Ballet is usually associated with beauty and grace, but as any form of art, it also has its hidden parts. To understand this art in-depth, we should analyze the advantages and disadvantages it has on the performers, especially the young ones.
At a very early age, mothers sign up their daughters or even sons for ballet classes, the main reason for this being that they want their children to have a nice posture. Indeed, as previously mentioned, the main characteristic of ballet is elegance. Besides, while learning how to keep a straight back, young children are also developing their physical capabilities. Ballet dancers have their muscles very well defined, you can see almost all their muscles moving while you are watching a show, even from the furthest chair in the room. From a more psychological point of view, we can clearly say that ballet helps children to become immune to any situations where they could be feeling nervous, thus to get rid of the permanent stress factor that appears on various occasions in their life.
Quoting the famous “no pain, no gain”, it is not a secret that ballet also has its disadvantages, especially when it comes to children and their bodies which are not fully developed. As I said, through ballet lessons, children start developing their bodies at a very fast pace. But at what point can we say that their physical effort has reached its maximum limit? Let me tell you a secret: the answer is never. As an “ex-ballerina”, I can offer you a glimpse of the ballet teachers’ way of thinking when it comes to ballet practice. Well, to put it frankly, in the art of ballet there is no limit, there is no stopping point and there is no mercy. To give you a concrete example, girls as young as 7 years are obliged to start practicing on their pointe shoes, even though this is not recommended until the age of minimum 10. This thing is advised since it is well known how dancing on pointe shoes ends in creating bunions even as an adult, having your bones fully developed. In this case, it is not necessary to explain how much harm this kind of practice can do to a 7-year-old girl.
We can see that the art of ballet has its positive and negative components. Yet, the harmony which can be found in ballet performances couldn’t exist without all of them combined.
hARTS magazine 