Amateur dancers not getting the pointe
Since Louis XIV established the Royal Academy of Dance in 1661, formal ballet has never been a self-taught art. Aspiring dancers have been trained under the supervision of professionals. And ever since the pointe shoe was invented in the early 1800s, only girls who had spent three years or so taking lessons ever got permission from their ballet teachers to buy toe shoes.
But now Web videos are shaking loose the rigid hierarchy of the ballet world. Aspiring ballerinas are recording videos of themselves dancing and posting the results for people to look at and critique on the Internet.
Young hopefuls put video cameras on their kitchen or bathroom floor, then do simple exercises in pointe shoes. The videos, which generally aren't more than a minute long, attract viewer chat pointing out mistakes and offering tips.
"I just wanted to see what I looked like en pointe. I'm blown away by how many comments there are, and how many people looked at it," says 18-year-old Nicole DeHelian, who recently quit taking dancing lessons at New Horizons Dance Alliance in East Greenville, Pa. She posted a video labeled "Pointe Shoes" to YouTube in July 2006, and it's now one of the most popular videos of its kind on the site.
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The ballet establishment isn't pleased. "To be honest, I was horrified by what I saw," says Rachel Moore, executive director of American Ballet Theatre, in New York, one of the pillars of the American ballet world. Dance professionals say these young dancers are setting themselves up for twisted ankles, broken bones and other injuries.
"If you look at those videos, there is no potential -- except to get hurt," says Kay Mazzo, co-chairman of faculty at the School of American Ballet, the official training academy of the New York City Ballet. "Ballet takes 10 years of training before you can do anything. ... You don't learn that by watching YouTube."
Dancing in pointe shoes can indeed be a danger for children who aren't trained to get up on their toes without hurting themselves. Possible injuries include stress fractures, sprained ankles, tendinitis, damage to the growth plates in the feet, shinsplints and bunions. Shoes that don't fit properly can permanently deform young feet.
Young dancers usually don't start putting on toe shoes until the age of 11 or 12. And even when children are ready for toe shoes, they often suffer through lessons with bloody, blistered toes. "My toes are always sore," says 12-year-old Maia Charanis, who dances four days a week with the Dancer's Studio/Backstage in Alpharetta, Ga.
The risks increase with the do-it-yourself approach. "The person who teaches themselves how to dance en pointe has a fool for a dance teacher," says William Hamilton, a New York orthopedic surgeon specializing in ballet injuries.
Another verity is that there is no stopping girls who want to be ballerinas.
Eleven-year-old Baylee Errante says she had been dreaming about what it would feel like to dance on the tips of her toes ever since last December when she saw "The Nutcracker." She begged her parents to sign her up for lessons, but her dad said she needed to finish basketball season first.
She typed onto Yahoo: "How to Make Pointe Shoes." Then, she jerry-built a pair with soles made of thin plywood, and the rest consisting of cutup socks, glue and cotton balls. Then she started dancing, copying videos she had seen online. After school the next day, she made her own video. She titled it "My Very First Handmade Pointe Shoes" and posted it to YouTube.
When her father, Jason Errante, found out about the videos, he says he wasn't mad. But he is now going to make sure she gets lessons. "Just seeing that initiative impressed me," he says.
Dance physiotherapist Lisa Howell, in Sydney, Australia, for the past year has been posting videos to give young ballerinas who are taking ballet lessons tips on improving their dancing. Her videos offer tips for preventing blisters and for doing simple foot-strengthening exercises.
Howell tells her viewers that her videos aren't meant to replace real-world ballet lessons, but she isn't sure they're always listening. She says far too many girls are posting unsafe videos of pointe work, and she quickly singles out half a dozen "horrific" videos featuring girls "sickling" their feet (twisting their ankles), wearing unfit shoes and dancing without control. In April, she posted a video about the dangers of teaching oneself to dance en pointe.
Howell's warnings have divided young ballerinas. "I spoke to one of my friends to see what she thought," one viewer wrote, after watching Howell's warnings about the dangers of teaching oneself to dance en pointe. "She taught herself to dance en pointe when she was 13 and she is really good. Now I don't know what to do. She thinks it is OK. but I know that you say that it is dangerous. What should I do?"