Jen of Nonsense Verse fame is a dancer. From her review of Robert Altman’s “The Company,” a film about a ballet company:
It struck me that in most of the sequences during rehearsal, when the dancers were told to stop, there was hardly a suggestion that the work they were doing was a serious test of stamina. Ever see a performance from backstage, in the wings? You’ll be stunned by the transformation, of dancers making it look so effortless, only to exit stage left and double over and wheeze as they try to catch their breath. No, it’s not pretty. But that’s the way it is.
From a distance you don’t think of dancers as athletes. Jen clears that up:
Most painful moment: A lovely dancer is jump, jump, jumping to demonstrate to her understudy the proper ballon in a classical solo. But then: Up, down, up, down, up, SNAP!, crumple. She falls in a heap on the floor, grabbing her ankle. Silent at first. Speechless. You’d think that someone who’s just snapped her Achilles’ tendon would be squealing in pain. (I mean, my god–look at the high-drama show those football players put on every Sunday.) But no. She just sits. And you know why? It’s the shock. Not the physical shock. The emotional shock of knowing, in an instant, that your career is probably over. After a lifetime spent striving, bleeding, breathing, crying to do this one thing, it’s done. And there’s nothing she can do about it.
I reserve a special admiration or people in the classical arts — theater, dance, orchestras — because they do the hardest, awe-inspiring work for the smallest reward. Which is odd considering that I’ve seen maybe two dances, three plays and four symphonies in my adult life.