In Ballet There Really Is No Casting Couch

In Ballet there is not really a Casting Couch. You cannot really cheat your way to the top by sleeping with the right people.
While you might be able to get a few opportunities here and there. Without the talent one can never stay at the top.
That is because ballet is just too hard.
The requirements on a skill level are absurdly difficult with each level up one goes.
So, while occasionally, there might be the dancer whose facility is perfect for a certain character, being a principal dancer requires much more than just luck or sleeping with the director or choreographer.
What Eva Evdokimova (in Berlin) could do; I could only dream of doing. And the skill levels for principal dancers have to be reached at a fairly young age in order to get the performances to show that skill level, get the acclaim, and become a star that others want to follow in the theater’s sky.
In acting, they say; “A star is not born it is created.” That is because in acting there are layers of help to manifest that illusion.
Actors become known for a character that makes them a star but behind that façade is a network of teams that help that come together and make that happen. Agents push a person or a look whose time seems ripe, and that might be the flavor of the moment. Then they capitalize on that.
There are costumers, makeup artists, and directors coaching that allows an actor to fine tune that required look to the point that they become a star if their ego does not get in the way of learning and being willing to adapt in the moment.

In the ballet world, while yes, there are teachers, coaches, directors (who too often are doing just the daily running of a ballet company, so they cannot engage much with the dancers, or are trying to navigate the financial benefactors so the show can go on), costumers, lighting specialists, stage crew that prepare everything, and an orchestra to make the magic of music so the dancers have something to dance to.
Real talent and real skill are far more rare and precious in the art of ballet.
We are all born to dance. It is something that has been essential and how human societies and cultures have bonded throughout time.
But those with the gift to have the lines, the spins, the leaps, the flexibility, the power to shape illusions with movement and the interpretation of the music with their body are one of the rarest of gems in the artistic world.
What gets one to the top in Ballet specifically, is a tremendous amount of personal effort, a lot of talent, a bit of luck, a ton of attitude, and most principal dancers are genuinely self-effacing but, on a stage, they become something very special.
In ballet, there are studio dancers and then there are performers.
What makes a star is someone who is a performer on the stage. You know a performer because the moment they step foot on that stage something magical happens, the shy girl ignites and suddenly can-do sequences and bring a character to life through the complex weaving of very difficult steps and the embodiment of a character. They have the ability to pull all the eyes in the audience and focus them on themselves.
I can see a rising star standing in the corps de ballet, even when they are not moving at all, and they are being a prop for the principal dancers or the border of the picture that the stage is creating in that moment.
There is something about them that catches my eye, even when they are doing nothing. They exude some magic. It is like seeing a dusting of light all around them. That light follows them, it allows them to shine and it makes us believe what they convey, and they captivate something deep inside our being.
Ballet is a career for the young and the tremendous pressure put on the body eventually breaks dancers down. I am one of the few dancers that I know that does not have lingering physical problems from my ballet career. Most must have hip replacement surgery, back and knee surgeries, and arthritis as they age from the wear and tear.
In the acting world and the movie industry, there is a ton of money and so the pay is much better, and actors can continue to grow as an actor with age, like fine wine.
Ballet dancers are a fruit that becomes ripe on the tree but that sweetness only lasts for only a short period of time before it begins to fall apart.
Most enjoy dance, but do not understand the tremendous layers of sacrifice ballet dancers do on the altar of Terpsichore. Even we do not understand fully … the toll that ballet will ask of our body, our mind, our emotions, and our soul.
Few will ever get paid enough to get ahead.
Few will ever be able to dance into their 40s, much less 50s.
Ballet is for me the sweetest and most tempting of addictions.
Drugs and alcohol have little attraction to a dancer who has tasted the elixir of success from their own blood, sweat, and tears.
All dancers know that in the end, no one can cheat to get to the top and manage to stay there.
We know that favor, in this art, is fleeting and precious.
Stardom in the ballet world is a tightrope that everyone eventually falls from, either from injuries, age, or loss of personal will.
The demands of a ballet career will break each dancer down, piece by piece.
We know this from the beginning. We watch it daily.
It is accepted as part of the risk to attempt to be a ballet dancer. We know that to experience such a special flavor of energy and expression, those moments might be offered only a few times in a career.
I have born witness to those precious moments as those amazing dancers captivate our hearts and an entire audience. Just imagine what it might feel like if one was casting that spell on a stage!
And when those special moments have been offered up by my soul, they were an even greater feeling in that moment than I expected. They were much, MUCH more than I could have ever imagined.
Such moments are deeply personal, and hard to explain because there is a feeling of being here and being so much more of the totality of your essence. Such moments touch a part of one’s soul that is outside the body, and a part that has been waiting for the human insecurity to move aside so we can remember, that we are the vastness of space and time and become it once again.
We are the Sun, the Moon, and the stars.
We are energy, light, movement, and matter.
We are sound and light becoming form.
In ballet, when the learning stops, the magic dies. When the magic dies, the light begin to dim, and it is not long before the that final curtain comes down.
~Suzanne Wagner~