Name: 「バレエにまつわるよくある誤解」について、プロバレリーナが真実を明かす。| VOGUE JAPAN
Uploaded: 2021-11-26T18:05:26.000Z
Duration: 17 min 16 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of degree

a lot of dancers have normal feet, they've been pretty good to me.

Hi, my name is scout for a safe and I'm a professional ballet dancer with american ballet theater and today I'm going to be debunking misconceptions about ballerinas when people find out I'm a professional ballet dancer, They always have some weird stuff to say.

Future continuous

So I'm going to be answering some of the most common assumptions and misconceptions about ballerinas.

Today I threw it out there on Instagram for people to write in what they thought.

I got over 185 responses so I broke them down into categories, Diet, lifestyle, body, personality, career point shoes and dance.

This is definitely the biggest section and the most common question I get all ballerinas are teeny tiny skinny people who don't eat, they never eat anything like ballet dancers eat nothing slash starve themselves eating disorders, Body dysmorphia.

You're working out from 10 to 7 with an hour break and you're eating a lot of food because you need fuel for that, but you're working your body so hard that naturally you just become lean.

Yes, there is a skinny culture and ballet, there is a stigma and reward system for being and looking a certain way.

I personally would rather see a woman out there dancing than somebody who looks like they're about to lose their last breath on stage eating disorders.

I think it's something that dancers struggle with, I can say I've struggled with looking at myself in the mirror and just being like, you don't like that.

but our generation is becoming so much more knowledgeable about health, we're understanding that the starving yourself and then trying to get a full performance out, like that's just not possible for a human to do that.

Okay, so these are the more like realistic assumptions, I would say, dancers take good care of themselves and live a healthy lifestyle.

They're all super healthy eaters and vegans and perfectionists.

The perfectionist thing is probably true.

Not everybody is a vegan, they eat a lot of protein you eat to aid your digestion and mood.

I think one of the biggest things that people don't understand about dancers is like, we are so in tune with our bodies, you're eating a bunch of salts and you feel swollen the next day, alcohol wise, I really don't like to drink a lot of alcohol, especially don't do it during the week, alcohol, super dehydrating to the body, so I'm not going to be drinking while I've got a full 23 hour show that night, multiple ones of like, they're vegan, they're vegan, they're vegan personal story.

I went vegan for five years and I was really struggling with my hormones at that point, I started skipping periods and that is kind of scary because that affects your bone health.

So I started re introducing me to my diet, you know, monthly, like when I was menstruating, I crave red meat and I'm gonna give myself that like, here's an example of like a day I wake up in the morning, love, love, love my coffee and then avocado toast, fried egg on top.

And then I always have like a banana or apple or something to snack on.

I'm sipping coconut water throughout the whole day.

Lunch is usually some kind of salad or soup and then going home to dinner of like roasted veggies and like a big kale salad and then maybe occasionally like a piece of steak or salmon or just some tofu.

And then there's definitely like potato chips somewhere thrown in there and like maybe a piece of chocolate or like a pint of ice cream.

Their entire life is ballet and no private life as possible, no social life.

I assume that ballerinas don't have time for much outside of training.

There's a little bit of truth in that, but a normal rehearsal chunk, which would be like usually a week to Maybe six weeks were working Tuesday through Saturday, and then, you know, multiple times out of the year we're performing until late in the evening, but that's very seasonal, it's not all the time.

So, you know, yeah, you're hustling for two months, three months out of the year.

But other than that, like you're able to just finish your day and go have a dinner with friends or go get a massage or on the weekends, like run out to the beach.

The next one is ballet is the most important thing in your life.

No the thing I can't stress enough is black swan is someone's imagination in a movie.

There's a lot of stuff in that movie that I'm just uh yeah it's funny in the beginning of the movie of black swan when they're waiting for casting and he comes around and taps all the girls in class.

You know what's going to happen for the season ahead Like there's preparation that goes into it, it's not just like oh you get it, you get it like the casting goes up, you see it, you walk by, you might have already been in rehearsal for it.

So that seems a little funky to me towards the end of the movie where Natalie apartment character, she is late for rehearsal and the Milligan's character is dancing and rehearsing and her hair is down like you know you wouldn't be rehearsing swan like with your hair down and out of a but like that's just silly to me and then also in the end to when she jumps off onto the mattress which it wouldn't be a mattress, it would be like full stationary foam, like good stuff to fall into.

Not just like an old mattress bed bugs, like new york and she's like, I was perfect.

It's a live performance and that's something that's so beautiful about ballet and so enticing.

I think for dancers is that there's never perfection.

Like you can always constantly build on its never ending.

Ballet is extremely important to me, but it's not life consuming where I identify only with ballet and if somebody gets a role that I wanted, I'm not going to be pushing them down the stairs, backstabbing like the sabotage stuff that just doesn't happen.

I've heard stories from the older ones, but I think there's a really cool vibe happening with our generation of dancers.

We understand that life is life and ballet is that life?

So continuing on the body section, this is my favorite.

I've had like two blisters my entire life.

I have a corn in one of my pinky toes, dancers do work their butts off, but isn't really that big of a deal to have calluses now.

It's so badass that our bodies literally make callouses to protect themselves and to like build up like basically a coat of armor.

Like I think it's such like a badge to have these like super, you know, like these feet can handle stuff I can walk across rocks and not even bat an eyelash like my feet are strong.

A lot of dancers have normal feet definitely for sure have calluses blisters corns.

But for the most part, like we have such good technology of like toe padding space, there's all that stuff and are so much more aware of like self care when it comes to feet that I think this is kind of an old school way of thinking.

The dancer injury rate is 100% dancers get injured.

I've been a professional now for six years and I've only had one injury that really just took me out for a good solid like four months, 14 month injury in a span of six years.

Like the odds are pretty good at that point.

You avoid injuries by working smart, really working on that technique and getting that strength and doing things properly and having somebody help.

So, hey, I need a coach right now, I need somebody to look at this.

Ballerinas will have long term body issues because of their work.

Yeah, you see replacements with the answer's quite often.

So there is some truth in the long term issues, but ballet technique has been crafted for hundreds and hundreds of years.

So there's a lot of thought process that also went into like landing from jumps.

The reason we roll through the feet is one, it's aesthetically pleasing in two.

It's helpful for shock absorption on your body were going to pretend this is my Marley right here and here's my point shoes.

I jump up and I roll through the foot coming down instead of just going conch.

And that hard landing that's shocks into your ankle which goes into your knee and hits bodies and everything.

So it's like that roll down that helps with allowing the body to slowly control the weight that's coming from up above.

So ballet is like any other sport out there.

There is going to be long term effects that happen down the road because of just how much we're working our bodies.

But I mean it's kind of the sacrifice that you make because you love what you do.

You do not have to have long hair to be a dancer or to put it in a but there's ways you can make fake buns.

I knew a girl that has full pixie cut and she was a professional ballet dancer.

You just work with what you've got cos can't require you to have a certain type of hair.

And ask is that you keep your hair and natural color.

Okay, so now we're moving on to personality, There's a lot of competition and meanness within dancers.

Dancers are neurotic obsessive narcissistic ballerinas are catty competitive and mean, no it's not black swan.

People aren't putting shards of glass and other people's point shoes, especially the culture at A B.

I feel like I've been so fortunate and lucky.

Like the support we have for each other, where I've gone in there, had a bad day crying in the dressing room, I've got at least six women around me being like, let's talk.

Like, come on, we support each other and love each other and that's how we get stuff done and that's how our performance happens.

Ballerinas need a strong character and ego in order to handle the job.

There is some truth in that you have to be a strong person.