classes, you need to find a different studio because the place you are at just won't be able to get you the technical underpinnings you have to have.
2) A good ballet class must have a complete barre from plies to adagio and you simply must do a challenging fondu sequence, preferably on releve, in the center, every time you take class.
Bare bones minimum - without these aspects, even a 2-hour long ballet class is ultimately just a hard work out but is a waste of time for getting you to advance technically.
Everyone wants to work on big turns and big jumps because they are fun but ballet also has to look right; the barre work and challenging, balance-creating center sequences are how you mold your body to look good when you are spinning around or leaping through the air.
All the leaps and turns in the world are again a very good workout, but mean nothing relative to ballet unless they look correct.
And, at the end of class, make sure a thorough stretch including all the splits positions are done.
3) NEVER try to stretch before warming up at the barre, ever.
4) Avoiding the trap of magic bullets.
There is no way to suddenly make big progress technically at any summer intensive or workshop unless you are doing number one above.
If you are getting at least 4 days of solid ballet classes each week, then going to a summer intensive or workshop can help to foster break-throughs in particular areas of your technique and, more importantly, you will sustain those break-throughs when you come back to your studio and continue with taking class.
5) Within ballet, everyone has different areas of excellence.
Do not concern yourself with what anyone else in the class seems to do better or not as good as you do - you must focus completely on your own technique.
Ballet is absolutely not a competition in this regard, it is a complete journey of self-discovery.
You can only undertake this journey when you are in class.
Corrections given to other students most definitely should be listened to by you and for certain used by you whether or not the teacher was talking directly to you; but you have to allow your own technical development to take you where you are strongest first.
In that way you gain momentum technically, and as you get more advanced in the areas you tend to be good at, then you can attack those things you don't like to do and get them also looking like you are good at them.
The things that should NEVER happen: 1) Pursuing other methods of strength or athletic training at the same time as ballet.
Practically any other sport or exercise just gets in the way of the precision alignment that ballet is attempting to make happen in your body.
Unless you are injured and doing physical therapy, stay away from all other forms of exercise.
And honestly, no ballet dancer needs to do anything but take ballet to stay in fantastic, perfect shape.
2) Get over-committed.
There are a lot of neat things to try and do when you are young person and in middle school or high school.
By and large, you can do these things and not short circuit for weeks or months at a time your class work.
But many students fall into a "I can do one more thing" trap.
They find a way to do the school play and keep up ballet, then they decide to tack on student council, debate, other academic clubs or things like the year book.
Then all of a sudden, weeks at a time arise where this student is needing to be in 3 places at once and some of these activities also require certain things for a grade on the report card.
Now, they are trapped.
Sacrifice ballet or a grade, because they can't do all of it and yet they committed to everyone.
As adults, we all know the value and essential need to be able to focus; there are only so many hours in the day, and if you do not focus, what ever work you do looks shoddy and tired assuming you get it done on time.
Students absolutely need to learn this not because they need to sacrifice, but because they are going to be adults very soon and then it really does matter if they said they could do something but then it turns out they are so busy they can't get to it.
In conclusion...
With the effort to make sure that the things listed above happen on an on-going basis, and the thorough avoidance of the two things just mentioned, a high degree of success in ballet up to and including becoming a professional dancer is completely, legitimately possible.
Along the way, the student learns much that will benefit them for all of life because they will have discovered how to focus, made decisions that caused great success to happen, and gained confidence from being able to do more and more complex performances.