Ariana+C’s+2016+OpEd+Article



“Ballet’s not a real sport is it? How challenging can it really be?”

Well, it certainly takes more effort than thinking of such a stupid, ignorant, ill-informed question.

Let’s just cut to the chase. Ballet is difficult. In fact, ballet is really goddamn hard. Not that others sports aren’t. But let’s just look at the facts.

Ballet is designed to make the human body do things that’s simply not supposed to do. Imagine your entire body weight. Trying to lift it, trying to support it. Now imagine doing that, on the tip of your toes. Jamming them repeatedly into a hard wooden box, hidden in your shoes. All while your back, legs, and arms are extended to the point where your ligaments and bones are within inches of snapping.

Now trying doing all of that in full make-up, stage lights blinding, sweat dripping and trying to look like a dainty fairy tail princess no less. That’s not even taking technique, the bloody toes, your mental stability or years of chronic pain into account.

Let’s just take a journey of what goes on in my head all at the same time; for 12 years, every single day, for 3 or more hours at a time. “Pointe your feet, straighten your legs, turn out your knees, suck in your stomach, tighten your butt, extend your neck up, remember the next step, then remember the next 4 steps, be on the music, breathe, look at the audience, seem like it’s effortless…..and don’t forget to smile and look like you’re enjoying yourself.”

And how are we supposed to keep smiling as our instructor is yelling countless corrections for you to fix as you’re trying to remember every single piece of choreography; which leg to kick up to our face first while your arms make a position that shouldn’t even be possible to do.

So next time you hear some idiot mention that “ballet doesn’t seem that hard” just remember this: I don’t just twirl around in a tutu. It’s a hell of more difficult than just grabbing a ball and running across a field.