Imagine your life as a professional ballet dancer. You wake up early in the morning, only to pain and soreness all over your body. You then prepare yourself for a day in the studio, training and rehearsing for upcoming performances. While classes typically only last for a couple of hours, rehearsals may take up to half the day or even the entire day, with only short breaks in between. Not only are hours long, but training also requires rigorous mental and physical workouts. Once you finally pull yourself through rehearsals, it is time for you to get ready for a scheduled night performance. It is not until past 10 or 11 that you finally have some time to relax. However, the following day, the cycle starts all over again. As you can see, the life of a dancer is extremely time-consuming and energy-draining. It requires much dedication and self-discipline. In the end, though, it all pays off because you love what you do and you have the satisfaction of knowing you were a part of an extravagant production.
Attending the ballet is an unforgettable experience. The performance leaves the audience mesmerized, with its stunning sets and costumes, entrancing music, dramatic choreography, and, most importantly, lovely dancers. The dancers’ movements across the stage create pieces of art that make their performance so visually appealing. I believe that the aesthetics created by the “perfection” of the dancers’ bodies and movements is vital to what we call a magnificent performance. Therefore, the discipline it takes to maintain that ideal dance figure and master the techniques and style of ballet is the essence of classical ballet dancers.
When you think of a ballet dancer, you immediately picture a delicate-looking woman with a small bust, thin waist, and long limbs. In the world of ballet, there is a collective understanding that a dancer must look a certain way and achieve a certain body standard. As Jenifer Ringer of the New York City Ballet says, “We do have to be honed to a fine point. … We do need to be thin” (The Oprah Magazine: “Real-Life Black Swan”). Nowadays, the dancers’ body image has transitioned from one of healthiness to one of extreme thinness, reflecting our own society’s unrealistic portrayal of the perfect female body. There are cultural expectations to be thin and the ballet subculture reaffirms these values by promoting and seeking dancers with a lean and delicate frame. In fact, according to Roberta Anding, the registered dietician for Houston Ballet, “most dancers weigh only 85 to 90 percent of what is considered ideal body-weight” (McGuire, “Food Obsessed?”). Thinness is highly valued in the ballet subculture because, not only do female dancers need to be carried by a male dancer, but they also have to display feathery gracefulness. Because ballet dancers are perfectionists united by the strong belief that ballet is a physical art form that requires dancers to look a specific way, many push themselves to the extent that they fall vulnerable to eating disorders and other health risks. While gaining too much weight may cause a professional ballerina to lose her contract and job, losing too much weight may also place the dancer’s health and body in such a critical state that she can no longer dance. Because of this ballet dancers are constantly at war with their own body. A dancer’s dedication to maintaining the “perfect” dance body signifies her value of self-discipline.
Ballet dancers are able to master the techniques and standards of ballet through rigorous mental and physical training. A professional ballet dancer’s life gives little room for any activity but dance. Many professional dancers even drop out of high school and do not attend college in order to dedicate their time and energy to training and rehearsals. Because of ballet’s demanding hours, a dancer pursuing a profession in ballet requires a lot of self-discipline growing up. Sergei Polunin, a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet, claims ballet was so constricting that it caused him to “miss out by never having [the] street life [to do] stupid things” (Channel 4 News: “How hard is the life of a professional dancer?”). Unlike other teenagers, pre-professional dancers begin intense vocational training at the age of 16 and have little time for a social life. Because of this, they miss out on a lot of normal and typical teenage experiences. Polunin describes a typical day as a dancer: “I don’t do many classes. Sometimes I don’t eat all day, then have four meals between 8pm and 4am. I go to bed really late—if I just sleep I won’t have a life outside ballet”. Even as a professional ballet dancer, sleep has to be sacrificed for a social life because the entire day is consumed by training and rehearsals. Ballet is an art form that has its own unique set of standards. It places great emphasis on posture and body alignment, which are essential to the aesthetics of a performance. Unlike other forms of dancing, there is always a correct or an incorrect method of executing a movement. Although, on stage, the movements look as if they are executed with ease, those turns, jumps, and leaps are actually very difficult to imitate. This is because ballet postures, forms, and movements are actually not natural to the human body. They are practiced until they become natural to the dancer. Unlike other forms of dancing, which give dancers more freedom and room for exploration, ballet movements are very precisely executed through extreme body control. Technique is at the core of ballet. With technique, the dancer’s trained body can be easily manipulated by the choreographer for creative purposes. It takes self-discipline to physically manipulate the body in ways that are not natural to the body. The ability to make these movements look graceful and effortless is honed by years of experience and dedication.
The satin pointe shoe, which is vital to a ballet dancer’s performance and reputation on stage, also helps demonstrate the ballet subculture’s essence of self-discipline. Pointe shoes look dainty, but learning to dance or even stand on toe shoes takes lots of practice. This is because the entire weight of a dancer’s body is balanced on the very tip of the shoes. Typically, a dancer must have several years of training before she can start dancing on pointe shoes because her feet, ankles, and legs have to be strong enough to endure the stress of dancing on pointe. Regardless of how many years of experience a dancer has, though, dancing on pointe shoes may still lead to the formation of bruised nails, calluses, or bunions and the blistering or bleeding of the feet. The ability for a professional dancer to endure these pains and push through a performance calls for great perseverance and self-discipline. Dancers must constantly push themselves and endure pain in order to create beautiful dance movements.
Self-discipline is at the core of ballet. Attaining the ideal dancer’s figure requires restraint and constant maintenance while mastering the technical art of ballet requires commitment to its rigorous training schedule and endurance of the harsh physical demands on the body. Both of these tasks require a dancer to persevere and improve herself until the desired results are reached and, therefore, require much self-discipline. It is the dancers’ value of self-discipline and their strive for perfection that set them apart from other subcultures.
Reflection:
For this unit, the class focused on analyzing the essence of a specific subculture. I learned that subcultures essentially share the same properties or characteristics as cultures. Both refer to a grouping of people who are united by similar behaviors, customs, morals, values, beliefs, and etc. The only difference is that a subculture reflects a smaller group of people. So, within a larger culture, we can have many different subcultures. For example, within the American culture, we have a variety of groups, including hippies, goths, punks, LGBT, hipsters, rockers, rappers, teens, and etc.
As usual, I have concluded that I am an extremely slow reader, writer, and thinker. I also noticed that it is difficult for me to gather my thoughts and convey them into words. Sometimes, I feel like my writing does not successfully portray or convey my intended thoughts. Even though I clearly know what I want to write about in my mind, it is hard for me to translate and transfer them into words. Lastly, I feel like there is always some kind of detachment between my thesis and the analyses and explanations of my body paragraphs. That is something I need to work on.
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