{"id":4641,"date":"2014-05-30T09:28:06","date_gmt":"2014-05-30T13:28:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/?p=4641"},"modified":"2014-05-30T09:38:03","modified_gmt":"2014-05-30T13:38:03","slug":"a-big-fan-of-big-ballet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/a-big-fan-of-big-ballet\/","title":{"rendered":"A Big Fan of Big Ballet"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I just finished watching the first episode of Big Ballet<\/i><\/a>, Ovation network\u2019s newest mini-series which chronicles a former Royal Ballet dancer\u2019s mission to stage Swan Lake<\/i> using ballet dancers that are considered too large for the mainstream ballet world.\u00a0 I have to say: I\u2019m hooked and can\u2019t wait for the next episode!<\/p>\n

\"dreamers<\/a>\u00a0I started dancing when I was five years old and while at first I didn\u2019t aspire to be a professional dancer (I even quit for a time when I was six), as I got more into it, I became more obsessed and in love and started thinking about a career in dancing.\u00a0 Despite injuries which plagued my late teen years, I loved it so much I pushed on (my journey is chronicled in \u201cMommying is like Dancing, and drugs\u201d<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\"EPSON\u00a0I went to college and studied dance education because while I love(d?) performing, there was one thing that I knew would hold me back from achieving professional status: my size.\u00a0 I\u2019m tall (5\u20198), wasn\u2019t terribly thin (a size 10-12) and had boobs (used to be a 36C).\u00a0 Was I \u201cbig\u201d?\u00a0 Definitely not.\u00a0 But what I was was bigger<\/i> than everyone else I danced with and what is considered acceptable in the ballet world.<\/p>\n

Thinness is as synonymous with ballet as with modeling.\u00a0 And ballet is plagued by the same problems: women taking extreme measures to achieve the \u201clook\u201d.\u00a0 Anorexia, bulimia, smoking, crash dieting\u2026anything to be thinner.<\/p>\n

I desperately wanted to dance but knew that even if I had thinned down, my height was still beyond acceptable for most professional companies so I chose a different path. \u00a0I chose to become a teacher (and a wife and a mommy) and I don\u2019t regret my choice in the slightest.<\/p>\n

But much like the dancers in Big Ballet <\/i>who gave up dancing when they were told they were too big and wouldn’t be successful,\u00a0I wish the ballet world was different so that I (and many others) didn\u2019t have to give up.\u00a0 I wish I had had the chance.\u00a0 And sometimes I wish I hadn\u2019t given up so easily.<\/p>\n

We are told as children (and now tell our children) that you can be anything you want when you grow up, that all it takes is hard work and desire.\u00a0 But that\u2019s not the truth with many things.\u00a0 There are many jobs, many industries, many things that children aspire to do that truthfully are not ever going to be a possibility for the majority of children and most of them for superficial reasons outside talent, ability and drive.<\/p>\n

\"EPSON\u00a0I know Big Ballet<\/i> isn\u2019t going to change the dance world but I hope it will show young, aspiring dancers that you don\u2019t have to be thin and have the perfect \u201cballet body\u201d to enjoy dancing. \u00a0As a teacher, I would never tell a child they shouldn’t be dancing. \u00a0Sure, you have to be realistic about where it\u2019s going to take you and whether or not you have a shot at a professional career but we need to stop discouraging children from doing things they love simply because they\u2019ll never be a pro.<\/p>\n

Why can\u2019t we just do things for fun, because we like it, because it makes us happy?\u00a0 Why must we (and our children) spend all of our time doing things that will lead us to a \u201cgood\u201d job?\u00a0 I for one will never discourage my children from doing things they enjoy, even if they aren\u2019t the best.\u00a0 I want them to take their time, enjoy their moments and feel satisfaction and joy in what they do with their time.\u00a0 Life is not a competition, there is no winner and there is no reward for getting to the finish line first!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just finished watching the first episode of Big Ballet, Ovation network\u2019s newest mini-series which chronicles a former Royal Ballet dancer\u2019s mission to stage Swan Lake using ballet dancers that are considered too large for the mainstream ballet world.\u00a0 I have to say: I\u2019m hooked and can\u2019t wait for the next episode! \u00a0I started dancing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4643,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14,9,5,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-mommys-life","category-ballerina-mama","category-family-life","category-mommy-time","category-work-it-out"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4641"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4646,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4641\/revisions\/4646"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}