Ballet Day 2025 is on Friday, February 7, 2025: What is a ballet dancers typical day like?

Friday, February 7, 2025 is Ballet Day 2025. Day 27: The Louvre (again) and the Ballet The ballet. (not my photo)

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Pirouette – it’s Ballet Day! It might be a little of the stretch to consider ballet for any day, so why wouldn't you simply visit a ballet rather?

I was asked this about a month ago, so I just copied and pasted my answer. Hope you don't mind.

Typical day.. you wake up around 8:30, have coffee and stretch then breakfast, walk to the subway and head for class where you stretch, than a 1 hr 45 mins. ballet class followed by rehearsal. Have late lunch then go back home and take a nap around 3:30. Wake up about an hour later and eat something walk to the subway and stop for coffee and coconut water and head for the theater. Arrive 1/2 hour before curtain time. Stretch and warm up back stage. Have a small snack at intermission and drink plenty of water. After the show drink more water and then out for dinner at around 11 PM and go home and crash in bed. Not too romantic.

You take class everyday even on show days or on rehearsal days. It is rather a cut throat industry and depending on what ballets are up for the season and the height of the male dancers in the company or who they like to partner you with, it has a lot to do with how you are cast. The nature of the repertory each season has a lot to do with it too. The career is very short and over in a flash and then you have the bulk of your life to figure out what you do next.

Training for the ballet is very hard. You give up friends and family and often have to dorm at your ballet academy so you can take multiple classes a day. You take about 30 hours of ballet technique classes a week and even more in the summer months. You academics are also often arranged by your academy or you do home schooling so you can finish high school early and apprentice for the ballet at age 16. Some do it as early as 15 and others at 17. Six months later you are asked to join the company as corps de ballet. Training starts young at about 7 or 8 with a cut off of 10 or 11 for untrained dancers. It is different for the men in the ballet. They can start much later.

* Additional from last time: There is a lot of flying and jet lag from touring and the schedules are different on those days.

*note.The coconut water is from my daughter's experience and what she uses all the time. They didn't have that in my day.

Is there a place where an adult can learn ballet all day?

What I suggest is to make your own "intensive". As you are a beginner, you really shouldn't do more than one 90 minute ballet class a day. 5 days a week to start. You can take open beginner ballet classes in NYC at STEPS on Broadway and Peridance. There are classes at beginner level every day. There is even a 'basic" class for someone who has never taken any ballet ever.

Broadway Dance Center is another option, but I would recommend STEPS. BDC has a winter workshop but it starts on January 12 so that would not be an option for you. It also has open Basic and Beginner ballet classes daily.

I'm 15 and want to join a ballet company?

I would look to find another ballet teacher ASAP. That is way too little ballet training to go en pointe. Gymnastics has the wrong alignment for ballet and even though you are flexible from gymnastics, it takes gymnasts turned ballet dancers longer to retrain those muscles to work in the right way for ballet. To be ready for pointe you not only need strong feet, legs, ankles and core along with balance, you need to be able to engage and hold your turnout without sickling. Most important is strong ballet technique and there are no shortcuts to that. Dancers on track for a professional ballet career your age have been taking 20-30 hours of technique classes a week year round for years and years. More like 4- 5 hours a day not 4 hours a week. Anything less than 15 hours a week is considered recreational training. They train in professional schools that screen them for body, facility and musicality not in a recreational school. Those schools are almost exclusively affiliate feeder schools to professional ballet companies. I know your training is recreational (aside from the small amount of class time per week you put in) as professional schools wont train a beginner your age even if they were born in the 2% of the population that has all the required gifts. Recreational ballet schools don't have the right training to pass on to you for a career in the ballet. Training for the ballet is expected to be complete by age 16 (sometimes as young as 15) when a dancer if lucky is chosen to apprentice with a professional ballet company. Dancers are either home schooled or take their academics as arranged by their ballet academies so they can graduate high school early to dance in the ballet. There are dancers who were born with all the requirements who have been training intensely since age 7 or 8 at world class ballet academies like the School of American Ballet, where they were screened for being born with all the right gifts or they couldn't train there, who will not reach the professional ranks. There are so few jobs in ballet.

You should know there has NEVER been a female ballet dancer who started as late as you are who has ever become a professional ballet dancer. Most professional schools have a cut off of age 10 for an untrained female dancer who is in that 2%. That being said there have been the rare exception of a dancer with so many gifts for ballet that they have convinced an academy to train them at the ripe old age of 12 or 13. In the past 50-60 years there have been a few female dancers who have started at 13 and have been successful. You could count them on one hand and still have fingers left over. Men can and do start later than girls do, but they have different requirements in the ballet.

To top it all off, if you were to get the right training (which is not available to someone your age,) it takes 10 years to "make a leg" in ballet. That would get you to the age that most ballet dancer's careers are winding down and they start thinking about retiring.

I am really sorry, but realistically you have no chance whatsoever of getting into a national ballet company or even a small regional ballet company for that matter. That being said, who says you have to get paid to enjoy ballet? Ballet careers don't pay well and are over in a flash. Then dancers have to find a new career for the remainder of their lives. Dance for the Joy of Dance and dance can always be a part of your life. Perhaps one day after years of training (with a more qualified ballet teacher) you could be a recreational ballet teacher.

*EDIT: Your teacher should be horrified not amazed that you could go en pointe in soft ballet slippers. That is so unsafe and not even all that unusual as many people can do that. It does put you at great risk for breaking a toe.