For professional ballet dancers?

Question

I am slightly considering the possibility of going into professional ballet after high school. I'll be graduating this year and have been dancing for 12 years. But before I think too much about it I wanted to get others opinions.

If you have been a professional ballet dancer or are currently one, what do you like most about it? What do you like least? What kind of training did you have before you started professionally? What would be your best advice to someone looking into doing it professionally?

Answer 1

If you live near the city (NYC is awesome for classes) or you're willing to travel, definitely go to the city for classes. I live near NYC so there's a bunch of different places that are really good for ballet. If you want to become a professional ballet dancer, I would start trying out for summer camps and dance schools like School of American Ballet (my friend got into there) and others. Google professional ballet schools and really look at their pictures - see if the dancers have nice feet and good turnout, etc. Stretching and good feet are big areas that pro ballet companies look for. So Stretch everyday. They also look for good stage presence - so dance confidently!

Don't forget to dance from your heart! And PRACTICE!! But you obviously practice alot if you wanna do it professionally and have bee doing it for 12 years. I'm no professional ballet dancer, but I do dance hip-hop for a living and one thing that I do not enjoy are the long hours of practice but yet I do enjoy it at the same time just have fun and dance G'luck

Answer 2

I danced professionally for three seasons before/while I started teaching dance. While I loved! (LOVED!) the work - I definitely had it's ups and downs. There are a limited number of jobs available and tons of dancers trying to fill the roles. Be prepared that even AMAZING dancers don't get most of the jobs they audition for - there's just too many people. That being said - once you are with a company - or working on a regular basis - it is amazing. I loved the rehearsals, being around people who loved dance the way I did and I simply adored the rush of being on stage.

Before I started dancing professionally - I had 15 years training in ballet, tap, jazz, hip hop, modern, and musical theatre. I studied at 7 different schools in my area so that I could expose myself to as many different styles as possible. On a typical week during high school, I dance around 30 - 35 hours.

My best advice is to make sure you love dance enough to weather the lows. There were days when I thought I must have been crazy for staying in dance. You need to make sure you have enough faith in yourself and enough love for dance to make it through those bad days.

Good luck!!