Boys in ballet - really fucking annoyed

[Boyscandoballettoo]

Please excuse the ranty tone of this thread - I have just had enough! Took my male toddler to a ballet class, and the number of negative comments or comments laughing about it from so-called family and friends has been overwhelming.

Please can people tell me AIBU to think it’s a bloody unisex sport?!? There have always been male ballet dancers! I do NOT understand the ignorance over it and even if it were a female sport traditionally, how dare people be so bloody sexist and make fun of a boy for joining in.

I don’t know why but it’s really pushing my buttons!

One of my sons has done ballet since being small. I really havent noticed much sexism directed towards him. Most people just say wow, he must be strong.
However his brother (who is a hefty rugby player) gets disbelieving comments every day when he says he is a nurse. Mostly from patients.

When my daughter used to do ballet there were quite a few boys at the school. Didn't bat an eyelid. I do understand how you feel though, my son has never liked football, my husband is very much into the sport so people will always comment how odd it is that DS doesn't like football especially as all boys like football!

Anthony Dowell once described the role of the male ballet dancer as "A forklift truck in tights".

Of course men can dance!

I've seen a few male dancers in my DD's dance school, it's not a problem although I don't know what happens outside of the dance school environment.

Very mean and small minded and unacceptable ... but sadly predictable.

I agree you should follow up with each person.

Didnt Rio Ferdinand do ballet and I recall rugby teams and football teams bringing in ballet trainers to help with suppleness and strength and reducing injury.

I think it's wonderful that your DS enjoys ballet. I went to school with 3 very tough lads who did ballet, and one of them made a good career for himself. No-one would've dared to ridicule them.

He's also done some TV work as a result of his connections
It would be nice to think this was as a result of his talents.

Ask the idiots who they think they women are going to dance with if small boys don't learn.

Why does everyone keep saying 'watch Billy Elliot' - great film but there's not really a ton of ballet in it!! Go and watch videos on Youtube of real ballets where you can see just how strong and talented the dancers are. The Royal Ballet put a lot of videos online of their rehearsals and snippets of performances, e.g.:

YANBU! My DS ihas just turned 10 and his dream is to become a professional ballet dancer. He didn’t dance a step at all until he was 8 years old, but in the last two years has taken up every dance style going. Ballet is still his love. He now dances for The Royal Ballet School as an associate and has just completed a run performing with The Birmingham Royal Ballet in The Nutcracker at The Royal Albert Hall over Christmas. He is a lovely dancer and is so hardworking and dedicated to his classes. We still come up against sexist nonsense on a weekly basis. You learn to either educate or ignore depending on the situation. Good luck to your boy. Two years ago I couldn’t have dreamed my young man would be doing the things he is now and it has been and continues to be an absolutely wonderful journey!

I think the difference between competing in dance and competing in other sports is the end game. Apart from ballroom and possibly freestyle the end aim of dance is performance. Dancers who compete generally do so in order for the same reasons as musicians might enter a competition. To get an idea of their standard amongst their peers, get an independent crit from an adjudicator and at the higher levels to get themselves noticed by artistic directors/gain scholarships for professional training.

Whereas in sports the end game is the competitin itself whether it be a local league or the olympics.

Jamie Bell had minimal ballet training (unlike the boys who played Billy on stage who could pull off those fouettes and which includes amongst others Tom Holland.

Laugh lightly and say 'Oh, give it a rest' and move on/walk off. Comments like that aren't worth your time or attention.

Some on here are being twats about it too: how is the OP 'precious' and why on earth should she lighten up? And why care so much about whether you call it a sport or an art or exercise or what?

'it's just not a traditional boys sport that's all.' So what are Rudolf Nureyev, Vaslav Nijinsky, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Carlos Acosta, Edward Watson, etc etc? Chopped liver? What a bizarre thing to say.

Peterspotter, It’s funny that female ballet dancers never get called athletes though. I certainly think of them as such and would use that word about them. IMO it's one of the very toughest things you can do physically.

YANBU to be pissed off, it's very annoying. Both my boys dance and have done since they were 3.
DS1 experienced more negativity - even from the other little girls initially! - but it wore off pretty quickly and i mostly only had positive comments about him. He was in year 2 of school when some of the boys in his class started to make fun but the teacher squashed that pretty damn fast and it's never happened since. DS1 also plays football and is pretty good at that too so that helps.

It does piss me off massively though that the auto-reaction to boys dancing is this sort of negativity and I was utterly heartbroken to read what happened to this poor boy, Jack Burns (TW: suicide) - it's so fucking retrograde! Sick of the toxic masculinity that delineates dancing as being a "female" activity.

I tend not to think of it as a sport but you certainly need to be very athletic and physically accomplished in order to do it
he'll have a great body🙂

He tends to get noticed much more than the average girl and get given solo parts just because he is a boy

Yes, this was my experience too. The boy in dds ballet class was treated like a god. Calm down OP it was all be fine, your ds is a baby you have years of people mocking your choices ahead of you!

The laughs aren’t haha how sweet an 18 month doing ballet - they are literally “HAHAHA A BOY IN A LEOTARD!!! Hahahahahah!!!!”

@mermaidbunny

You must be SO proud! I saw the nutcracker over Christmas and I was all emotional watching the boys and girls on stage and thinking how proud their parents must be

Why isn't dance a sportArya what are the key differences because I can't see any?

“HAHAHA A BOY IN A LEOTARD!!! Hahahahahah!!!!”
People say that to you? Tell them to stop laughing about your son and fuck off

My DS did all sorts of dance classes as a child - ballet, tap, modern and disco. This was over 30 years ago - I never had any negative ccomments about it and neither did he. He was often the only boy in the class - didn;t bother him at all. As an adult he's done tango and swing dance.

I'm suprised there is any negtivity coming your way - dance shows are very popular on the TV and they all show plenty of male dancers.

I'd just shrug it off, - if your little boy sees you getting angry he'll think something is wrong. If you just take the 'aren't some people silly' to criticism, he's more likely to shrug it off too. Ultimately it doesn;t matter what anyone else thinks about the things you choose to enjoy.

Have they seen how buff ballet dancers are as well? Not an inch of fat on their bodies, and they have really muscular arms and legs.

It's the blue brain- means boys naturally choose more aggressive sports like rugby and martial arts. The testosterone means they don't have the fine control and balance for delicate activities like ballet and need more running to burn off energy.

ballet's just dressing up in pink and wearing pretty skirts. It's not really strenuous, just some skipping around waving your arms. Definitely a girl thing.

I wouldn't encourage it as he may get bullied or people will think he's gay or trans.

I'm being sarcastic obviously but sad thing is people do think like this. After school ballet was 100% girls at my kids school. DD said there were a few boys who wanted to do it but their parents wouldn't let them- for the above reasons.

Then showed her this:

Why isn't dance a sportArya what are the key differences because I can't see any?

You seem very offended that I don't consider it a sport? I don't know why that's coming over as some sort of insult? Until today I've never heard anyone refer to any sort of dance as a sport. I would just have thought that Dance is it's own category, my niece dances competitively in irish dancing at a really high level, never heard her call it sport either -shrug-

plus my husband who is very sporty would rather he did an actual sport

Why? Why would your husband object to an activity that requires all the attributes of any "sport" (which I'm guessing he means football or rugby etc).