New ballet obsession

[Djaamila]

Hello everyone

 

I don't know if I'm posting this in the right place, I'm new here, but since it's a ballet themed forum I thought you could give me some advice...

 

So here's my story. I'm Djamila and I'm 15. I have practiced hip hop for five years now. So far, when I heard about ballet, I imagined little girls twirling on the tip of their toes in pink tutus lol. My friends and I have laughed a lot talking about it, mocking the other girls of our age that could do something as ridiculous as that!

 

But last week, I was at the gala of my local dance club where I do hip hop, and for the first time we were together with the girls from ballet classes. During our preparations, they looked as silly as I though they would, prancing around in their colored tutus and slippers, talking about girly things like make up or hairspray, looking all uptight in their pink tights. I didn't pay them much attention, just making a few jokes about them with the other hip hop dancers.

 

During the evening, I did my part of the gala and then went in the public to watch the rest. That's when I saw the ballet part. And, I don't know why it happened, but I felt like... totally hypnotized by it! The girls entered onstage, looking otherworldly in their outfits with their hair in a bun and shiny diadems on their heads, a beautiful smile on their face, and formed two ranks before starting to dance. The performance was so amazng! I could not describe exactly what they did, partly because I don't know the ballet-words for it, and partly because I felt like I was in the clouds during the whole thing.

 

When it ended I felt like in a daze, my head full of frilly skirts and shiny diadems and pink ribbons - and I continued to feel like that for the rest of the evening and during the following days. I tried to talk about the ballet performance to my friends from hip hop, but they just laughed while saying how ridiculous it was, mimicking some moves from the choreography, so I just laughed along and said nothing.

 

Now I can't get this moment out of my head, and a part of me wonders what it would feel like to be one of those girls on stage, wearing a white tutu with tights and slippers, my hair in a bun and a wide smile on my face, looking pure and graceful and doll-like. But another part of me just dies of shame at this idea, fearing what my friends would say if they saw me scantily-clad like that or knowing that I practice such a girly and ridiculous thing. Literally, I'm feeling this shame gnawing me right now xP

 

Sooo... I don't know what to do. I can't talk about it with my friends or my family because they might laugh at me if they knew what I feel. I don't even know why I feel like that... I have never been a girly girl, and usually I'm not into pink or delicate or frilly things : I like hip hop, basket ball, and skateboard. I haven't worn a skirt for years. But I know we change a lot at my age, and I've always been so easily influenced... For the past few days I have been looking at pictures of ballerinas in tutus on the Internet and even searched some online shops for dancewear. It's like an obsession. Do you think it will pass, or that I should try out ballet? Does this kind of thing happens a lot?

 

Sorry for the very, very long text, and thank you for reading it - I really needed to express that :)

 

Thank you!

[Ian Macmillan]

Djaamila,

 

May I say welcome to the Forum and, yes, you've posted in just the right area.  I'm sure you won't want for advice and I won't pretend that I know how to get around the perceived problems that you describe.  However, can I suggest that you google two names - Misty Copeland and Michaela DePrince.  They're well known to many on here and, for a bit of inspiration and confidence, you should find lots in their stories that might help you.

 

And, for what it's worth, my wife's grand-daughter, about a year older than you, has made a fairly successful crossover in the other direction, from strict ballet classes to street dance - it can be done.

 

Oh, and also have a look for the small UK professional company called Ballet Black who are currently touring a tremendous double-bill of very different pieces.

Edited May 20, 2018 by Ian Macmillan
Afterthought!

[MAB]

Hello Djaamila, thanks for sharing your thoughts and your dilemma, I think I can understand your friends reactions to seeing a dance discipline so different from hip hop.  I know from talking to non dance colleagues about classical ballet that the tutu is a strong disincentive to even watching ballet.  Professional ballet takes many forms and some of the most impressive ballets don't conform to girlie pinkness in appearance, I recommend going on line and take a look at as many examples of the art you can find.   I caught the ballet bug at a similar age to you, though of course back then I was in full time employment at fifteen so never considered classes.  Even if you decide ballet isn't something you would be comfortable doing, it might be something you will get a lot out of watching.

 

Best wishes

 

Mary B.

[stardancer]

Hi my lovely. 

Look up as many ballets as possible,book yourself in for ballet classes,or privates,my good friend male trained from the age of fifteen, lots of classes went to elmhurst and is now or was in Tokyo doing ballet.

Never mind what people think,life is too short, and you never no what a fantastic journey it will be.

 

[Pointetoes]

11 minutes ago, stardancer said:

 

Never mind what people think,life is too short, and you never no what a fantastic journey it will be.

 

Exactly, go and give it ago. Better to have tried, rather than constantly thinking “what if”

 

Good luck and let’s us know how it goes. 

[Legseleven]

You won’t be expected to wear overtly girly clothes for a ballet class if that would make you uncomfortable. And tutus aren’t worn in class anyway - but as you are imagining yourself wearing one, that might be an incentive to become good enough to perform ballet on stage! 

If the ballet classes are held at the same dance studio where you do hip hop, why not ask your teachers if you could try out ballet classes? As the foundation of all dance (possibly excepting tap), ballet could help you with your hip hop as well as  possible becoming a new passion for you. 

[Mummy twinkle toes]

Many good hip hop and street dancers will have also studied ballet. Try a couple of classes and see how you feel. Don’t worry about being mocked. It is your life and your passion. True friends would support this.

[Harwel]

Perhaps you should start talking to the ballet girls.  They are just girls like you, with the same worries, fears and stresses of growing up.  The clothing is just a type of uniform, like any other walk of life. The tutu is not worn often and the ballet girls are very tough to put up with the work required and the sneers of others.  Understanding and tolerance, perhaps your dance school teachers should try to get you all together and try to understand each others perspectives a little. 

[Streetdancer]

Check out Dickson Mbi who made the transition from hip hop (he won loads of popping competitions) to contemporary dance. There was a great documentary about him the other night on BBC4. It's amazing to watch him fuse locking with contemporary moves in his own choreography! Not quite ballet but I think he did that too. 

[MayKwok]

I think there's certainly no harm in trying out other dance forms.

 

I'm primarily a ballet person, I have tried contemporary, street, hip hop, tap, jazz, ballroom, latin, swing, but I have ended up sticking with ballet for various reasons. The main thing is I've tried it and that lets me make an informed choice.

 

You might take a class and decide you become absolutely hooked. Which is great, I think it's good as a person to broaden horizons and experience different things. Having more than one skill under your belt will certainly benefit you - you never know when it will come in handy. You're 15, still very young, if you end up choosing dance as a career you never know if at the next audition someone requires a dancer to do both a bit of hip hop and ballet? A few years back English National Ballet collaborated with Flawless, hip hop crew of Britain's Got Talent, so hip hop and ballet do mash up sometimes.

 

Or you might try it and decide it's not actually for you. But at least you won't ever wonder "what if".

 

Ballet need not be all about frilly tuts and tiaras. You don't have to wear a skirt if you don't want to. Plenty of people wear shorts / trousers / leggings. Or layer up in warm up gear which to me looks like black bin bags... but I digress.

 

At least you have the convenience that you are part of a dance club and you can  ask if you can join a class, rather than having to google / search around for a ballet class.

 

Give it a go, and let us know how you get on too!

 

Best wishes,

May

[Nicola H]

hi Djaamila

a lot of  good stuff has been said , it;s also  worth noting that some of the very well regarded  Contemporary  dance  degree level course  spend as much time in ballet class as they do in contemporary class 

'neo classical'  ballet isn't necessarily  tutus and tiaras  - look at Sir Matt Bourne's work -  his  'boy' version of Swan lake,  ,  how some of the repetoire of companies like Northern Ballet  subvert  it ( look at  Kenny TIndall's  Casanova for instance ) ... 

even   Ballet;s Dark knight  himself Macmillan  made some really  gritty stuff (  def no tuts or tiaras in  The Judas Tree   for instance ...  but even some of his more lighthearted  work like Elite Syncopations ...    which the  most  tutu-y  companies such as the Royal ballet  fall over themselves to do ...

there's still aobut 2 weeks  of  the Documentary 'Ballet's Dark knight'   on  the I player. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b2gjbl ( it does  discuss some quite grown up stuff )

the ballet world is pretty diverse  especially   in terms of adult  recreational dancers  age / sex/ gender/ race  all go by the wayside , even if some of the big five companies   may appear to be horrifically white  

Ballet Black  have been mentioned  as a comapny with a particualr interest in BaME  involvement 

 and   also in another Plug for Northern  ( shock Horror Nicola fan girling over NB again! )   look at the  way  Mlindi Kulashe  has been cast  on the basis of his ability as  a dancer  , his ethnicity  being  irrelevant ... his casting as Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre    or  as  'the Fury ' in the Boy in the striped pyjamas ... 

[LinMM]

I loved your post Djaamila as it was so honest but why not give ballet a go.

I have no idea why I loved  ballet as a child as I was not a girly girl was out on my bike all the time and could climb trees with the best of them!! I think it was the music which attracted me and I never wore a tutu until my 20's .....in fact I don't like them much but luckily many ballet stories don't require you to wear a tutu! I went to see Northern Ballet dance in Jane Eyre on Saturday.....and not a tutu in sight!

I think sometimes people can stereotype others too much. This may happen a little more with teenagers as they are trying to form a group to "belong" to and conforming to a peer group can become a bit too much of a pressure.....especially if it stops you trying to do something you would like to.

You don't have to give up hip hop of course! Just try a few ballet lessons and see how it goes but it does take quite a long time to look good and acquire the technique of ballet. I'm sure one type of Dance helps another. 

I love going to Young dancer of the year Competition where you see all styles of dance and last year I loved the hip hop dancers even though I know I'd be not very good at it myself!! 

Like others ....over the years I have tried all kinds of Dance .....was really into Indian Dance and a more free style type of Dance called Five Rythms for a while......but I keep coming back to ballet. So go with your attraction and see what happens.....a couple of your friends may eventually end up following you! Good Luck

Linda 

 

 

[Kate_N]

20 hours ago, Djaamila said:

I have never been a girly girl, and usually I'm not into pink or delicate or frilly things : I like hip hop, basket ball, and skateboard. I haven't worn a skirt for years.

 

You don't need to be a "girly girl" to do ballet. The technique is tough - to dance at even a reasonable level, you need to be aerobically fit as well as strong. And you don't have to wear a skirt! 

 

Have you seen these young women doing 'Hiplet'?  They're not over the box of their pointe shoes enough for good classical technique (or my taste) but I think that's part of the style of Hiplet (and certainly a lot of teens & adults in training on pointe never get over the box correctly). But they're beautiful  & accomplished dancers, and I really like the idea of fusing hip-hop & ballet. It all started from an Instagram post - you can find that, I'm sure.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJqmS2nmYos

 

[Anna C]

Hi Djaamila and welcome. ☺️ Everyone's given you good advice and I can't add much.  I definitely think it would be worth seeing if you can try a ballet class with no commitment.  If you don't want to tell your friends, then don't.  In my experience of being a teenage girl and now being a Mum to one, sometimes people mock things for various reasons; peer pressure, being secretly intrigued by something but not wanting to admit it, and so on.   Your dreams and passions will stay with you as you grow, but your current friends may not, so don't have regrets in the future about things you didn't try.  

 

There's absolutely no need to wear pink frilly things, or even pink shoes with pink ribbons; black tights over a leotard of any colour is quite popular with teenage ballet students.  Several big dancewear manufacturers now make tights and shoes for POC.  To start with, you'd probably just wear something you can move in. 

 

If you try ballet, as May says, you may not like it at all - in which case, all you've lost is an hour of your time. 🙂 If you do like it though, stick with it regardless of what your friends say, because if they are true friends, they will be happy if you are.  And even if actually doing ballet isn't for you, watching it may become a lifelong hobby, whether that's live, at the cinema for a live stream, or on DVD.  

 

There's also loads of ballet on Youtube.  This is one of my favourites - ballet clips set to Tinie Tempah:  

 

[Mummy twinkle toes]

Here are 2 film clips which are great. The first one blends modern and hip hop: 

 The second one is Center Stage 

 

Both of these films show how versatile ballet can be. 

[Lisa O`Brien]

Hi Djaamila and welcome to the Forum. My closest friends knew I did Ballet but not everyone did. I grew up on a council estate in Manchester and was definitely the only person at my high school who did Ballet. My friends were very supportive but other girls who found out called me a snob . Anyway, they all came round in the end after watching me dance in a school show and then when I got into Urdang at 16. They were all like, "Wow, I know someone who is going to a top dance school in London when she leaves school". People DO have a certain image of Ballet in their heads that it is girly and even silly. But as others have said, try it yourself and come to your own conclusions. There are a lot of adults out there who discover Ballet very late and massively regret the fact they never "found" it when they were younger. Also, you can pick up some good DVDs on Ebay if you wanted to watch some professional productions at home.

Edited May 21, 2018 by Lisa O`Brien

[CeliB]

One thing I would add if you ever need to justify ballet to your more sceptical friends is that many international level athletes (eg Olympic swimmers and divers) take ballet as a complementary activity as it creates such extraordinary core strength. There are several stories of international sports teams in things like rugby and football doing a swap with a ballet company to try out each others training regimes, and generally the ballet dancers come out as fitter and stronger. So if you didn't want to admit to having fallen in love with the beauty and sparkle you could just say you are taking classes to improve your balance, flexibility, strength and stamina (much like taking extra exercise classes or doing gym work).

 

My daughter who is 19 has been doing ballet since age 3. She gave up the girly pink at around age 7 (I think she was the only girls in her class dressed in black hehe and was the only girl in her class at school wearing boxer shorts instead of pants! the influence of an older brother... ). She is totally NOT a girly girl and is now off to college to study medicine but still lists ballet as greatest love - had she been blessed with a ballet body this would have been her absolute dream job. 

 

I suggest you do a bit of research and find a class that is fairly relaxed about things like what to wear - teachers can vary SUCH a lot. I have come across really formal teachers who even with their 3 year olds insist on perfect RAD uniform and others (like DSs first teacher) who are happy to have a bunch of unruly little boys falling about and doing cartwheels occasionally, or girls who wear any old outfit and stick their hair into bunches or whatever. You might it a bit easier to be in a less formal class at least at the beginning?

 

If you want some recommendations why not tell the forum which area you are in - people can often suggest good teachers/classes. And good luck- I hope you do at least give it a go.

 

and here's one of my favourite little snippets that shows just how amazing ballet dancers can be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utWJcsk0cNA

 

 

[Anna C]

What a fab video, CeliB. 😀

[richieN]

Hi Djaamila,

Welcome to the forum.

My youngest daughter started in ballet when she was 4 and now aged 9 she has just started at a street dance school, which she loves. However, the years of ballet and contemporary training has not gone unnoticed, and the other children are pretty impressed by her flexibility, strength and balance.

No-one has a bad word to say about her ballet.

So I advise you to take classes and see where they take you. The training is hard, but your Hip Hop friends will notice the difference. I guarantee it.

Good luck.

[Hazel]

Hi! Idefinitely recommend you check out a group called Beats On Pointe! https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=41&v=E5qN5yt1RYs

They were in London a couple of months ago and their show is ballet/ street mix. It’s basically YOUR story.

Others have pointed you in some good directions...check out Instagram too. I think you should definitely look into it more, lovely that you’ve been inspired by the buns tutus and tiaras but there is a thoroughly contemporary ballet scene out there too and dancers are incredible athletes with amazing core strength, flexibility and coordination

Enjoy discovering more!

[Jan McNulty]

Hello Hazel and welcome to the Forum!

[Sim]

Djaamila...you should check out this short video on Ballet Black, who are based in London.  Some of these dancers have also done hip hop, but always come back to ballet!  LIke all professional ballet dancers, they possess strong athleticism but are very graceful at the same time.  So difficult to achieve, and believe me they are the last type of artists in the world who should be disdained or mocked.  People who laugh at ballet simply don't know anything about it, or understand it.  If you want to do classes, you go and do them and, hopefully, enjoy them, even if that's as far as you go.  It's about the enjoyment.  And believe me....it will help no end with your core strength and posture.  A contemporary dancer told me once that classical ballet is the type of dance around which all others revolve, and to a large extent that is true.  The main thing is....try it, enjoy it, and if you don't enjoy it, and least you will know that from experience!!  

 

 

[Sim]

And here is a fine example of how hip hop/street and ballet can complement each other beautifully.   It's well worth you looking at the video of Lil'Buck doing this piece with Yo Yo Ma playing the cello.  It's beautiful.  Both of these depict a swan coming to the end of its life, but fighting hard against it.  Enjoy!

 

 

[Sim]

I couldn't resist....here it is!  His arms are as beautiful as any ballerina's!  Think swan wings....