Saturday, February 9, 2013

Exploration Number Four

Watching this film is class has given me a new view on how ballet dancer live. All of them are working to have the same goal of winning some type of an award at the Youth America Grand Prix. The younger kids are just looking to win an award since they are not getting ready for college or can work a job. When we get to the older kids, we see that they are working to achieve a scholarship or a job. This film also showed that the performers and their families will do anything to make sure that their child will win. These dancer face many different challenges from injuries to the judges not liking the dance they performed. What amazed me is how often dancers get hurt when practicing and how that can affect how the dancer will perform.

Michaela story was the most interesting of all the stories in the film. She came from a war torn country without any knowledge of ballet dancing. When she was adopted, she first learned about ballet dancing. It was interesting that her adoptive parents let her do it and also put a lot of time and money into her dreams. What amazed me the most about Michaela’s story is that she had a foot injury a few days before the Grand Prix and was thinking about not performing. It was good to see that she did go on to do her performance and was able to win a scholarship.

This was an interesting film to learn how this subculture is but as I was watching this I saw that I could draw some parallels to my sister who does horseback riding. Both horseback riding and ballet require you to practice many hours a day and pay a lot of money on clothing for the performance. My parents have put both the time and money in to letting my sister do horseback riding but it has helped her become a trainer that she is today. One difference I can see is that in horseback riding you do have to take care of an animal while in ballet dancing you only need to take care of yourself. It was interesting that I was able to find this connection between the two and it shows how some subcultures can be similar in some ways.

2 comments:

  1. I agree, Michaela's story was the most interesting and her dream involved painting a new perspective about her color also, since she said that people tend to think of ballet dancers as white.

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  2. I think it is cool how you were able to make the connection between horse back riding and ballet i honestly would have never seen that myself. Good Post!

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