BETWEEN HERE AND HOME: The brutality of ballet

I’m not proud of it, dear reader, and clearly I’m still not mature enough for a night at the ballet, but in my defence, I was a first-timer to the world of tutus and tours en l’air, and the very strangeness of it all caught me off-guard.

It was beautiful, yes, but also compellingly brutal. I wondered if this is what it’s like for the overseas traveller watching AFL football for the first time.

The ballet was performed with a music track rather than a live orchestra, and because The Capital is a relatively small venue for viewing ballet, we were able to hear every footfall – the soft thud of slippered feet as dancers stepped down off a pointe. It made the whole spectacle so acutely physical.

I found myself more fascinated by the biology than the stories. Struck by movements that seem so unnatural to the human body – to be turned out in a way that is so foreign to the joints, muscles and ligature. Ballet dancers are essentially training their bodies to a different structure than that which they were born with. It makes the spectacle both compelling and unnerving to watch.

I imagined the pressure on the toes, the ankles, the knees, simply from standing on a point; the agony that dancers must face each day to get back out on the boards and do it all again.

This was made even more real at intermission when it turned out we were seated next to the proud father of one of the male dancers. “My boy came to ballet late in life,” he told us. “He was nine when he began dancing.” 

It’s true. For most of the dancers on stage, their journey to reach the Dancers Company of The Australian Ballet began when they were three or four years old. 

They are students of the Australian Ballet School – survivors of a culling process that sees only the elite few progress each year for another shot at their dream. 

Training six days a week from 8am until 5.30pm – usually studying at the same time via distance education or with tutors – they live and breath their art.

In footballing terms, these performers are ballet’s number-one draft picks. The elite of the elite. Yet, the hardships are many and, unlike football, the financial rewards are poor. 

The father who sat beside us has three children – all of them dancers. His daughter has overcome two horrendous knee dislocations to finally be accepted by Queensland Ballet and dance under the tutelage of renowned artistic director Li Cunxin (of Mao’s Last Dancer fame).

I remember reading an article in The Guardian recently where the journalist asked dancers from the English National Ballet about their injury battles. It was like something from a horror movie. 

Dancers who had gone on pointe with broken bones and stress fractures simply to guard their place in the company. For most dancers, blisters, bunions and corns are the norm; the inevitable result of feet compressed into unforgiving pointe shoes. For others, corns develop sinuses and become ulcers; nails thicken and grow hard skin underneath.

There were stories of prima ballerinas covering their feet in glue and other chemicals to make them stick. Even performing minor surgery on themselves – attacking the dying flesh on their feet with scissors and razor blades. So why do they do it?

The American dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham sums it perfectly: “Dancing gives you nothing back; no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to hang in museums, no poems to be printed or sold; nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive.”

There were a lot of young girls in the audience on Saturday night. All of them picturing themselves as Odile in Swan Lake, being held aloft by Prince Siegfried and his ample codpiece. I hope their moment in the spotlight will be worth the hardship.

Read John Holton's other blogs at www.johnholtonhereandhome.blogspot.com.au