-----Living on the hairy fringes of the civilized world I mostly see these things through the medium of video tape which leads to the impression that those little people certainly are athletic and they dance quite well to all that tinny Tschaikovski. Nureyev, despite his demise, still leaps most lavishly. Pereskova's got da shouldas... oooh.
-----Once went to see 'Carmina Burana' (Orff) in the big shitty and was stunned and delighted to find that in front of the monk clad chorus a whole troop of danseuses were doing their interpretive best. We've got some hefty 'rinnas up here. Man, did those lifters sweat, swear I heard a grunt or two. Beyond Ballanchine... no tattoos on those wristees.
-----Would go more often, but ballet, like so much else, is an expensive habit. Moreso for the performers even than the audience. All that work and study until one day the body just wears out and then it's on to teaching. Although there is apt remuneration for the 'stars', in the corps de ballet its all sweat and suffering. Such love for a thing. Kinda like a guy who runs between a brown bear sow and its cub screaming, "Mama, I'm home!", but not as quick.
-----And then there's the feet. Remove the toe shoes from those graceful swans and it's roll over ancient China. Yet there is vast beauty bound in the bruised, callused, and compressed pieds. There is strength there beyond a legion of buffed up physical culturists sweating in their well oiled definition. Like terns with ruffled feathers a ballerinas feet have flown a superlative distance.
-----Of course one cannot forget the ballerinas most bracing accouterment: the dudes. These fellows are all frighteningly symmetrical yet trimmed to absolute necessity. The best of them manage with fair regularity to break the one law to which everyone agrees. Any which hold the stage have had to battle incessantly with the competition as well as the idiocy of small and all to common cliches. Stout hearts, for sure.
-----It is to the credit of the otherwise detested (be there a hint of invidiousness here?) rich that they throw a fair chunk of chump change at the world of these slaving, besotted, and insular dedicants. During the days of the glorious Soviet Union the Kirov and the Moscow Ballets were the pinnacle of the proletariat's accomplishment without which the decadent west would have been starved for supreme talent. Every cultured nation announces itself as such through the refinement of its national ballet company. So it is with some happiness I see dance classes becoming popular in this far flung locale. Beats the fuck outa cheer leading.