Beauty requires sacrificeBallerina's legs as a working tool

2025 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2025-01-24 17:46

Perfect figure, pointe shoes with ribbons, chic costumes for ballet, tours, standing ovations and a sea of flowers… All this is probably a dream of any girl. Someone leans in favor of a modeling career, while someone dreams of dancing, devoting their lives to professional ballet.

The survey showed that about 40% of people talk about ballet as dancing on tiptoes, the same number consider ballet toe dancing, and only 20% of those surveyed said that it is dance on pointe. "Pointe" is translated as "point" or "point". Indeed, if every contact of the ballerina's toes with the floor could be drawn, then we could observe a dotted line of dots. Ballerinas, like air fairies, soar above the stage, and it seems that the force of gravity does not affect them at all. But no one knows what such lightness and grace is worth.

The legs of a ballerina cannot even be compared with the legs of experienced athletes involved in running and jumping. They are so resilient, so hard that when touched they even seem unnatural. And this is understandable: the legs of a ballerina must be strong and hardy, because on an area of a couple of square centimeters (the size of a “patch” of pointe shoes)leans the entire weight of the dancer, whose beauty is admired by almost everyone.

But ballet fascinates only the viewer, behind the scenes and in the halls where rehearsals take place, everything looks different. This is a harsh, even cruel reality.

The ballerina's feet are subjected to many injuries and torture. Particularly frequent injuries in ballet are sprains, fractures, dislocations, damage to the ligamentous apparatus of the joints. The largest percentage of ballet injuries occurs in the area of the hip joints, the result of which is a complex of problems that entails inflammation in the small pelvis.

You don't need a degree to calculate the pressure force of a 50 kg ballerina over an area of 2 centimeters. This is the power behind the chiseled legs of a professional ballerina.

Among the dancers there is such a thing as "breaking the rise." These are violent stretch marks of the ligaments of the foot (its upper part). Most girls, in order to stretch the rise, slip the rollers under their fingers. Thus, an unnatural overbend is obtained, but, as you yourself guess, this does not lead to good consequences. The ligaments that work under tension are stretched and even often torn, the ligamentous apparatuses of the feet become loose and weaken.

With age, a ballerina's legs tuck easily, especially when jumping or running. Arthritis, thrombophlebitis, arthrosis… All of these are concomitant diseases of ballet art, a terrible price to pay for beauty. Moreover, not every dancer, having retired (by the way, in a veryat an early age) will be able to afford to wear open shoes due to deformed feet.

But the behind-the-scenes tragedies don't stop there. It is generally not customary to talk about incomprehensible diets and fierce competition. Another shadow side of beauty is PT diseases, nervous breakdowns, tears, disappointments…

Thousands of girls come to ballet, but few become real stars. Many, unable to withstand the stress and colossal loads, leave already in the first months…