You are doing the hardest variation, or classical pas seul, meaning to dance alone, of your life. Despite the gleaming smile on your face, you can feel your feet bleeding in your shoes and you are breathing so hard that your lungs burn like fire. None of that matters; only the performance matters. The audience does not care you are in pain. Perform! Enjoy yourself! Fight through the pain! You are almost there! You take your last pose, stand up and bow, your face still shining. As soon as you are off the stage, you cry: you wish you could’ve done better.
I think nondancers (and even some non-classically trained dancers) have a skewed idea of what it is like to do ballet. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen adolescent boys mock ballet by haphazardly twirling on one foot and then saying something along the lines of, “Ballet can’t be that hard.” What these people do not see is the other side of dance.
My longest day of dancing was a Saturday: ballet class for warmup started at 9 a.m., and my last rehearsal ended at 9:30 p.m. This was technically my longest day ever, but it was only two hours short of what is my every Saturday routine.
In professional ballet companies, all dancers are required to take an average of six ballet lessons per week. These classes normally last anywhere from an hour and a half to three hours, sometimes including pointe. During a class, we practice straightening our spines, getting our full weight on our legs and turning our knees outward, all of which are required for good technique, until the ballet master is satisfied. Preprofessional ballet companies such as my own normally do not require this amount of extensive training, but because it improves your dancing, everyone does it, including myself. In performance season, rehearsals begin; these can last anywhere from 45 minutes to nine hours, and because a ballet class just has to come first, this time is on top of class time.
After the first hour of rehearsing on your toes, the blisters from yesterday’s class reopen and you find your taped up toes to be bleeding, staining the previously perfect pale pink pointe shoes. As if the second excruciating hour was not bad enough, the next six to seven hours are unimaginable. Eventually, you are so tired that you start falling off your pointe and out of your positions because of the pain, but it is then that the ballet master yells at you even louder to stay in position: a true paradox.
Many times, food is second to dancing. Every classically trained dance teacher will implore you to eat well and often, but it is rare that the rehearsal schedule includes breaks for snacks. Water bottles are constantly refilled at the studio, but the dancers regularly run off of pure adrenaline, self will and protein bars.
That is not the only negative aspect of ballet teachers I have noticed. Once, when I was in fourth grade, a teacher told me I should reconsider my choice to pursue ballet because I didn’t have a thinly built body. As a growing child, a little pudginess was not uncommon at my school, but at the studio, compared to the extremely small girls, I was wide. This, by far, is not normal behavior for my ballet teachers, but this one has always been open about her traditional views on what a ballerina should be. Obviously, I have grown taller and I fit into my skin better than then, but my bone structure never did change: even now I am wider than most ballerinas. I still have classes once a week with this teacher, and she still tends to point out my nontechnique-related imperfections.
Thankfully, I’ve been able to get through this period of self-consciousness without harming my health, but many of my friends have not been so lucky. Professional ballet companies take your physical shape into consideration when deciding whether or not to employ a dancer, so everyone is constantly watching their figure. Many of my friends have tried diets such as liquids only and no carbs and no sugar, but these diets usually only result in muscle loss and therefore weaker bodies: another frustrating contradictory scheme.
I think people do not consider this crude side of ballet because spectators only see the glamorous, well-rehearsed version. This effortless way of dancing is the goal for all dancers, but getting there is ugly, sweaty and laborious. Ballet is not a piece of cake; we have just worked so hard all our lives to make it look like it is. Nothing compares to the dedication serious dancers have to the art, and I would rather die than never dance again.
– By Jasmine Wilkie