I Am an Athlete

I would like to say this: ballet is a sport, despite the fact that it is sorely misrepresented in much of popular media, and the definition of “sport” should be expanded to fit it. You may be thinking I’m just really bitter about something someone said to me recently. No, I am actually serious about this. Ballet is an activity — which, as you probably know, I do — that is often underestimated and/or misunderstood by the general, non-ballet-dancing public. I understand that not everyone has to love, fully appreciate, or even watch ballet, but the quantity of images in the world like the first one below drives me crazy. Ballet is not a place where a bunch of little girls in pink tulle prance around all day. (Not to say little girls never wear pink tulle and prance around in ballet, that’s just not the whole picture.) What is left out of a lot of popular media is the physical and mental aspects of ballet, especially at higher ages and in more serious classes.

First of all, we are athletes as much as a soccer player or a gymnast is. Most of us have trained for years to reach the point we are at now, and this is not a stopping point. Someone could not start ballet and in two years of hard work expect to get close to the level someone is at if they have been training for six years. I have 16+ hours of scheduled class and rehearsal time per week during most of the school year, but I’m at the studio for 22 hours per week. We work on stamina, muscle precision, and technique, making us physically fit in a very unique way. Being sore from class is our typical state. We work through pain on a daily basis (ask any dancer, it’s more true than it should be). Also, I don’t think anyone could watch a ballet and say we are not athletes. I don’t think this would be that much harder than an intense club sport, but that’s my point. Ballet should be considered a sport.

Not only are we working physically, we also push ourselves mentally. During any individual moment of dancing, there are a minimum of ten things we are supposed to be thinking about to dance as well as we can. Also, as you might expect, the choreography we perform is not improvised, and our movements and body placement are very specific, especially when dancing in a corps (group). In the case of CUBallet (the company I and eight other Uni students dance with), we rehearse each show for 10-20 weeks before performing it, and no rehearsal is ever repetitive or pointless. When we are dancing, moreover, we have to make every movement look effortless and smile as if the pain in our feet wasn’t making us want to cry. That is emotionally taxing. When we get to tech week (on weeknights), we are at the theatre and working — not doing homework, putting our feet up, or otherwise having down time — from at least 4:30 to 10:00, often even longer. I wish I could say that when we get home, we can go to bed, but this is unfortunately not the case. We start homework, eat some dinner, and soak our feet in buckets of ice water before going to bed. This is probably not that much harder than a not-school-affiliated theatre tech week or maybe a club sports tournament, but that’s my point. Ballet is just as hard as those, and should be treated as such.

The most annoying thing to me is when people make me feel like ballet is less than what it is. Saying “oh yeah I used to do ballet too when I was five” or “do a spin for me” just makes me cringe on the inside before responding, “oh that’s cool” or “what kind of turn?” It’s the little things that add up. At the subbie retreat, we did an activity where, without talking, we had to get in groups by our favorite sport and act it out. One of the subbies and I stood next to each other and started doing pliés (a basic and yet integral piece of ballet). We got weird looks but we are dancers and want to be seen as such. Again, I realize that not everyone has to love ballet (there are plenty of sports I don’t love but still respect), but I want it to be recognized as a sport and dancers to be recognized as athletes as much as swimmers, soccer players, and gymnasts are. At the end of the day, we are all hard-working athletes whose time commitments deserve a little respect. I especially want medical professionals and physical education teachers to see it as a sport so that they can best help their clients or students who are dancers (especially because we have a tendency to get injured and ignore it for three weeks before admitting we need help). Besides, ballet is as hard as any sport. It’s as physically and mentally exhausting as a sport. Please call it one. On the simplest level, I want to see more pictures like the one on the right in popular media instead of the one on the left.