The concept that class work should be focused on developing the dancer’s physical instrument safely and correctly in order that the muscles of the body remain balanced and are not over-worked on one side is a concept that has been completely lost amidst the competition school’s focus on developing “routines” for competitions. Staging routines is where the studios make their money. The thorough, developmental approach found in ballet class work is tedious and slow, and neither students nor parents — even if they have some comprehension of this fact — have much patience for the long trajectory required in balletic training. Most have absolutely no comprehension of the difference between training and learning a routine. Most, I’m sure, think the two processes are interchangeable. It is not uncommon for studio owners, parents and students to assume that you can simply put pointe shoes on students and, by teaching them a piece of choreography on pointe, and drilling that same “number” over and over, the students will become proficient on pointe. For the teacher of ballet, instead of being able to focus on developing the strength, elasticity, speed and coordination of a dancer in a balanced technique class with full barre and center work, half or more of each class now has to be spent on teaching a recital (or competition) piece. This practice is totally destructive.
Thus, for me and other teachers like me, the challenge is to educate not just the students but the parents and studio owners. I have frequently said, “If the training principles are correct, the dancer’s body becomes more beautiful.” I have also said, “If one trains like a sumo wrestler, one will begin to look like a sumo wrestler — not like a ballet dancer.” Dancers today, because of the emphasis on masculine tricks and circus stunts are being trained in ways that “beef them up”. The training and competition choreography at many dance studios is frequently handled by very inexperienced or incompletely trained teachers who do not have the requisite knowledge about the human body or the developmental physique of young, pre-pubescent, and pubescent children. Much less is there anything near an orderly, progressive, systematized approach to training. Some of these teachers, who are just out of high school, are still too young themselves to have good judgment when it comes to staging choreography, tricks and aerials for the young. The current craze and requirements of competition dance for more and more dangerous tricks and aerials is having dire consequences for young people. It is like an addiction, everyone is demanding it and, of course, all the youngsters want to do them and will even beg to do them. One child of my acquaintance just last week sustained a horrible compound fracture of the radius and ulna while practicing her aerials for her competition routine.
The consequences of poor training, plus over-training and one-sided training are producing a generation of dancers with muscular development that is not only “thick” but disproportional and out of balance — and therefore dangerous. Poor training produces highly inefficient, jerky, not to mention unattractive movements. The joints (hips, knees, ankles and metatarsal heads) are destroyed by over use and by inappropriate use. Since I started teaching at these competition schools 12 years ago, I have witnessed what having 6-9 hours of hip-hop, jazz, and tap a week (compared with only 1 to 3 hours of ballet class a week) does to the ligaments and joints of children who, when I saw them at age 10, all had nice feet and legs but who, by age 13 now have had their legs and feet ruined. The knees and ankles lose suppleness, the Achilles tendons become stiff and short, prohibiting the demi-plie and therefore losing the ability to thrust off the ground efficiently and smoothly and land safely. The quadriceps muscles are either flaccid (in the case of the child who’s hyperextension has not been corrected by an observant teacher) or bulked up due to overuse and lack of attention to lengthening the muscles.
Competition dancers and increasingly ballet dancers, too, look “thick” instead of having the lean-muscled appearance of dancers twenty years ago. Since I already see repetitive action injuries on a wide scale at these competition studios, I am certain, that these injuries suffered now by children as young as nine will have a wide range of painful, debilitating physical consequences for them in the future— all due to our culture’s insane addiction to sensation and fame. The hugely profitable production companies don’t care: they parasitically feed on the young. They know that there will always be another young person to step into the competitive maw to be chewed up in a search for validation, fame and fortune. Are we really so bereft as a culture that our children’s sense of self-worth and validation is tied only to sensationalism, fame, marketing and profits? Are we so anxious that we will sacrifice our own children’s bodies on the altar of the profits of corporate production giants and pin their self-esteem to essentially meaningless and (increasingly) physically harmful activities?
We have not yet come to grips with the inescapable physical reality that a female body is not the same as a male body. We are forcing the athleticism of fully-grown, mature male athletes onto girls as young as 8 years old! In the male, the ligaments, tendons, and muscle attachments as well as the thickness and strength of the ligaments, tendons, and muscles themselves is quite beyond the capacity of even the most athletic, mature female body. The call for sanity in this regard has nothing to do with discrimination against women. Women’s athleticism must be based on the realities of the female body’s physical equipment and proper training methods for the female body which are quite different from the male’s. Unfortunately, girls are being told that they must and can be just like the boys in athletics and that they should aspire to all the same tricks that they see young men attempting. Our culture has gone terribly wrong on this. It amounts to a total devaluation of the essential qualities of the female body when the values of the male body are super-imposed upon it. The masculinization of the feminine in our culture has gone too far when young girls are being physically ruined, all in the name of fame and competition.
