Oh The Pressure!

How many of you have picked up your dancer from class only to find them in tears? Yep, every single one of us. Ballet is hard. Kids who are attracted to ballet are a different breed. Not only do they have an artistic slant to their brain, they are also laser focused technicians. And, this is kind of an unusual mix.

Much of the time this results in a serious Type A personality! Ok, you know the word I’m about to throw out! Yes – perfectionism! Ballet dancers are perfectionists and this is not always a good thing. When you mix a perfectionist with ballet training, things can get tough. And, it starts early. We noticed it with our kids by the time they were about eight. They were not yet operating at an elite level, not did we know if they would get there. But the perfectionism was already rearing its head. Loudly.

Body Image

Let’s step out of our ballet bubble and take a look at this world as if we know nothing. Basically, a young kid puts on tights and a leotard and goes to stand in front of a mirror for several hours a day. And, they stand there with a bunch of other students in equally tight fitting clothes. Every bulge of baby fat is readily apparent to anyone watching. And, for little kids, that’s adorable. I have pictures of my sister from her ballet years where she was dressed as candy cane for one of her recitals. She looked like a marshmallow with stripes. But, she was six and really thought she was the bomb. Loads of kids looked like that at six.

The problem is that, as kids get older and continue in dance, those mirrors don’t go away. They become “the enemy.” How many of you have heard of the “fat mirror” at your dancer’s school? There’s one in every studio. In no other student activity have I heard a reference to a fat mirror. This is just the first step toward the insane focus on a dancer’s body.

Then there are the other students. I have a boy so leotards were never much of an issue. You had three choices for tights – black, grey or white. And, for shirts, pretty much the same. There is just nothing fun about free dress day for the guys. But, for the girls? It can be a full-on fashion show. Never have I heard so much about how a certain leotard makes a kid look long and lean or short and squatty. It’s really a thing and everyone is looking at each other. In addition there is that pesky mirror. 

So, now we’ve got a bunch of kids who are in amazing shape. Who all think they’re fat. To the outside observer, this is crazy.

They Grow

Puberty is the enemy of every ballet dancer. Boys grow and, seemingly overnight, lose all coordination. It’s as if they forgot how to walk! Things they could do in the ballet studio six inches ago are now completely foreign movements. I’ve yet to see a ballet teacher who acknowledges that boys all have this happen and that they all eventually grow into their bodies. Of course, there are some out there who don’t fit this mold of teacher. Unfortunately, they were not in my son’s orbit.

The question with boys, at this age, is whether they can grow into their bodies fast enough to keep their self-worth intact. 

And, with girls, ouch. The curves come. Sometimes in places that dancers don’t want them to appear. Mind you, these girls are not fat. They simply are going through the natural development that takes place with puberty. Until it doesn’t. We’ve all seen the principal dancers with major companies who are flat chested and have legs skinnier than my arm. Perhaps genetics? Perhaps an eating disorder? I really don’t know. What I do know is that these are the people dancers see day in and day out, and try to emulate.

When our kids were younger, they became aware of something at their ballet school called the 1000 calorie challenge. Yes, a bunch of students decided they were only going to consume 1000 calories per day. Try that for a few days and see how you feel. Then layer on five hours of ballet class and see how you feel. This is what staring at yourself in a mirror all day and seeing these skinny pros does to these kids.

Corrections

Now, throw in the whole notion of “corrections.” My other child played ball sports (soccer, tennis and basketball). Not once did she come home from practice telling me how excited she was because she got the greatest number of corrections. If she had ever told us this, our first assumption would be that she’s getting cut from her team!

Only in ballet does a kid find happiness by a teacher spending an entire class telling them what they’re doing wrong! When my son would go to summer intensive auditions, he could almost predict his admission chances based on the number or corrections he got. To the outside observer, this is totally messed up.

So, now your dancer is feeling fat and isn’t getting a lot of corrections in class. And, they’re feeling pretty crappy about themselves.

Transparency

Add lack of transparency to the mix. In many ballet schools dancers have no idea where they stand. This is especially true once students get to company affiliated schools and conservatories. One day, they may be made to feel that they’re loved. The next day, the artistic director won’t make eye contact with them. This Is not a hypothetical. It happened with my son, as well as Jenny’s daughter, at different stages of their training. 

And, it’s hard to bring this up with a teacher because it’s often part of the culture. Individual teachers may not realize they’re even doing it. Plus, most kids are afraid to approach a teacher because most dancers are people pleasers who don’t want to rock the boat.

Coping With Pressure

When kids are stressed, they look for ways to cope. This is sometimes how eating disorders start. When my son was 15, he moved into his own apartment, started full-time online school, started full-time ballet training, had grown six inches and was heading back into the studio after being locked down from COVID. Oh, and he was the only one from his previous level to have been moved up. Every other kid that year came in from the outside. Note, this is very common in residential ballet programs. Full-time training schedules mark the transition from “local school” to “finishing program.”

This was a tremendous amount of change for one kid and he coped with it in fairly unhealthy but not surprising ways. Because dancers feel like they have little control over so many things in their lives, they often control their food or use alcohol and/or drugs to cope. In my son’s case, he developed a borderline eating disorder that year. Fortunately, he realized that he was on a slippery slope and reached out to us for help. He was also using alcohol in an unhealthy way. The double whammy of disordered eating and drinking had a huge impact on his mental health and then also, his physical health. All of this led to sub-par performance in the ballet studio. The problem? Not one person at the ballet studio seemed to notice.

What my son went through is not an isolated situation. We could regale you with stories about how kids were coping in ways that were incredibly unhealthy.

What To Do?

We don’t pretend to be mental health professionals. But, we have spent a lot of our hard earned dollars finding support for our kids. And, help did not always come in the form of a mental health professional. Often, it was finding the right doctor to help with an injury. Pro-tip – always find a doctor who has worked with dancers.

One thing we have learned over the last ten years is that there are certain instances, several in fact, where our dancers didn’t think they could talk to us about something. It wasn’t that they didn’t trust us. Rather, we were not, and had never been, dancers. We realize now how important it was to have someone from that world with whom they could talk. It could be an older dancer or a former teacher. Now, this is not to say that any of these people can take the place of a mental health professional. And, some kids absolutely need that help.

However, sometimes dancers don’t need anything more than a good, consistent sounding board with someone who understands their world.

It can even be a Pilates or Gyrotonic teacher or a strength coach. You may wonder why finding a good Pilates or Gyro teacher is a good idea to help manage stress. But, think about this. Many, many Pilates and Gyro teachers are former professional dancers. So, they know the life. Not only are you getting some great cross-training, but they also talk with your dancer the whole time.

My son worked with a Pilates and Gyro teacher from the time he was 12 until he moved away at 15. She was a former professional dancer and used to teach Pilates to the company that was affiliated with his ballet school. Not only did they talk about cross-training exercises, they spent each session talking about the ballet world. 

I look back now and realize that the time he spent with her was far more valuable (and therapeutic) than just the cross-training. She was a sympathetic ear who had been there and knew some of the stuff he was dealing with. Sometimes it’s not a true mental health professional that a kid needs. It just may need to be someone who “gets it.” I am actually realizing just how valuable this person was to my son as I type this blog entry.

In some cases, kids may need a little more help. We have talked a lot about the wellness coach that both of our kids worked with in the past. Her name is Elizabeth Sullivan and she is a former professional dancer who now works with ballet students and professional dancers. There are others out there who do what she does, but we have the most experience with Elizabeth. 

As we mentioned before, people, especially parents, can’t always understand what dancers are going through. Everyone sees these beautiful athletic humans and wonder how anything could be wrong in their life. What they don’t see are the tears, the criticisms, the insane work ethic, the cognitive dissonance that exists between being an artist and a technician and the pressure they feel to always be perfect.

A performance or wellness coach can help dancers develop strategies to deal with the stress. These coaches are not psychologists or psychiatrists. Rather they are certified coaches who understand dancers. In a lot of cases, kids just need someone to talk to regularly who has run the gauntlet of serious ballet training. They help with the 95% of the time that the kids are not on stage. Doing this work on developing their “mental toolkit” means that when they do get on stage the stress levels may be much lower.

In more serious cases, a dancer may need to see a true mental health professional. And, if they do, we have one key piece of advice. Find someone who has worked with dancers or elite athletes. 

Jenny’s daughter decided to seek out a therapist to help her deal with the stress of auditioning for companies as she was recovering from a serious injury. When her daughter first met with a potential therapist, the therapist told her that she had never met anyone who had been under as much pressure as she was under as a dancer. Well, duh. People who have not been in the dance world simply don’t get it. It’s that simple. 

There is an entire field of sports psychology that has really taken root in the last 50 years. Elite athletes, especially gymnasts and figure skaters face similar types of pressure. So, if you are able to have your dancer work with someone who has that type of experience it will serve your dancer well in the long run. Yes, I’m sure you’re thinking “why does my dancer need to work with someone who helps athletes “visualize sticking that landing or hitting that penalty kick?” 

But, it’s the same mental exercises regardless of sport. Elite athletes all deal with stress – it’s just different from sport to sport and from ballet. But, people who operate at the elite level all share a trait – they are all perfectionists and they always think they can get better. Sports psychologists can often help deal with balancing that need to always get better with recognizing that you’re doing great in the present.

One theme that we keep coming back to is that for anything related to physical or mental health, it’s important to seek out professionals who know the world of elite performance. It’s a weird place and only those who have been down that path truly understand what these kids are going through.

If you want to hear more from Elizabeth, tune in to our Wednesday podcast to hear us chat with her about how to manage stress in the studio, especially as it relates to injuries and coming back from them.