He said he had been told by German car company Mercedes that it was struggling to fill the 5,000 places on its apprentice scheme, despite have 30,000 applications, because many of those did not have the basic qualifications needed.
Manchester is widening access to apprenticeships with its "apprentice ambassadors", and a new Ucas-style clearing house to match students with apprenticeship offers well before they leave school, conditional on making the grades.
Mr. Mitchell and three excellent former colleagues from the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and its apprentice program — Silas Riener, Melissa Toogood and Cori Kresge — scrunch, balloon and shape their facial features into configurations that normally signify strong emotions: terror, disgust, misery, pleasure.
"It's an awesome value at a nominal cost," says Ben Lerer, 31, a co-founder of the Thrillist Media Group, a digital media site geared toward men; its apprentice is Ben Darr, 20. "We would hire Ben full time today," says Mr. Lerer, who treats Mr. Darr to twice-weekly boxing sessions.
Four of the five works were danced, largely or entirely, by two different casts (in one case three); and the numerous dancers who made impressions in solo roles included several who have graduated (from the company's school and then its apprentice ranks) into the corps de ballet only in 2007, 2008 and 2009.
The planned space allows the company to rehearse and present more of its repertoire, mount additional full-length ballets, extend its apprentice program, launch additional revivals, and provide young dancers and choreographers the opportunity to train and present their new works.
The company has fairly typical standards for the skills that it's looking for, but it doesn't require its apprentices to have a degree.
Rolls-Royce, which runs its own apprenticeship academy and where 20% of its managers started out as apprentices, said it deliberately "over trains" its apprentices so that they can also meet the needs of companies in its supply chain.
Enstitute doesn't offer anything like $100,000 to its apprentices.
(Rambert is one of the few companies that pays its apprentices).
Britain, and Scotland in particular, won oil from the North Sea oil because the Clyde shipbuilding industry taught its apprentices well.
