There is no finishing line to perfection <33

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

~Ballet~

The Experience of Female Ballet Dancers by Kendra M. Gray and Mark A. Kunkel

They express our longings, our fears, and our fantasies
Ballerinas were the darlings of the aristocracy. Today, only the settings have changed
Ballet’s classics are odes to sentimentality and to the romantic vision of women
Men are strong gallant cavaliers

It is they who will pay for our pleasure
Beautiful, delicate figurines under a globe of glass
Women are soft wisps, almost transparent with passion

The audience enters an enchanted realm
Cloistered in a world of make believe
Ballet was always a fantasy
Ballet training tends to steep students in fantasy

Passivity and powerlessness of the dancer are sanctioned
Dancers are frequently described as touchingly helpless
Aura of helplessness

They are the children of their own imagination
Ravishing, like a mortal goddess, yet unreachable
You feel just like a princess
I would find absolute Nirvana in this world of tutus and curtain calls and flowers

Wrap yourself in the tight little cocoon of ballet
NYC ballerinas are like nuns, they’re a sisterhood
It’s like living in a gloriried convent
You can lose yourself in the theater
When I dance onstage, it’s like I’m someone else. But when I’m me, it’s different

I never had a sense of myself. In ballet, you’re just not allowed to have any
individuality
Dancers must cultivate conformity rather than originality
These men and women lose part of themselves
Person behind the gestures and roles
Ignoring the fact that dancers are human beings

The person gets lost inside the physical qualities

A ghostly pallor is the desired effect
(Almost skeletal)
Pared down to the bone*
Ideal of the feminine that equates beauty and grace with excessive thinness
Looking normal is bad
Our bodies may be fine for dancing but they’re really not women’s bodies
Physical characteristics often determine their futures
Misogynist aesthetic
The ideal physique for ballet is perhaps not the ideal for a normal person
They like women who look like little boys
Asexuality of the ballet world
The ballet aesthetic seems to eradicate all marks of the feminine
The mold female dancers must fit is a peculiar idealization of the feminine
Breastless, hipless, long-limbed shape
Not too tall, not too short, and not too temperamental—someone who will fit in every way
Perfect ballerina profile, slim hips, and fine, long limbs
The battered ballerina
Daily battle with their bodies
Daily pain is as much a part of a dancer’s life as daily class
Our bodies just can’t take it
Their most faithful companion is fatigue
Hire the handicapped

You can get by being a superb technician and being entirely unthoughtful
(Dancers are taught not to participate in the creative process)
(My style of dancing is whatever George Balanchine wants me to do)
(Boys and girls are supposed to be seen and not heard)

Almost self-destructive zeal
It seems that everyday it’s do or die, and sometimes I think it’s just too much
I go to class every day and I just kill myself doing one step
People think dancers are so disciplined, but so are soldiers and that’s what we’re like
You never have to think, you always follow orders
Dancers are deliberately trained in obedience and deference
Dancers are programmed in diffidence
NYCB dancers are famed for their robot-like allegiance to Balanchine
This is the end of the line, and it’s either them or you
Little room at the top
The competition among young women is palpable
There are some people who would do anything to get a rival out of the way
Swimming in shark-infested waters

A T-shirt proclaiming her the property of ABT (American Ballet Theatre)

Teachers will announce in class if you’ve gained weight
They make them starve themselves
Ballet’s dirty little secret

Who me? I’m just a dumb dancer
Your brain is an unexercised muscle
Oh, I don’t need to know. I’m a dancer

In a professional company, no one will pamper them

I was dancing out of fear
You can always be let go

He’s always pulling things out of us
My style of dancing is whatever George Balanchine wants me to do

In ballet, it’s like they’re being punished for having problems

Ballet mothers and dancers are practically fused
(Invisible partner)
My mom, she lives for me
Whatever my dream is, it’s her dream
I had daydreams of rescuing my parents from attacks of wild Indians by being the
beautiful little girl who dances
They do not want to disappoint their parents as much as they have disappointed themselves
It was my mother who wanted me to be a dancer, not me
Her mother will always hold an integral place in her life and career
Dancers trace their careers to a parent
How do you escape the burden of expectations placed upon you by parents, teachers, and
fans?

Only when you’re noticed do you exist
Mirrors are indispensable tools for criticism and sometimes a source of reassurance
After looking at yourself in mirrors day in and day out, you just can’t see yourself
anymore
Scrupulous dependence on mirrors
Cannot bear to look at themselves in the mirror
You get hypercritical and narcissistic
Self-scrutiny is hardly narcissistic because it holds so little pleasure
So absorbed in their own images that they do not connect
They stared past each other, through each other, over each other, straining for
a glimpse in the mirror
Each class becomes a mini audition and each exercise a struggle to improve
Her teachers are not her helpers but her judges
So central is criticism to the ballet experience that it becomes, perversely, a
compliment
Students infer praise
She seems almost hypnotized by her own failure
Hopelessly perfectionistic, a soloist finishes a variation and curses herself

Mr. B is our leader, our mother, our father, our friend, our mentor, our destiny
Like children, his children, we feel sure and safe in trusting him
Tied to their companies in a quasi parental relationship
He knows what you can do even when you don’t
You must give yourself to Balanchine
Teachers and choreographers become surrogate parents
You have to approach ballet with the innocence of a child and never question it
The barre is never far from their grasp
I just have to concentrate on dancing; I’ll worry about what happens afterward
Gives a child’s life focus
Even when everyone is uptight and tired, it is still like being a part of a big family
Everyone in ballet is connected

You can’t become a woman in the ballet world
Fearful and obedient, they are indeterminate creatures of indeterminate sexuality
(Their disease is a denial of sexuality)
Baby ballerinas
Adolescents frozen on the border between childhood and adulthood
Ballet’s children live in a world outside time
Can we all just stop calling each other boys and girls?
A dancer seems wise to preserve childlike innocence
Is never Madame but always the small girl whose arabesque lacks perfection

How do you find the self you packed away as a child?
(How do you grow up when you’ve put yourself on hold for so long?
Begin to wonder if you’re here because you love it or because you’re afraid to go into the
outside world and face the abyss
When you’re fifteen, you’re whole life is built around dance. Later, you start questioning
yourself
When you spend your life only dancing, you feel there are too many steps to take to get to
where you want to be, so you question taking that first step at all
Is that all there is to life?
So you talk yourself into thinking you love ballet
How do you cultivate a new self without discarding the skills and talents which are both your
joy and your pain?
The void they must fill is a vacuum of indecisiveness and passivity

I am no longer a dancer, so who am I?
Living with a body that has lost its aura of immortality
Someday I just won’t be able to take it anymore—it will be too painful
I don’t want to do a double pirouette when I remember what it felt like to do 6
It’s a tragic career in a way
As hard as it is to go on, it would be even harder to quit
I think a lot about what I’m going to do when I quit
Gravely troubled dancers who are insecure about their futures
That sense of failure, that inability to commit myself to anything because I’ve given
up dancing
Face a bewildering outside world
Retirement merely ushers in a series of losses: loss of income, of workplace community, and most
importantly, loss of identity

Not to dance is death

A dedication you can’t do without
How can you possibly deny yourself all these things … in order to dance and put your body
through all that you do and still be happy?

Dance is the number one priority
You get tunnel vision
Lives revolve around the ballet stage and rehearsal studio

Injuries are considered a sign of weakness
Students who are afraid to lose their place conceal injuries
If you have an injury, they don’t want to bother with you

If you want to fall in love, you worry you’re cheating ballet
Don’t have friends outside ballet
They are taught that ballet is a jealous, demanding lover
Temptation to engage in normal personal relationships will seduce them

Dancers are encouraged to avoid the outside world

The greatest sacrifice is financial security
They would have to dance for the reward of doing what they loved
If you want to transcend this earth, you must sacrifice
They consider self denial and self discipline the highest virtue
Dance is the art of sacrifice and deprivation, not fulfillment and gratification

Art is spirit, innocence, purity

The profile of a dancer
more introverted
higher achievement motivation, anxiety, and emotionality

higher physical complaints, sensitivity to criticism and perfectionistic tendencies

compared to musicians and actors, dancers scored highest on emotionality and
were the most inferior-feeling, anxious, dependent, unhappy, hypochondriacal, and
obsessive. Dancers also tended to be the most tender-minded, painstaking and
thorough, and were close to musicians on empathy.

On Pointe @)~~

4:18 AM