Nina Ananiashvili's The Joy Of Becoming A Dancer

“Ballet is not just movement, not simply abstract. It’s something beautiful.” Nina Ananiashvili, the artistic director for the State Ballet of Georgia, begins to describe the magic and mystic found within the art of ballet. Only a ballerina possesses the key to unlock the mysteries hidden within each graceful movement of dance. Nevertheless ballet, like almost everything else, has a side far less romantic to it. Throughout her entire career, a dancer struggles to ensure a strong and healthy body while simultaneously pushing it to its limits and demanding for it to perform impossible tasks. More than once will she have to continue to work through extreme pain and injury. Inevitably, the way a dancer pushes through moments of pain, injury and other causes, her body will receive wear and may or may not end in a damaged state.

Opening night arrives and the audience slowly filters into the theater to find their designated seats as the lights above begin to dim. Bursting with applause, the audience exalts at the beauty, grace and lightness of the smiling ballerina before them. Little do they know that this same ballerina is experiencing unimaginable pain and anguish. As a dancer, she must never reveal her pain and she must never cease dancing in the middle of a performance no matter her pain. If she finds herself badly …show more content…
In spite of an abused body at the end of a dancers career, she gets to experience the way it feels to soar through the air, even for even a split second, to defy gravity, merely touching the floor with an inch of the toe shoe. Dancers may not have the same body and may suffer discomfort or occasional pain, yet they still will always posses a body fit for performing impossible tasks and maintain extreme flexibility and strength. Though over work and injury may cause a dancers body to wear at least she has experienced what many can