How Fragile Are We? The "Gentle" Epidemic of Adult Ballet.
Gentle approach vs. too careful goals? More thoughts from the quarantine at-home studio.
It’s one of the biggest self-imposed limitation of adult ballet:
The idea that an adult body is fragile and that you shouldn’t expect any outstanding ballet feats from it. That some things are solely the realm of teenage and 20something bodies. That a body older than that is destined to break if you lift your leg above 45 or 90 degrees. That it’s not worth pursuing a strong and resilient athleticsm, large ranges of motion, and that it’s best to take it easy if you don’t want to injure yourself. That certain movement are inherently not good for you, and you shouldn’t push too hard, but just kind of enjoy the meditative nature class. That you should be gentle in your expectations.
Or to say it in one of my reader’s words:
“Drives me crazy - like: “take it easy because you’re an ADULT and if you push yourself you’ll pull all your muscles at once, have a heart attack, and DIE““.
The tricky thing is that this “gentle” approach is actually sold as the more mature, more enlightened one! The underlying message: Letting go of any high-performance physical ambitions will give you peace and make you happy and healthy.
I believe we have a big missed opportunity here. I think this idea of “gentleness” is based on an unfounded fear that’s keeping us from a lot of fun - and it’s worth examining it a bit.
I think underlying the notion of having to be gentle and careful with our goals is the idea of the aging body that we have come to have nowadays. We think of it as inherently getting worse and “less” of everything: less resilient, less elastic, less strong, less quick, less worth looking at. We consider normal that an aging body has chronic issues, doesn’t properly heal, and just generally can’t be loaded too much if we don’t want it to break.
And if you’re happy with all this - totally fine! There is nothing wrong with 45deg arabesques.
But if you seek more, here is a friendly reminder: It’s not the nature of our bodies to deteriorate with age.
In fact, what we consider being a normal aging (=breaking down) process is simply a result of the dominant, sedentary lifestyle of our times. A high volume of scientific evidence, official exercise recommendations, physio-backed Dos and Don’t around movement - they all are based on a population that doesn’t load their bodies enough throughout a lifetime.
And because you only see breaking-down bodies around you, it’s easy to assume that it applies to everyone.
I don’t know about you, but that’s kinda depressing to me. And being involved in ballet, I think that a part of us has never bought into this narrative of physical decline. But it’s also a fact that we do not have a huge number of models for how it can be differently, so one important part of carving out our path is to identify and connect with the few who live it.
The other part is to actually change the narrative. And I hope this small article can make a tiny contribution to it.
So let’s take it on. Here are a few new premises I am proposing for a more physically bold stage of adult ballet:
Let’s accept that the breaking down of a body with age is not due to the age, but to the accumulation of repetitive stress and not enough movement load and variety of a whole life time. We actually now have enough evidence that “aging” processes in the body come from a combintion of a) non-use b) repetitive negative stress (physically and mentally) c) habitual muscle tension and d) toxins (including diet choices). Which is great news, because this empowers you to do something about it versus being a helpless victim of an inevitable aging decline.
We have placed “gentle” in the wrong place. Because, yes, there is a place for gentleness. But we have it backwards: We think that because of aging, it’s wise to lower our expectations for what our bodies can achieve at a certain age. We label that as being “gentle” towards ourselves, just “enjoying it” and “doing it for fun”. At the same time, we accept a lifestyle and habits that is the actual cause for aging and as such, not “gentle” at all. So I propose to turn it around: How about choosing a gentle approach to how you treat your body, ramp up your training, and structure your life - and then being open to results that are far beyond any “gentle” expectations?
Confusing “no pain no gain” as a requirement for outstanding results. This is essentially another way of looking at the premise above: We think that achieving outstanding results requires a ruthless and self-punishing regimen of training. That training pain is a measure of success. And because of that connection, no wonder that adult starters shy away from big flexibility, strength, and aesthetic goals! So the key is to understand that you can be self-compassionate and gentle in how you build up towards remarkable athletic and artistic feats - but that the feats themselves can take you to the moon.
Believing that it’s childish or irresponsible to work towards and dedicate a large amount of time, money, and energy to serious ballet goals. The false premise here is: Adult life = working, making money, taking care of family, and a bit of entertainment. This might go beyond the scope of this article, but I believe that we need new models for adult life, where making a living does not take up the majority of the day, when you have most energy for physical work. Where it’s a given that several hours per day need to be spent on a joyful movement practice at different intensities, because that’s what your body craves and was made for and thus will make you happy. Acknowledging these kind of innate and fundamental human needs for embodyment and expression - that is true gentleness.
We need to get in charge and say what we aspire. In any adult-specific ballet environment I have been to, despite the best teachers on earth, there was never much talk and work on high extensions, for example. There is rarely encouragement nor the tools to take your arabesque higher, or how to work on crazy high jumps. Or even how to perfect your tendu on a level that matches a professional dancer’s leg. Instead, it’s all about playing it safe, don’t do too much, keep it low, don’t sweat too much, smile at your spaghetti legs. I get it, teachers have all kind of abilities in class and need to make sure no one gets injured, but if we quietly accept this, things won’t change. There needs to be a conversation, and we as adult starters need to say something if we want to go beyond 90 degrees. I don’t know, maybe there is a fear of rejection, a fear that the teacher will think of us as deluded or incapable. In which case it helps to remind ourselves: Your body cannot NOT progress given the right input. It has incredible capacity to heal and restore itself. But you have to know what you want. I think here is also a case for investing in private and semi-private lessons, as well as “homework” (which many of us have gotten much better at during these quarantine times) time, because that will enable you to work more specficially and therefore more ambitiously.
I want to wrap this up with a text that my awesome guest writer Olivia (check out her article on how to live an almost semi-professional ballet life despite working full-time) sent me a while ago:
“Adults are smart, determined, and hard working. We can be a little impatient at times sure, but I think there are plenty of us who take this art form seriously and dedicate ourselves. Sure some dancers just want to have fun and aren’t super concerned with progress, and that’s fine. But I resent the notion that we are all doing this because we were looking for a cute and fun little exercise class. I don’t do ballet to work out. I work out so that I can do ballet! Adults can be taken as serious ballet students. And [adult ballet does] not have to be this niche thing where we need to be treated gently and can’t seriously work to improve.“
As with any self-imposed limitation taken down, letting go of the “gentleness epidemics” comes with a certain responsibility - but mostly, it will give us freedom. Freedom to explore more, to allow ourselves to invest more, to surprise ourselves more, and to enjoy more ❤
How’s your experience with challenging yourself vs. keeping it low? Where are you in the spectrum between “just there to move a bit” and “I’m going for Svetlana’s extensions”? What is an ambitious ballet goal that you have currently?