I’m not built for ballet. My frame is well suited for soccer and other sports that involve strong legs. But I love ballet. At young age, I excelled at swimming and was even offered a spot on the local team but it wasn’t for me. I joined soccer but the schedule was grueling. I still wanted ballet. One day my mom was walking by the store Fat Albert and turned into the wrong door. That wrong turn changed my life. My mom had accidentally walked into the dance studio that became my second home for the next two years. Eventually my family moved from Brooklyn to the Bronx as I was accepted into a high school in Westchester. It was my mother who then found my new dance home, Harlem School of the Arts. The fluid movement of a prima ballerina…
This project will examine the ballet’s lack of diversity, which is still experienced in 2016. Even thought more American companies are establishing inclusive policies, until this date they represent the minority. There should be progression in race-related variety on stage, mostly in the U.S. where the population is so diversified. However, is it because of the monetary variance, the absence of role to replicated for future dancers, the necessity of reinforcement from educational institutions…
Suzanne Abraham (1996) describes how dancers feel, and what their physical appearance should look like. Researchers have found that among ballet dancers, it is common to have an eating disorder. Dancers want to be thin and have a ballet dancer body, and not everybody is born the same way to have that lean body type. Therefore, girls start bad habits, such as throwing up and not eating, just so they can have that ballet body type. Gelsey Kirkland, a ballet dancer, explains, “I starved by day,…
Misty Danielle Copeland was born on September 10, 1982 in Kansas City, Missouri. Even though she was born in Kansas City, she was raised in San Pedro, California. Misty was very late in starting ballet studies, but it didn’t stop her. Usually, ballerinas start studying when they are three or four, but Misty was thirteen when she took her first ballet class. When she unlocked the magical world of ballet, Misty was coping with the fact she was living in a shabby motel room with her five siblings…
On December 6th, I saw the Moscow Ballet 's Great Russian Nutcracker at the Miller Auditorium in Kalamazoo, MI. The Moscow Ballet was on their 2016 National Tour. The choreographer Stanislav Vlasov, former soloist with the Bolshoi Ballet. Stanislav Vlasov reimagined the ballet and showcased his own view of the Great Russian Nutcracker. It was practically special because Western Michigan University symphony orchestra had the opportunity to play along side of the dancers. Throughout the ballet,…
Many dancers now are turned away because they are simply taller than the mandated height, sometimes they will be turned away based on their body types, yet having a thin body was a recent development by the famous George Balanchine. Commonly referred to as the ‘Balanchine Body’, this ideal body type that first began in the 1900’s shapes what we see as the perfect ballet body yet what is said and done in whispers behind closed theater doors, dressing rooms, and practice rooms, is often nowhere…
This excessively specific physique has become a sort of “job requirement” for ballerinas. Most are not born with the qualities that are required, meaning that they starve themselves almost to the point of death. These requirements do not make sense because in order for a ballerina to survive 8-hour rehearsal days, she must eat. If she doesn’t, she won’t be able to perform her best, and will in turn not look her best on stage. Weight and body image is something that Copeland, as well as many…
The strength of a dancer is often hidden behind the grace that is performed. Although dance is considered to be a performing art, it takes a certain level of athleticism to make it look simple. Athletes practice every day for certain sessions while a dancer routinely takes strengthening class among rehearsal. Dance is something that one must take the time to perfect by practice just as any other sport. “We condition every rehearsal, which includes a six minute plank, three hundred sit ups,…
more relaxed leader than those who would come after him. They believed that One Day in the Life was a critique of the Soviet system. This lead them to confiscate all of Solzhenitsyn’s papers including unpublished works, some of these works would be leaked to the west and published without his approval, they would then be used as further proof of his dissidence and reason to exile him. Solzhenitsyn believed in mother Russia, he believed that overall it was a good country and that with a few…
who disagreed with their ideas eliminated chasing and sending them to concentration camps in Siberia, where practically no longer returned, also Stalin persecuted those minority of people who wanted to secede from the USSR, as for example, Ukrainians, Chechens, Caucasians ... and during the cold war Soviet ideology strengthened against US capitalism. During Stalin's rule and in a few years, the USSR recovered so that stood up to the US, especially his recovery was in the industry and…