but also call me, darling
8. Normal people telling you that ballet is easy and very girly
not being svetlana zakharova
tutuandtea:“• sewing pointe shoes • putting hair into a perfect bun • washing your hair twice because you use so much hairspray • wearing skinny jeans that do not let you do a proper arabesque •…
Not every dancer can be a ballerina, and not every ballerina gets to dance with the New York City Ballet. So when one makes it, and then stays with the company for three decades, it’s a big deal.
Wendy Whelan is that ballerina. And on Saturday night, at 47 years old, she’ll give her final New York City Ballet performance before she retires.
"I’m sure I’ll get very emotional after," Whelan says. "I don’t expect to get emotional during. It’s not my style, I just don’t do that. But I’ll probably enter a depression, and I just know that I will do that because I always do that after a big ballet experience. … But this is the end of a ballet career, so that’s a bit bigger than just a season of ballet."
Hear the story and see more photos from the preparation for Whelan’s last performance over here.
Photos by Erin Baiano for NPR
unknownfamiliar asked:
pas-de-chat-saute-de-chat answered:
i don’t think i was being an asshole tbh and as a dancer i find it pretty offensive when non dancers think it’s “cute” to strap on pointe shoes and mess around lol :)
why do people always fail to grasp that what we do isn’t anywhere near cute or prissy in any way
it makes me so angry that I want to set things on fire
Sara Webb, a principal dancer with Houston Ballet, dances as the White Swan in Stanton Welch’s Swan Lake, which ran in June. Read about Webb’s experience taking on this role here: http://bit.ly/TxjL2y
A dancer getting fitted for pointe shoes at Freed’s of London, a world-renowned manufacturer of hand-crafted pointe shoes, while on tour with the company in London, England in 2013.
Pointe shoes are like wands: the dancer doesn’t choose the shoe; the shoe chooses the dancer.
Yeah but at least wands last for more than an hour
Please reblog so it reaches a larger audience! <3 thank you!
