When starting out in a professional company I was 5'4" and 117 lbs. I was told I had to lose 22 lbs to be considered for soloist roles. I did by purging and using laxatives after every meal. Yes, I did get soloist roles. However I became so sickly and weak I couldn't keep up with the rigors of training and rehearsals. My partner during the Nutcracker season had to literally drag me through it. I quit the company, gained back the weight and began teaching - Happy And Healthy. Thank you for exposing the subject that's taboo to speak of in the ballet world.

There is an actual diagnosis called body dyspraxia. “Dyspraxia has an impact on motor coordination skills. It can cause children and adults to perform movements poorly and out of order.” I always thought there was something wrong with me that I “couldn’t remember” barre combinations. When teachers give very complex combinations either at the barre or in center, I very rarely get it the first time. This leaves me feeling exhausted and confused. I am unable to work on technique or improve upon anything in my body because all of my energy is going to remembering the combination. I always felt it was wrong for me to ask the teacher to change things, so I hid my embarrassment, and I fumbled through Ballet class, ..meaning that I wasn’t progressing. I’ve always felt like if the combinations were simple, and we did them repetitively every single class, instead of changing things up every class… I would learn ballet so much faster and be a MUCH. more accomplished dancer. I dropped out of ballet in college because of dyspraxia- not because I wasn’t a good dancer. In fact- I was a VERY GOOD dancer!! But I had a different learning style. I never went back to ballet until last year. I’m now 53. My memory isn’t any better, and my dyspraxia is the same or worse as it used to be. But now, I ask my teachers to slow down and work with me a little bit more. I’m no longer ashamed to tell them what I need. I would absolutely love to open up this conversation with the whole ballet world! Dyspraxia is not uncommon! It’s quite common! And yet students are blaming themselves and even quitting when just a few minor changes to the way the ballet class is taught could make all the difference. Thank you for bringing up this, and the body image issues. Both are majorly important… And I hope that both are able to change. In modern schools, children with dyslexia are given ways to succeed! Can Dancers be given that same chance? In modern society, all different shapes and sizes are being embraced ….in advertising, in fashion, and in the everyday world. Can dancers be given that kind of acceptance as well? Some of my favorite ballet dancers are the ones who have a little bit more weight to them. They look human. The women look more beautiful that way (at least in my opinion!) And I like bigger men! Who says that only specific body types are the kind that can be beautiful on a ballet stage? I say no! I say let’s change this!

@barbaraperry5023

21 күн бұрын

Ah! NOWl can put a name to a problem that plagued me decades ago! I was in martial arts, not dancing, but the 'forms' one had to learn are the same as set pieces/sequences of choreography, in actuality. I was one of the better students, but could NOT learn forms essential to progress in rank. Until one day, an instructor got the bright idea of going through the form slowly while FACING IN THE SAME DIRECTION AS ME. I learned 4 complete forms in a single day. From then on, l was allowed to have all forms/combination sequences shown to me while facing the same direction... Such a simple solution, yet it kept my progress at a standstill for nearly a YEAR. Dyspraxia is real.

Thank you!!! Everyone is so afraid to speak on this subject and I am so happy you did ❤❤❤

Mr. Wise, thank you SO much for pointing out that giving complicated combinations is not always in the best interest of developing a dancer's technique. I really hope you will keep talking about this. It is an important conversation the ballet community needs to have. There is a difference between what I would call a "choreographic" lesson and an academic lesson. It seems there are so many studios with teachers complaining about their students needing better technique while giving the same tired combinations that have little to do with actual teaching objectives. Then when their student is unsuccessful, the teacher blames the student's lack of talent. I believe we as teachers must take more responsibility. Of course, if a student is lazy and uncommitted, then the teacher is not at fault; but I worry that the work ethic of many former dancers goes out the door once they begin teaching. There is an art to teaching, just as there is an art to performing; though the two are very different. All the best to you and Mrs. Wise!

So good to hear this! So real…

I think there should be much more of a conversation around ageism and "when is it too old to start," and what is meant by "professional," or "success," because the common narrative is that you can't be succesfull professionally as an adult beginner, but that's only true when professional is defined so narrowly as to only mean being in a company, and not anything else (never mind how this narrative also excludes those who had to begin again as adults because of injuries they may have recieved as teens, and completley excludes older adults from any notion of professional success), and how so much of this is so rooted in white, European and colonial notions of success. And similarly there needs to be a conversation around the exclusion of ethnic/religious/social minorities and even more specifically there stories, because if a Jewish, Roma, or indigenous story were to be told by ballet it is always told by the pov of white europeans which ends up excluding more dancers from these groups of people and similar groups of people- which is my big problems with some very classic ballet dances which are constructed specifcally around these narratives. TL;DR: More space for adult beginners to not just be successful in making ballet their life, but redifing what professional means beyond the narrow lines we've ascribed to it, and a serious conversation about Christianity, colonialism, whiteness, and the stories that are told/we tell in ballet even when they seem benign can be seriously harmfull to many other groups of people today. And finally understanding how the above issues also are at the foundation for other significant problems such as body image issues, and pushing students beyond their limits causing injuries.

Truly wise says a grandfather

There is a certain, probably intentional, irony in speaking of the "ballet industry." Over relatively recent decades, we have been made used to hearing of the banking industry, the insurance industry, and likewise for writing, service, consulting, and so on. Previously, one distinguished between industry and business, and between business and artistic avocations and professions. Certainly, ballet dancers are industrious. However, "ballet world" offers a more encompassing connotation without the quiet, but nonetheless present, implication of turning out (no pun intended) -- or churning out -- dancers according to a fixed "mould" or "product specification." In Jonathan Richardson's 1725 "Treatise on the Theory of Painting," the artist said, "Next to genius and industry, virtue is the best qualification a painter can have: This, as it is truly great, and lovely; as it arises from the wisest, and most noble sentiments, it produces such; and a mind impregnated with these is the most likely to conceive, and execute what one polluted, and encumbered with vice cannot."

@BalletWise

18 күн бұрын

Beautifully said, thank you for this comment!

Competition is the bane of human existence- and often non-human, too: look at the horrible abuses in the so-called "horse sports" or the deformed and illness-ridden "pedigree" dogs for shows. The distortion of bodies and minds to compete with other bodies and minds - to win - seems too deeply rooted to overcome in our society. Yet dance is human patrimony, for everyone. We have commodified it as a product...

@philipwilliams2310

22 күн бұрын

..... WELL SAID! 👍