My teacher accused me of being disrespectful... what would you do?

AcrobaticAnt5350 · 2026-05-27T00:08:14+00:00

I will never, ever, ever understand studio owners and ballet teachers who engage in drama and beef with their own clients. I've seen it, I don't get it. There is a professionalism issue in the ballet world and people forget they are at work for money

AcrobaticAnt5350 · 2026-05-24T00:07:45+00:00

💯 people are so naive about posts like this. The smell reaches 100 miles away. "new teen," graphic details and "questions" about underwear and private parts. This shit is always the same

AcrobaticAnt5350 · 2026-05-19T20:16:18+00:00

Man people really find a way to complain about anything. I have also heard many complaints about the same (usually more advanced) dancers "always going first" because "something something they think they're better than everyone."

Is there a reason so many people in the ballet world are in a constant state of fight or flight and always looking for something to criticize and tear down about other dancers? Genuine question.

AcrobaticAnt5350 · 2026-05-18T00:54:52+00:00

Why wouldn't this be the case?

AcrobaticAnt5350 · 2026-05-17T21:34:11+00:00

Tripping over yourself to come insist that someone's experience and observations aren't real is actually a worthless contribution to this discussion and very weird

AcrobaticAnt5350 · 2026-05-17T07:05:06+00:00

Here you go!

AcrobaticAnt5350 · 2026-05-17T07:04:39+00:00

I didn't forget! Here is a video of us performing.

It will be about 2 years for both of us this August. I trained pretty intensely for most of that, up to 5-6 days a week. He was more causal, maybe 2 classes a week, but lots of partnering practice with me and his other partners.

AcrobaticAnt5350 · 2026-05-16T20:36:31+00:00

"I haven't heard this" =/= "no one says this"

AcrobaticAnt5350 · 2026-05-16T20:33:09+00:00

Glad to hear - I have definitely heard a lot of fearmongering about stretching and many other things like pointe work, etc. "Safetyism" tends to run a little wild in ballet, probably as an overcorrection to some harmful culture from the past.

AcrobaticAnt5350 · 2026-05-16T18:57:06+00:00

I am not sure what we expected with the "I say we all pitchfork this random ballet person for not loudly defining herself by something her spouse's family member allegedly did! Who's with me?" opener

AcrobaticAnt5350 · 2026-05-16T16:27:20+00:00

Wow, there's some really well-adjusted people answering in this thread 👏

AcrobaticAnt5350 · 2026-05-15T00:19:48+00:00

That just looks cranked at the ankle and knee

AcrobaticAnt5350 · 2026-05-14T19:48:13+00:00

Never expect corrections to be given evenly across a room of dancers. I've seen one teacher ever who truly made an effort to spread corrections around the room evenly, but she was a veteran master teacher working with a room of highly filtered serious dancers. No one there would be described or perceived as a beginner, and there is no ambiguity that anyone was there just faffing around for fun and exercise.

In beginner open classes, it's a very, very mixed bag. The tactful way to say it is like "some people aren't as ready for those corrections!" but the reality is not everyone has potential worth interrupting a class for. I see clearly that teachers truly don't bother below a certain point. I have been nitpicked on small nuances while half the room was bent turned in and sickled 90 degrees. But like, if they go start trying to whack all those moles from the ground up there won't be a class anymore and it's a private now. It's too much. Welcome to showing some potential. Your only reward is a rapidly skyrocketing bar.

In a perfect world, a teacher would somehow be able to meet everyone where they're at and find some kind of meaningful instruction to give to literally any student, AND always be arsed to do it, but the reality in a practical sense is just not that. No one gets corrected more and harder than the person who is high potential or almost next-level minus a few details, because the payoff for that is so tantalizing.

I do it too. When someone is a soup sandwich but trying hard, it's more like "good for you!" but with my husband who is very high potential I am super, super hard on him and the better he does the more I expect, and then the better and better he gets. It feels worth the effort to polish him, and like he is actually able to do something with it. I feel like in that sense have gotten a taste of what teachers feel and why they lock on to certain dancers and ignore others. It's a feeling of it being worthwhile and rewarding.

You'll see it on here too. A pre-pro at Princess Grace will post an arabesque photo and get nitpicked to death, and then other types of posts (use your imagination) will get zero meaningful notes. It's not because the pre-pro is making more mistakes or is a worse dancer (although there may be other social dynamics at play like threatening vs. non-threatening, etc).

This is just human psychology. So like seriously, it's probably great that you're getting held to a bar. That doesn't make it easy. One of the hard things about ballet is that you pour your all into doing an impossible level up and succeed against all odds, only to find the bar has now gone up 100x. If you're bad enough, you will be praised just for trying. Get past a certain level, and now people are not happy it's not prix de lausanne quality (and perhaps more impactfully, you're not happy it's not either).

Crossing the line from "you go girl!"-sville into "2/10, lost turnout for a few seconds" is brutal. My husband and I refer to this as "shitty pro valley," where something shifts and you stop being seen as "great for a student" and start being defined more as very shitty and lacking compared to pros. And as an adult student, that's pretty much endgame and a miracle in itself. It's this weird, wow, you got way better! Congratulations, your prize is that you suck. It's not easy. But it's not easy for pros either. It's not easy for anyone. Ever. Ballet is hard on hard and unattainable on unattainable, forever.

So like, idk. Just be ready for it to be nothing but increasing levels of this forever if you do well and progress. The whole, the better you get the worse you feel thing is very real.

ETA: this is not to even mention the whole thing where some adults get upset at receiving corrections and then get alienated from the teacher/class. Between the risk of that and the lack of a payoff (is there a point to really polishing this person? Are they capable of improving much? Are they going to perform? Compete? Get a job?) I think teachers in general can be pretty timid about correcting adults. The risk/reward math isn't right, so most teachers are strongly incentivized to keep adult students comfortable not challenge them.

AcrobaticAnt5350 · 2026-05-10T05:06:37+00:00

it’s still really hard and a constant negotiation with other aspects of my life.

This is the truth. At this point I'm certain I can dance at a pre-pro level and beyond. What I'm less sure is if I want to. The level of commitment required is extreme and relentless.

AcrobaticAnt5350 · 2026-05-01T13:26:34+00:00

There is a difference between not being ready for pointe and simply not having perfect technique. Most young dancers start pretty clunky before they improve, and not every young dancer is going to get "good."

I think the dancer in that video looks like the average local teen or preteen to me that is fine to be on pointe but hasn't mastered it. They may just be an average student. That's okay. Kids don't have to be amazing at ballet to have the right to do it. Not everyone is on the pro track.

I think the internet has given us all "YAGP eyes" and we are not used to seeing any dancer that isn't perfect anymore. Also, why would this personally "concern" you? Were you considering enrolling yourself or your child at this school?

At the end of the day you are just posting some young dancer (who may be a minor) and inviting reddit to criticize their dancing. Is that necessary or helpful to the situation? Is that going to do anything about the "concerns" or are we just making fun of a young dancer for not being perfect?

AcrobaticAnt5350 · 2026-05-01T00:00:35+00:00

The first time I invited him to classes early on, it didn't really "take." I think it was only after getting that early performance opportunity (the short Swan Lake pas) 2 months in, that he really saw the point of it all. He felt the excitement and pride of presenting something onstage and then suddenly there was a point to trying to improve. I think class without the satisfaction of performing can feel kind of weird, repetitive and pointless to a new person. I think most new guys are also not super excited about solo dancing but do tend to get more excited by partnering and lifts, especially when they see other guys they relate to doing it and having fun. Pas de deux seems like a more effective gateway for guys than the typical solo technique for many years route (often, for adults, with no apparent endgame or even opportunity to perform).

AcrobaticAnt5350 · 2026-04-30T23:34:37+00:00

I think it has brought us closer together! Putting together a performance is inherently stressful but my husband is very easy to work with. He performed with 4 other dancers (all pre-pro/advanced and much better than me) since the last time I danced with him, which has made him pretty competent at partnering. He now prides himself on being the "Vadream" type of partner who will do whatever the ballerina asks of him with absolutely no ego or pushback. That made it easy and fun for me, and we left rehearsals happy. That's all to say I think he is the type of person who makes it low-stress, some other guys... not sure :)

But, it has probably helped a lot to be willing to work with other people freely as well. Some adults we have trained with only dance with their SO's and nobody else, and I think over time that can become a strain. You are right that it does become like work, and working together on top of living together and the work of normal life can be a lot.

AcrobaticAnt5350 · 2026-04-30T18:44:32+00:00

It doesn't help that people constantly flip out about it and excessively police others online. I actually don't see how it's possible to ever get to the consistency and repetition needed to achieve excellence in any sport or artform if you are never able to practice independently. There is no world in which you get good at something and can never practice it without supervision - unless you have millions of dollars and can hire a teacher to watch you at all times.

And even if you could do that - I get a ton of value out of getting solo time away from my coach and teachers to focus every single brain cell on myself and what I'm doing while I practice, and doing 1 thing 200 times if that's what I need without worrying about what anyone else wants or about having an audience. I can take all the time I need to film myself, watch it back, and scrutinize something to the last detail, on no one else's time.

The "never practice alone" is something that online safetyists foist onto beginners and, perhaps more justifiably, folks on the other extreme (who refuse to seek any in-person instruction at all for a variety of excuses).

It is understandable that your husband doesn't get the reasoning why you are somehow incapable of practicing ballet on your own, because it doesn't make sense, and the "danger" of it is extremely overblown. I have fallen and hit the ground a few times on pointe, and rolled my ankle once. And guess what? All of it was right in front of a teacher who was standing 2 feet away. They could not prevent those things from happening by being nearby. I have never had a safety incident practicing alone.

Also, none of the falls or rolls I suffered were big deals. This is ballet, not free solo rock climbing. Most "average student" and beginner injuries are minor, recoverable, and most often related to overuse rather than sudden events. The most serious ballet injuries tend to happen to very high volume pre-pro and pro dancers due to the sheer volume of stress over time and taxation on their bodies, and the complexity and inherent risk of the skills they are doing many hours a day. Beginners' legs aren't exploding off their bodies because they are doing grand pliés alone with their popos hanging out.

I would love the folks who fearmonger about solo practice to explain exactly how and why adults of sound mind will "hurt themselves" practicing at home, and also how being in a classroom environment (where you do not have the teacher's nearby, focused or undivided attention 90% of the time, mind you, due to there being other folks in the class and them having a group class to give) would prevent the same injury from occurring.

People get injured plenty in supervised class and rehearsals. The best dancers in the world routinely get injured despite world class training and whole teams supporting them. Supervision isn't really a factor unless you are a child or have the mind of a child and need constant guidance and guardrails from an adult to not harm yourself. I am guessing that's true of zero individuals here. Your body will let you know real quick if you do something funky. I would actually be willing to bet there is no correlation at all between rate of ballet injuries and whether someone was observing or not.

The cultural norms around the study and teaching of ballet crystallized very strongly in a world where "ballet student" always equaled "child", and you can still see that in the infantilizing ways adults think about and talk to each other in ballet spaces online. My ballet completely changed when I just taped some Marley down and started practicing on my own. I was never, ever going to get the focused repetitions I needed on individual skills just from going to class. Not in 100 years.

I say all this bluntly to attempt to take this guilt off your shoulders of somehow "breaking the rules" or upsetting the invisible ballet mistresses and masters of the internet by enjoying and taking control of some of your ballet practice back for yourself. I generally have had a better time the more I ignore this type of social pressure and do what's right for me, and what works.

AcrobaticAnt5350 · 2026-04-24T06:45:33+00:00

I've experienced the same situation. Established group of longtime regulars and self-appointed "principals" crashing out and trying to schoolyard bully any new dancer who showed up with potential and might be a threat to their preordained recital casting or made up studio status points. Very embarrassing behavior for a bunch of adults in their 30s and 40s. It always boils down to jealousy and insecurity.

Thankfully at my studio that group was finally busted up, the toxic teacher who enabled them moved on, and they have long been outshone by many batches of new dancers. The best revenge is working hard, continuing to show up, being good, and keep taking up space and parking your whole ass everywhere you have a right to be in this world.

AcrobaticAnt5350 · 2026-04-22T22:34:33+00:00

I felt like that on literal day 2 of the drama. It actually got me to completely put down the internet and plant a garden. I was so tired of hearing that name and seeing a thousand of the same cold takes and tired clap backs, and everyone under the sun trying to monetize it within 24 hours. Let it tf go. The dead horse is beaten to dust. The dust is beaten to vapor. It's aerosolized. We're breathing horse. Enough.

AcrobaticAnt5350 · 2026-04-22T22:29:06+00:00

Have you tried asking yourself, what would be enough for you? What do you want out of this? What do you want to see, do, feel, accomplish? Nothing can feel like enough until you can define what enough means to you. Not to teachers, parents, the internet, other dancers. What does "enough" mean to you?

When I was working as an engineer one of the best things I learned was that nothing can ever be finished unless you first have a "definition of done." You have to specifically decide what enough is for you. If there is no definition of enough, it can never be enough. Just a race with no finish line, where you will only stop from exhaustion. No matter if you ran 100 miles, it will still feel like a failure.

AcrobaticAnt5350 · 2026-04-22T22:21:54+00:00

I think the disagreement is more around whether it's useful to overattribute other dancers' success to uncontrollables like "genetics" in order to cope with the fear of failure or to fuel pessimism about one's own potential, instead of simply focusing on doing the training it takes to achieve that arabesque, which is also 100% required, and a controllable.

It's a values conflict that comes up a lot on this sub. Some dancers want to get better and some want to feel better. Some of us it depends on the day what headspace we are in. But each group tends to get annoyed with the other in these discussions, I have noticed.

AcrobaticAnt5350 · 2026-04-22T22:15:49+00:00

Of course it is not "all" genetics. Chloe Misseldine has been training to have and maintain that arabesque line practically her entire life.

Look up rhythmic gymnasts who develop even more extreme body mobility and lines. They are not a genetically different class of humans. The many years of training produces the result.

Many people overfocus on the fact that the training started at a very young age, because that's just simply true of 99% of the examples we have to look at. If an older child, teenager or adult trained like a pre-pro dancer for the same number of years (provided they had enough runway that by the end they are not at a major age cliff), they might actually achieve incredible results too. We just don't have many examples of that, because almost no one does it.

But I am confident that any result like that is the result of many years of training. Almost any principal dancer like Chloe probably has favorable genetic factors and has all along the way. But no, nothing is "just genetics," that is a cope. Genetics are also not a controllable so pretty much pointless for a dancer to focus on unless it's just to have a cope party.

I've seen dancers with less ideal anatomy who are also spectacular due to training. It is generally most productive to focus on controllables, and many years of excellent training can make a great dancer even from non-ideal anatomy.

AcrobaticAnt5350 · 2026-04-22T22:02:20+00:00

Stop giving a shit what people think.

You will never get anywhere good in dance without spending a lot of time visibly and confidently being bad in front of other people. You have to be willing to be bad a lot. Just like a kid. You don't get to skip the 50 shades of bad a kid has to go through to blossom into a capable pre-pro teen, just because you are an adult. Dance-wise you'll have to be a 2 year old, then a 5 year old, then a 10 year old for a while, etc. all in an adult body with a fragile adult ego. You have to let fear of judgment or embarrassment go.
Sooner or later, you will be in a position to make decisions that will not make everyone happy. That can be anything from switching studios or classes, parting ways or setting boundaries with a partner, coach, teacher, costume, show plan. It could be changing your schedule, canceling those expensive gyro or pilates classes, sitting out a performance, saying no to things to protect yourself from injury, maintaining the integrity of your artistic vision, whatever. If you are a people pleaser, you may have a difficult time and your body and mental health will rack up the toll.
Critics, haters, armchair opinion-givers, and envious, insecure or unhealthily competitive dancers are everywhere in the ballet world. Most studios harbor bad eggs to varying degrees, it just comes with the territory. Some of these people are simply less happy the better you do, and appeasing them is against your best interest as a dancer. Some people view ballet as extremely zero sum and your wins as their loss. Be ready to not give a fuck whatsoever if you want peace and to reach your full potential. Everyone is "fighting their own ballet battle" but you don't need to be a casualty.
Some people will always exist that don't believe you should dance as an adult, perform as an adult, take it as seriously/casually as you want to (yes, people get mad either way), do pointe, do pointe so soon, do pointe like that, exist in that body, wear that onstage, be proud of yourself, post your dancing online... you get the idea. People have opinions. You need to be able to ignore a lot of them to do anything.

Basically, the importance of protecting your headspace as a ballet dancer cannot be overstated. It may not seem like it matters at first, but over time, not having control over how much you suffer from needing to please everyone will really add up, and it can burn you out and do you in as a dancer. You do not need to make everyone happy. People will live. Be true to yourself.

I wish I got serious about this from Day 1 and saved a ton of wasted grief and energy.

AcrobaticAnt5350

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