I have been doing ballet for… six years now. I started when I was six years old and I am now twelve (as you may have deduced if you are strong at mental math). I remember so many times in my ballet journey where I thought to myself, “I wanna quit.” But there were more times where I thought, “I love this, why would I ever quit?” But the truth is, there is more blood and battle in ballet than the world cares to know.
I was eight years old, and I had just learned that injuries could end a dancer’s career. As an eight year old, I obviously did not have a career, but I was terrified of getting hurt. Spoiler alert — I got hurt. I had Achilles Tendonitis in my two feet almost a week after learning about the effects of injuries on ballet dancers. Achilles Tendonitis is “an overuse of injury of the Achilles tendon, the band of tissue that connects calf muscles at the back of the lower leg to your heel bone.” According to MayoClinic.org.
Because of this injury, I stopped improving. I stopped improving because in order for my Achilles to heal, I needed to put a pause on my rigorous dance schedule. After I had healed, I remember dancing so awkwardly, and thinking to myself, “if injuries can happen this easily, and can cause so much anguish, do I really want to devote my time and energy into something that is so fragile — dance?” Of course these are not my exact words, because I have never come across an eight-year old with such vocabulary and sentence structure.
I have had quite a few injuries since then, but they are nothing — nothing — compared to other dancers’. Anna Pavlova was born in 1881, in St. Petersburg, Russia. She died young — at the prime age of 50, because she refused a surgery that would’ve saved her life, but ended her career in ballet. While Anna was dancing in the Netherlands, she was diagnosed with pneumonia. She famously told the doctors, “If I can’t dance then I’d rather be dead. Prepare my swan costume.”
Before her death, audience members who would watch her in awe after her flawless performances said that they could see blood seeping through her pointe shoes at the end of her shows. Considering the thickness of pointe shoes, she must have bled a lot in order for it to be visible — let alone be visible from the audience in the dark.
Of course, Anna Pavlova is one of the extreme cases of dancers sacrificing themselves and injuring themselves in the process. I hope this piece of writing has made you think about the hidden pain behind the ballerinas, effortlessly twirling on the tips of their toes on a glamorous stage — because ballet is more than pink tutus, makeup, and pointe shoes.
CREDITS: the8percent, mayoclinic, and the Book of Gutsy Women by Hilary and Chelsea Clinton.
Dance Domain 