I am going to go on a bit of a tangent here but I promise this post has a very relevant point (even if a bit messy in structure; I will write a proper meta / format it properly at some point); I often ponder about the inherent strain that ballet puts on you as a person. Not just physically but also mentally; you don't compete as a professional dancer, you perform, obviously but each performance brings with it a pressure to excel that is not for the weak of mind. Mistakes on stage can happen & ballet dancers learn to handle them accordingly but there are some passages / sections in a ballet a dancer just cannot, under any circumstances fail at - if they do? They put the whole production in jeopardy.
One specific example is the 32 fouettés in Swan Lake; not only are fouettés the most difficult & physically demanding of all pirouettes, as Odile you need to do the aforementioned 32 of them quickly in a row without a single break.
This in itself is incredibly exhausting, strenuous & difficult to pull off perfectly - what makes it even harder in context, however (& what renders it a mental test / challenge of one's durability & endurance, mentally & physically) is the fact that as the principal / étoile / etc, you, in most cases, have already been dancing Odette beforehand. It's a double role after all & when the 32 fouettés happen you are at the end of Act II, you already danced the pas de deux & you already danced through a whole other act. Not only do you still have a full act to go after it, too (& keep in mind that a performance usually takes three hours & that said performances are usually taking place after company class & rehearsal the morning & afternoon prior meaning one has already danced quite a bit that day) but exhaustion is most likely already setting in to some degree & you distinctly know that you cannot, under any circumstances, mess up now. In this very specific section there is absolutely no room for failure, no room for fear (there is no way to recover from mistakes during these rapid 32 fouettés after all). You have to give 200% at this moment because if you fail to keep the audience / kingdom / prince / etc under your spell (all that the black swan is about at this very specific moment) you have failed as Odile & consequently, ruin the performance.
You can truly dance Swan Lake a million times & it will still come down to this one (1) incredibly important moment in Act II every single time. && you have to learn to bear the pressure, the exhaustion, the potential aches & excel regardless.
&& it brings me back to the idea of people often failing to understand how incredible of a feat dancing ballet is because the dancers make it look utterly effortless & easy. Odile usually smiles through her fouettés; there are no gasps out of strain or similar. The most you will ever see is controlled exhales. && this level of perfect self-control is part of what makes a good ballerina in the eyes of audience. If it looks effortless, if it looks like you are not bothered by what physically strenuous movement you are executing or whatever discomfort & potential burning in your limbs at this point exists, you are doing everything right.
While musing about this on my break, I remembered a short of a professional dancer I watched a while ago who explained why they push themselves through, sometimes very much agonizing, pain & only ever take time off for serious injuries. To hereby paraphrase the video in question: we are professional dancers. If we would stop dancing every time we felt pain or discomfort we would never dance. You learn to live with it & smile through it. && it struck me as one of the most Amélie-core sentiments in its totality to ever exist, perfectly putting into words what I often try to communicate through Ami's internal monologue; the crux of her being to some degree especially when put into context of Odile's 32 fouettés & aforesaid 'look effortless / push through' philosophy.
For starters, said quote & the idea of going through the motions with a smile on her face, effortlessly, without ever communicating to anyone how she is truly feeling, mentally or physically & never allowing anyone to see a moment of unease, is a sentiment deeply engrained in her mind, a philosophy she has been living by for as long as she could remember; subconsciously (*). Of course Amélie would grow up to be a paragon of self-control, excellent at masking & coping with her [undiagnosed] autism through basically subjecting herself to the worst kind of exposure therapy & believing it to be something every young dancer, & by extension young woman, would need to plow through. Never once did she question it for that reason & never once did she consider her perfectionism or obsessive self-monitoring to be odd.
(*) & by extension, to some degree, this is Widow's life philosophy too, again in an utterly subconscious & unchecked, slightly altered way by the nature of how unfeeling / different & yet alike Widow is; there is a reason why she accepts her circumstances at Talon for the longest time & just goes through the motions & why she tries to ignore the harrowing reality of her situation. She is self-aware of her physical & mental malaise but... chooses to 'just not interact with it'; ignore it for the lack of a better word & not communicate that sentiment to anyone. To sit with it rather & try to shrug it off when things do get bad (which Amélie was prone to as well; the mind forgets but the body remembers It's a meta for a different way) ⸻ to be either Amélie or Widowmaker means to always be in a physical &/or mental state of discomfort in one way or another; it's very own form of horror if you think about it]
Amélie forced herself to adapt to the world around her & accepted discomfort as a permanent part of her being; may it be in the form of physical aches & pain felt when dancing throughout most of her career, pushing herself further & further for her dream; the very one thing she was ineffably passionate about or in the form of, for example, sensitivities to overlapping noise, & hot spotlights or the constant social-exposure & chameleon-esque molding of her personality she coaxed herself through at outings to always be the most amusing, charming, beautiful & pleasant person in the room. It makes sense she would be that way, growing up the way she did (through the direct influences of the world around her; her mother, ballet school / the ballet environment / sphere & the social strata she would be elevated into when eventually making it as a ballet dancer to name some examples).
To her, pain & uneasiness are normal aspects of her everyday life & agonies she learned to live through for the sake of her art, the very thing she loved more than life itself; just how she learned to sacrifice much & more in the name of her beloved ballet, too, because in her point of view there just is no room for mistakes, no room for fear. If the mask would slip just once, she would put her whole life in jeopardy, no?
