I used to be a ballerina. Not a professional, but a pretty darned serious dancer. I danced for fifteen years, beginning at the tender age of 3. And towards the end of my “career,” I was at the studio 7 days a week, dancing for 1.5 to 3 hours a day. Looking back, I can say that ballet was woven into the fabric of my being as only something that played a part of my most formative years could be.
Olive waiting for her first ballet exam
It’s almost every little girl’s dream (or at least it was when I was growing up): to twirl around in pink satin slippers and a pretty tutu. The stage, the lights and the applause were merely the glamourous dimensions, of course. What you didn’t see were the gruelling practices, the blistered feet and the countless hours of repeating the same movement over and over and over. I loved it though. I loved all of it. I loved it so much that I couldn’t bear to acknowledge that it had damaging effects on me. But as I’ve grown, I can admit to both the good and the bad.
As I reflect back, I can see three major ways that growing up in ballet both shaped me and scarred me:
Body Awareness vs. Body Image Anxiety
Dancing taught me a lot about my body; basic biology of what the muscles are called, how my muscles and ligaments control various movements, how to keep my center of gravity in balance, and the importance of drinking lots of water. The flip side, however, was the emphasis on a certain look of the body. Thin and long were the ideal. Mercifully, I was always on the skinny side, but I think growing up in that environment still left me with the lingering question, “Am I beautiful enough?”
Discipline vs. Perfectionism
Ballet also taught me how to be disciplined. From an early age, we were expected to pay attention in class, not to fidget (ie, stand absolutely still when the teacher was talking) and to keep pushing for improvement. The leg should be exactly 90 degrees high. The waistband should be completely level at all times. No loose hairs were permitted to fly out from the bun. Unfortunately, this was an ideal breeding ground for perfectionism. Ballet taught me that imperfection was unacceptable. I remember failing an exam because my one leg was longer than the other. And I grew up with a sense that somehow I was never good enough; that I had to keep improving; that I had to be perfect (even if perfect was unattainable).
Gracefulness vs. Grace-full-ness
I only learned to distinguish between gracefulness and grace-full-ness in recent years. As a girl, whenever people watched me dance, they would tell me I looked so graceful. I remember a classmate telling me in Grade 9 gym class that I played badminton like I was dancing. It was clear that I knew how to be graceful in my physical movements. What I didn’t realize until much later was that I didn’t know how to be full of grace. I was so performance oriented, so perfection driven, that I had trouble letting loose, making mistakes, having fun and resting.
I still love ballet. And there are times when I feel like I miss doing it. But I have a much more realistic view of it these days. Yes, it taught me a lot of good things. But it also scarred me in deep ways that I’m only beginning to work through now. Would I enrol my little girl in ballet classes? If she enjoys it, yes. But I’d teach her that she doesn’t have to be perfect at it. And I’d take her out if she stopped having fun. Or, I might just encourage her to take jazz or modern instead.