Young ballet dancer forced out for making porn videos...

[chrischris]

I can assure you the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School is not a university or anything like one. Like the National Ballet School in Toronto it takes in some students who are past the age for graduating academically from high school. It may be that they need to work on strength issues or improve their technique or whatever before they start the audition rounds.  But the rules of the school apply to everyone, from the young children upwards. Saying that this guy was a dancer with the RWB is a bit of an exaggeration. Like many companies, the RWB drafts in some students when they need extra bodies for bigger productions (the RWB itself has only about 25 dancers).

 

Thanks for the info but that's not really what I meant. The original post was about people's behaviour outside of their place of employment, and Janet reminded me that this was a school student. I was just pointing out that schools, in the most commonly used sense, don't usually have students that are in their 20's, so an article saying 'a student was kicked out of school for filming a porno' probably doesn't accurately reflect the situtation, the age of the person involved etc

 

Edit: And it is obviously harder to control the outside behaviour of a 22 year old then it is a 12 year old.

Edited July 15, 2013 by chrischris

[Pas de Quatre]

My feeling is that if this young man is studying at a school, where obviously there are also much younger pupils, then there is a duty of care on the part of the school towards these children.  If an older student is participating in an activity that many parents would find distasteful (understatement here I believe) then the school couldn't allow him to continue there. 

[chrischris]

I typed the name of a royal ballet dancer in to youtube to look for a particular ballet video, and one of the options that came up was a list of videos posted by a user with the same (not at all common) name, all featuring clips of naked, or half naked, women in a variety of poses, with links to similar videos. The account probably doesn't belong to the dancer, but it's a bit bizarre, and it reminded me of some of the points raised in this thread about protection of image/ brand, children accessing images, and in other threads about how the internet and social media has blurred the line between private and public (with people's facebook updates and twitter comments being reublished elsewhere).

[Fonty]

I assume the school takes pupils of all ages, so they have to consider the image the school is projecting.  A parent who is considering sending their teenager to this particular school may have second thoughts if they see what older pupils are getting up to.  Yes, he was doing it in his spare time, and not on school premises (I hope) but not everyone is comfortable with the thought of pornography.  I assume he was paying fees, and therefore the school has a perfect right to say "We don't want your money any more, please go."  The issue is the sexual nature of the activity.  If he had been found to be posing for a Life Drawing class to earn extra money, I suspect the school would have been more lenient. 

 

Nude photos are a different issue, although again it depends on the type of photo, and the perception of the viewer.  A male posing for a Mapplethorpe style photo could claim he was modelling for a famous photographer who was a recognised artist in his chosen field.  A woman posing for the centrefold of Playboy (if it still exists) with photos taken by a celebrated photographer could argue the same thing, but might have  more trouble having that argument accepted. 

 

Nudity itself is not the problem, but there are cases where some people feel uncomfortable with it.  I would raise an eyebrow if my husband bought a calendar showing naked ladies sprawled across the bonnet of a racing car for our office at home.  Would I object? I don't think so, although I say this knowing that the chances of my husband doing such a thing are zero!  However,  I would think it inappropriate to display the same calendar on the notice board in a public workplace. 

 

On the other hand, most of us remember the calendar that the Royal Ballet produced about 3 or 4 years ago? Eagerly purchased, and proudly displayed by many of us who post on this forum!    I could justify this because:

 

1)  It was for charity.  I wouldn't have bought it otherwise.

2)  There was nothing remotely sexual about it (at least not to me, anyway)

3)  It showed that the Royal Opera House was nowhere near as stuffy and boring as it is perceived to be. 

Edited July 30, 2013 by Fonteyn22