The role of puberty in the making and breaking of young ballet dancers: Perspectives of dance teachers (original) (raw)
Related papers
Of Grit and Grace: Negotiating Puberty, Surviving, and Succeeding in Professional Ballet
Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal, 2021
Experiences of puberty and how individuals adapt to puberty may be integral to success in ballet; however, there is a paucity of current research in this area. This study explores the lived experiences of nine professional ballet dancers to capture the journey of negotiating puberty in a ballet context. An interpretative phenomenological analysis approach was employed with semistructured interviews utilized to gather rich, descriptive accounts from nine professional ballet dancers from the United Kingdom and United States. Lived experiences were characterized by conflict and struggle, coming to terms with physical changes and possessing grit and grace in order to successfully negotiate puberty, and to succeed and survive in professional ballet. Accepting physical and esthetic strengths and weaknesses and learning how to adapt or how to compensate for weaknesses was described as pivotal. Factors such as social support, the timing and extent of pubertal changes, dance teacher behavior...
This article presents some of the data from interviews conducted with three ballet teachers at various dance schools in the North of England hese teachers were at diferent levels within the ballet qualiication structure and had diferent experiences in teaching and performing ballet themselves he interviewees shared their personal opinions and relections about teaching ballet generally, and in particular, the guid- ance of the young ballet dancer It has been widely reported that ballet, along with some other aesthetic sports such as igure skating and gymnastics, has gained a repu- tation for being an activity with high performance related stress, which could bring about eating disorders in some of its most devoted performers (Ryan, 1996; Kelso, 2003; Bloomield, 2004) At the highest levels of ballet training, which could include very young dancers, such extreme physical and psychological demands could cause them to lower their self-esteem and feel the pressure to attain the perfect ballet igure by privately manipulating their diets However, as Buckroyd (2000:30) has pointed out, “...although it seems unlikely that dance training causes eating disorders it may very well create an environment in which vulnerable youngsters may develop them” herefore, an initial aim of the researcher was to gain an informed glimpse into to this kind of environment and to understand some of the reasons, if any, for this kind of dangerous pressure on young aspirant dancers Consequently, the aims of inter- views were two-fold; to gain an insight into the teacher’s past experiences as a young dancer, and, to gain an insight into their more recent experiences as a teacher of young dancers As the research progressed the data revealed some interesting in- sights into “ballet-life” with some evidence of pressure and eating disorders being mentioned he concludes that striking a workable balance between the demands of the parents and the demands of the ballet teacher may be key to ensuring continued participation and enjoyment of this physical expressive art-form.
The little baby class ballerinas: a discussion about gender through ballet
2018
Dance has always been present in the history of humanity. Sacred dances, in their oldest form, have been present in diverse rituals. Ballet has appeared more recently, permeated with fantasy, romance and mysticism, influencing the aesthetic of the ballerina’s body and the construction of the image of the ballerina’s figure. As a result, the body plays a central role in dance, be it for the study and analysis of movement, for the beauty of dance or for the ideal of the weightlessness and beauty that it represents. The purpose of this article is to outline the body’s production in teaching baby class, while this body is crossed by binary grammar of gender in the constitution of territories/female and male practices. This text presents the emergence of dance and ballet, from classical to contemporary, in which the construction of gender makes itself present. Although present-day classical ballet is labeled as a typically feminine dance and the majority of performers are female, it has ...
2014
This article is a result of a small-scale interview-based study that explored the social conditions of ballet and contemporary dance production in the city of Glasgow, Scotland. This study draws on interviews given by twelve professional dancers and choreographers both freelancers and company based, who for the purposes of this research offered to share their experiences of studying and making dance. More specifically, this article aspires to map the social conditions of possibility of dancing and making dance, drawing on the class condition and career trajectories of those individuals who became dancers. With the aid of Bourdieu’s (1984; 1990; 1993a) concepts of ‘capitals’ (economic, social, cultural and physical), ‘habitus’ and ‘trajectories’, this piece of work will discuss how class conditions give or limit access to vocational training as a career pathway to dance. It is argued that, although the social origin of this sample presents relative variety, dance is an activity that demands different types of support, which are eventually more accessible to those social groups with more assets.
Journal of Dance Education, 2019
Dance provides both psychological and physical benefits, and yet many boys miss out due to societal perceptions surrounding the feminization of dance. These perceptions can lead to the bullying of boys who dance. Because dance teachers are in a unique position to engage boys in dance, it is important to investigate their perceptions. This article reports the experiences of ten female dance teachers from the United Kingdom vis-à-vis attracting and retaining boys in dance, especially ballet. Here we focus on three salient themes that emerged from the data: dancing boys in social context, parental and teacher support, and improving the dancing boy’s milieu. The dance teachers identified a number of strategies for engaging and retaining boys in ballet, such as privileging boys within the dance studio and improving opportunities to dance in schools. This article posits potential strategies to engage boys in ballet that could potentially empower all genders within the dance world.
Health and Wellbeing in Elite Female Ballet Dancers: Implications of Maturity Timing
2018
General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.