Way to go, Wall Street Journal! UPDATED
Wall Street Journal is addressing the dangers of trying to dance on pointe without training, specifically when you put it on YouTube. I understand the childhood dream of dancing on pointe. People say "Well, I've never taken ballet or dance at all before, but I think I'll dance on pointe now. I'm good enough. Three years is way too long to take class and wait.". News flash: I danced for TEN YEARS before I even touched my first pair of pointe shoes. Three years isn't that long.
The article specifically features this girl, Baylee Errante:
UPDATE: Since this was originally posted, the video that homemade pointe shoes girl posted has been deleted. Never mind. It's back.
She Googled "how to make pointe shoes" and then took flat ballet shoes, stuffed them with cotton balls and socks, and put plywood in the soles. Then she "danced" in them and put it on YouTube. Smart. Safe. Shows obvious signs of substantial ballet training. The video is still up. It makes me want to cry. WHAT was she thinking? I would never wish a debilitating injury upon her, but I hope she gets it in her head somehow that doing something like that is NOT correct or safe. My favorite part is the "echappe" at 0:27 in the video. *shudders*
The thing that gets me is when they write things like "I'm going to take ballet lessons". Well, that doesn't mean that they can go on pointe. That would be like if I jumped out of a plane with no parachute having no idea what I was doing with the idea that I would be ok because I was going to take skydiving lessons in a few months.
I keep thinking of more things I want to say about this. The article is attributing the popularity of these videos to Anaheim Ballet's podcast slogan, "Ballet is for everyone and not it's for anyone who has a computer". I don't agree with this. What it seems AB is trying to say is that people that wouldn't normally have the opportunity to see and learn about ballet are now able to by looking at it online, while many people seem to take it as "Go make your own pointe shoes".
The one problem I have with the article is the list of videos it provides. Some are hideous. Others are perfectly legitimate videos: a dancer warming up in new shoes, doing pressovers to break in the arch. There's nothing wrong with that and that's what a fair amount of the videos used as examples in the article are.
I'm glad WSJ is warning people about this, but am regretting looking for that video. It's hideous.
Selly
