Celtic,
Let me say,I love your posts! Dance is, according to a Harvard study, the hardest sport on the body, period. What's more, a study showed that female dancers stood the MOST pain of anyone in the study inclucing MALE dancers! Ballet, Jazz is brutal, and you have to be a little bit crazy to pursue a career in it. Dancers are born, they are not made. I was dancing when I walked. I could not stop. When you walk away from the ballet barre, for the first, a least 3 years, you often go home and cry from the pain and the difficulty of the sport. It is, again, brutal!
Try this on for size, if you want to be a professional ballet dancer, you must meet these requirements:
You must be thin, and this means THIN.
You must have legs that are exactly proportionate to your body, not longer legs than torso or the other way around.
YOu will be booted if your big toe and your second toe are not equal in length. One cannot go on point unless both those toes are equal in lenght.
You cannot be flat footed
You cannot be "bow legged," or "knock knee-ed," they will throw you out right there,
You must be 5'7" or taller and that is to make it into the corps.
You must have the correct facial features, there is MUCH facial plastic surgery among young dance professionals to meet the facial requirement.
And this is just body. We dance six hours a day, every day and never miss a day. We do this through out our careers. It's up in the morning and into the studio and sometimes you are putting up your hair and drinking coffee while driving there, you must not be late of you cannot take Master Class.
There are some reasons why dancers fall to drug use. They never make it as a professional if they use drugs. One cannot dance on ANY drug. Most pro dancers are drug free and if they are not, they are on their way out.
My career was the hardest choice a person can make and I was checked for all of the above throughout my young days until I finally stood out enought to have my own independent career. I was lucky, my body fit the standerds.
dancer, with info about the career of dancing.