Ensuring that Canada's future ballet dancers will not disprove the time-tested saying: the artist is first of all an educated person, is the National Ballet School of Toronto. The first of its kind in North America, the school teaches 125 full-time students and another 500 pupils on a part-time basis. Candidates of good academic standing are accepted after selective audition for educating from grade five to twelve in the standard subjects laid down by the Ontario Department of Education. Along with this normal curriculum students receive intensive training in ballet and its related arts. Now, significantly, eight years old (ballet teachers around the world agree that eight or nine years is required by promising students to reach professional standard) the National Ballet School already has a fine record of student graduates dancing with Canada's National Ballet Company. Students benefit not only from instruction given by the school's noted director and principal, Betty Oliphant (whose career includes teaching a graduating class at Russia's Bolshoi Ballet School), and from other noted dancers and instructors, including the well-known Celia Franca, but from leading figures of the international ballet who often visit the school. Canada's National Ballet School is further assuring the nation's increasing contributions to the world of art.