Saturday, May 23, 2020

Quora Question: What's the Pointe?

I'm bored.  I'm surfing around the 'net, and got a question from Quora.  You'd think they would have learned by now.  I predict this one goes a week, but we'll see.

Warning: Not safe for work.  Your mileage may vary.  Void where prohibited.  Etc., ad nauseam.
Courtesy of Quora, we have this inane gem.  Something triggered a less than completely sane response from me, so here we go - down the alley of ill repute.

How is ballet pointe work taught differently at the School of American Ballet, vs. the Royal Ballet school (England) or the Paris Opera Ballet school?

Let me make it clear that we’re talking about teaching methods here, as the subject is going to be the same (pointe work).

Americans have a tendency to berate and castigate their students in public.  Screw it up once, you’ll get a correction.  Screw it up again, and you get a reprimand.  Third time’s the charm, and after the instructor is halfway into his speech about how worthless a particular student is, and how this oxygen thief is stealing valuable time away from the class and some talented student that should be here instead of this Caliban… students break down and start crying.  They get no sympathy from their classmates, who are busy being glad it’s someone else this time.  The instructor keeps this behavior up until the student either quits, commits suicide, or improves.

Yes, I’m serious about the suicide part.

The English have a sort of fetish about corporal punishment.  They spank their students.  In school, a student will get ‘strokes’ from a rod (a switch about 3 - 4 feet long) and this punishment will be delivered in public, in front of all the other students and instructors.  Ballet school is no different.  Perform a movement incorrectly, and the student is corrected.  Fail again, and the student wordlessly presents the bum for a few strokes of the birch rod - and it hurts.  Fail a third time, and the correction is delivered in stentorian tones, then the student is birched in front of the class - usually three strokes.  More mistakes mean more, and harder, strokes.  Welts are a regular occurrence.

I’m not saying that the English are perverse - after all, emotional or verbal abuse is still abuse - but both methods seem to work. Just look at the quality of the dancers!

Note to readers:  If you read this and take it seriously, you're more demented than I am.  No, wait - if you read this, and you're an editor at Quora, you can't quite say that the author is pulling your prick and is a drunken pree-vert.  Not quite.  Like I say, I'm betting on a week, but you never know.

4 comments:

Old NFO said...

ROTF, good one!

Mad Jack said...

Thanks Old NFO. One ding-a-ling actually took this seriously and responded to it. Ain't I a stinker?

Glen Filthie said...

In Canada we give them a time out.

Mad Jack said...

That's not what I heard.