Can someone tell me what ballet is all about? Grace and beauty, or strength and stamina? Or both?
If you asked a studio of dancers why they are dancing, 3 out of 5 would, most likely, say "Because it's what I love". Honestly, this time last year, that would have been my answer, in a heartbeat I would have told you it's what I have always done, it's what I love… but now… if you asked… I would probably burst into tears and run in the opposite direction because I don't know anymore… I want to say I love it, but in reality, when I think of ballet, I hate everything about it. Now, I don't know, maybe its that I hate everything about ballet that has to do with myself, because I love to watch ballet, and it still amazes me how much effort is put into making something seem effortless, but in the past few months I've lost my passion, my drive, my heart, and my love for ballet, whether it was sucked out of me because of the stress or I just threw my hands in the air and gave up, I don't know, but the fire isn't there anymore.
Recently people have been saying how sad it would be for me to stop dancing now and that I can 'always" go to college, or how I have so much talent and to just waste it by quitting would be silly, but to me, it would be worse for me to continue dancing when it's not what I want anymore… I don't know what I want, I am so confused as to what I should do… Go to college? Stay home for a year? Audition for as many companies as I can and receive rejection after rejection…? What am I supposed to do? Sometimes I wish someone else could make the decision for me.
Ballet's standards have changed so much. Nowadays there is a demand for twig thin young women with feet that bend in half and go through 5 pairs of pointe shoes in 3 days. I will admit that not all companies look for this, but I swear to you, that in the back of their mind, every company director wishes his audition was full of this description. There is a level of mental and physical abuse that dancers put themselves through, and it doesn't come from the teachers, at least at my studio. It comes from the dancers themselves… Isn't that sad? I think it is, maybe it isn't to you, but to me, it makes me want to vomit. It is impossible for me to look at myself in the mirror and not feel anxiety about how I look, I'm starting to feel like I should be sticking my finger down my throat after every meal just to fit the persona of "Ballet Dancer", why? What mentally stable person would ever even dare to think of doing that!?
For years, I've drilled the idea into my head, that I would never make it as anything if I didn't become a dancer, and now I feel like I'm trying to prove myself wrong by making the one thing I used to feel safe doing into the one thing I never want to think about. The moment someone mentions ballet I want to run out of the room, I want to throw myself off a moving, high speed train. It has become that terrible to me that I could quit right now and not feel a thing. Thats just it though, it would probably rip my heart out… Not only that but to think of all the people I feel like I'd be letting down… My parents, my sister, my teachers, my friends, my grandparents, the people who have supported me all my life. What would they say, would they look at me differently? Should it matter what they think? I don't even know. I can't answer one single question about ballet. Yesterday I talked to someone who had no idea about anything that had to do with dance, so they asked me all kinds of questions… and I could barely answer any of them.
Last March I had a surgery that would change my life for the better, or so I thought. In some ways it did, but in some ways it didn't. When I had that time off from ballet, it was probably the most fun I have ever had in my whole entire life, I got to see my friends almost everyday without worrying about whether I have to go get ready for ballet, or whether it was worth missing class for. My family and I took a road trip to Florida and I never wanted to come home, I got to meet new people I had never seen in my whole entire life and for once, not worry whether they would stab my back later on in the future, or steal my part from me, or whether or not they would be better than me. I got to go to sports events, and parties, and the movies, all without ballet tugging at the back of my brain. I long for those experiences again, I long to be free of pain, it seems that after every class I have some new twinge, I am starting to worry that people think I fake it and I don't! There are some amazing dancers out there, who are built just for ballet, who can take the beatings, the pulled muscles, the sprains, the tears, the sweat, they can take it all and still find the strength to keep at it. For years I have longed for that ability, I have wished for the opportunity to be a ballet role model, for little girls all over the world to look up to me and see someone who proves that its not as hopeless as it seems sometimes.
I read a quote the other day that said " You don't have to know ballet to enjoy it, all you have to do is watch" or something along those lines, and I thought "Wow…That is so true." and it is! It really is true. But once you are immersed in that wondrous, beautiful world… it all just becomes so… so fleeting, as if every minute spent doing something else will ruin all the progress… It's funny, because I could go on and on and on about all the bad things ballet brings out in a person and all the wrong images it personifies… But I can go the other direction. I could gloat about the beauty, and the grace and the strength and the stamina, and the will and the emotion and the drive and on and on and on and on. Gosh, the list is endless! Really it is! This is the part of me that would die, if I ever gave it up. If I just quit… I am only telling myself and others, that I am weak.
