While it would be nice if everything was rainbows and daisies in ballet, that is definitely not the case. There is a lot of hard work that goes into ballet, and as in anything else, that means nothing is going to be perfect. What makes it worse is that we are supposed to be perfect, which is why it gets so intense and why we have so many rehearsals. We train for so many hours a week so that on stage we can be as close to perfect as possible.

However, we do have to be reminded of this occasionally.

Firebird has been a difficult ballet for us so far. From the beginning, our director has struggled to find the proper movement quality for us, even going so far as to completely rechoreograph six minutes of our dance, which had taken three weeks to set. After finally learning the steps, we struggled to wrap our heads around everything. More often than not, our director would end up laying on the floor, crying, “Do any of you know what the heck you’re doing?” It wasn’t until we started to run the whole ballet that we finally understood what we are supposed to do as shadows and began to improve.

Until last night.

Our director was quick to tell us that our rehearsal was “the worst run you’ve ever done since we started running this.” It wasn’t entirely the shadows’ fault – the younger girls, as princesses, completely forgot their timing – but our director mentioned several times that us older girls had gotten too complacent in our movements, a comment that was designed to fill us with shame (which it did).

At the end of rehearsal, our director gathered us all to give us a speech. The speech was about how we couldn’t allow ourselves to think that we had it and that we didn’t have to work so hard.

“It’s going to be better next time because I’ve gotten on you guys about it tonight,” he said, “but it needs to be better every time. You need to fully commit.”

I feel like this statement should have had a dramatic music score with it. Commitment is the absolute core of ballet, more important than technique even. If you’re not committed to what you’re doing, then you might as well not be doing it. If you’re boring, then your audience will not want to watch you, and then what’s the point of performing?