It's your first day at a new studio. You walk into the room and it goes quiet. You put your stuff down on the side of the room, put your ballet shoes on, and leave to go to the locker room, the whole time, all eyes are on you.
I call it the new girl syndrome, also known as competition sighted. Any ballet dancer will tell you that the ballet world is cut-throat. Whether you like it or not, you're always going to be looked at as another piece of meat for people to bite at. I've seen it at every studio I have ever been to. A new girl walks into the room and everyone stops and stares. "Is she good? Is she better than me? How old is she? Where is she from. She can't stand there, that's my spot. The teacher likes he more than me.", no one likes to be the new girl. It's scary and intimidating, especially when you don't know what you are up against. It's so hard, I know how it feels to be the "new girl" most ballerinas do, and its not fun.
So how do you overcome this? Some girls use it to their advantage, some crumble under the the pressure. You have to be able to get around the glares. There are certain things to help you break the ice, almost like an initiation. Sometimes all it takes is a simple joke, a statement about a teacher, about how your class went, and sometimes you may just earn respect because of your dancing. Soon enough you are part of the group, and another piece of fresh meat walks in and it starts all over again. Being the "new girl" many times before, it is interesting to watch from the sidelines, it's also pretty sad. People judge someone before they even know the persons name, granted they may get lucky and make an accurate assumption, but give the girl a chance… No, there is no room for chances, or second chances. Once an opinion is formed, it sticks, until that person proves otherwise, which, if they have basically been shunned from the group, doesn't happen very often.
Even after you've "made the cut" you are still being judged, whether by your peers, or superiors… There is so much stress to prove yourself, so much sleep lost thinking of what you can do better or fix tomorrow. So much time is spent worrying if you said the wrong thing yesterday to someone that could turn your life into a living hell, what if you said something that could be taken out of context, or that could mutate into something that could be very bad for you. You'd think that this kind of stuff wouldn't really matter because all we care about is the "ballet" part of this competitive world… We should just be concerned about ourselves and our dancing and how we can improve, not what other people think. Ha… no. That's impossible. In my opinion, if you don't care what other people think, then why are you in ballet? The whole entire focus of ballet is to perform for an audience, and when the audience leaves you want them to think, "Wow, that was great, those dancers were beautiful". When you take class you want the teacher to see you and praise you for your hard work, and if they don't you want them to correct your mistakes. When you are dancing, you want the people around you to like you, to like what they see and to be impressed by your skill. Dancers care about what other people think, there is no way around it. It doesn't matter under what circumstances, you want people to be impressed. Whenever a dancer says to you, "Oh I really don't care what she thinks about me" They are lying. I've said it, I would know. It's not true at all.
It's this constant need to feel wanted, to feel useful, to feel accepted, and to be successful. It's what drives us to do well. If someone goes to long without one or more of these things, there is a nagging sensation at the back of their brain, then it becomes something stronger, and soon they just go insane. It's not pretty. Though, once a person feels like a need is met, everything evens out again, and they improve, or they start to dance again, not just move with the music. It may be a short and painless process, it may be long and dragged out, it all depends on you and your performance. Don't give in when you feel like giving up. That is one of the hardest things to do, it's hard not to walk off the floor and think "That sucked but whatever, no one cares." Someone will always care, someone will always see you struggling, and there will always be someone to see you succeed, it's just patience that decides its gonna take a vacation on you. But if this is what makes you happy, don't just throw the hard work away when you walk into the room and immediately feel out of place, work your way to the top.
