Off-Topic / Stop the SS!!!! [140]


It's normally just a torn knee ligament or Achilles tendonitis and a few surgeries! And ballet dancers are happy, it's something people want to do because they love ballet and want to dedicate their lives to it.


That's weird for a woman to do. Pointe shoes only really damage the feet if they don't fit correctly (admittedly, most of the time).


🤦...
I'll forgive you, a lot of people think this. Ballet dancers are humans who eat, just with a very specific body type of lean muscle and nearly no fat. Could you exercise for 10 hours per day 6 day per week eating nothing? No? Ballet dancers aren't different in that way. Humans (yes, ballet dancers are human, who knew) can't either.


Weight requirement for Vaganova at 167cm is 45.1kg +/- 1kg. Nothing outside of that. Ballet requires a very specific body type, a very small build (not in height, that should be in the 160s-70s) lean muscle and almost no fat. People without the correct body type are not accepted if they're auditioning or expelled (not just randomly, there are fewer places each class, there are always people who are expelled every year) if they just developed the wrong way. Even the toe shape/length is considered. No one wants to see a dancer without the correct body type.

Off-Topic / Stop the SS!!!! [140]


There are two, actually. Bolshoi and Vaganova. And the style isn't the problem, the way the dancers are treated is. The styles in Russian ballet are beautiful and very important.


The correct weight for my height - 45kg. The ballet academies have specific requirements for weight and body type, of course. No one would pay to see a dancer with an incorrect body type.


They aren't prostitutes, they're ballet dancers.


The schools don't force them to audition. And they're not exploited, they're privileged, they have the best teachers and even get to dance on the company stages (for example, Vaganova students dance in the Mariinsky and sometimes Mikhailovsky).

UK, Ireland / Boris Johnson - is the new British PM a popular figure in Poland? [150]

@Vincent
These politicians you speak of, are autistic or something?

Off-Topic / Stop the SS!!!! [140]

@jon357
Most people don't spend half of their childhoods away from family to attempt to have a career, with the guarantee of injury and almost guarantee of lifelong physical issues.

It's the fault of the ballet system, not the dancers.

UK, Ireland / Boris Johnson - is the new British PM a popular figure in Poland? [150]


It's barely a question. A 2 year old knows what a woman is.

Off-Topic / Stop the SS!!!! [140]

@jon357
Can you imagine spending 8-10 years of your life (average) working extremely hard on something, in every little detail, only to not be as successful as your talent would suggest simply because of personal or political reasons? Ballet dancers in Russia normally enter a ballet academy between 8-10 and often live away from family to study ballet, for hours per day 6 days every week normally to enter a corps de ballet.

Russian ballet has always had political motives. For example Plisetskaya's career was never as good as she deserved until she was 31 because she was Jewish and her parents had been persecuted.

Off-Topic / Stop the SS!!!! [140]


They do! It's worst in the Bolshoi though.

Off-Topic / Stop the SS!!!! [140]

@jon357
Did I ever say the Ukraine war is right? Of course it isn't, but that doesn't make other bad things, even if not equal, fine.

Do you think every Russian is alike? Like that idiot online who said Russian people have long limbs just because the ballet dancers do.

News / Lech Walesa urged to "reduce Russia" to 50 million people [360]


If anyone tried to make it happen, there would be no "if". Russia will not be destroyed.


This is the key word... some are more easily lied to than others.

News / Lech Walesa urged to "reduce Russia" to 50 million people [360]

@Paulina
Please no SS.
It's just pointless and dumb to overreact or react at all to a stupid old man. They should focus on important things, like ending the Ukraine war and working towards helping fix Ukraine and Russia while handing power to someone else immediately.

News / Lech Walesa urged to "reduce Russia" to 50 million people [360]


In an ideal world. Back to reality now.
@Paulina
He's an idiot, but the overreaction is crazy. He can't do anything to Russia anyway, it doesn't matter what he says.

News / Lech Walesa urged to "reduce Russia" to 50 million people [360]


I agree, only because I'm on PF.

News / Lech Walesa urged to "reduce Russia" to 50 million people [360]

@Velund
I am not worrying or choosing sides. I said a fact.

News / Lech Walesa urged to "reduce Russia" to 50 million people [360]

@Velund
Speculating is useless and drugs/corruption or anything like that isn't the point. Would you for example stab your grandmother for money?

News / Lech Walesa urged to "reduce Russia" to 50 million people [360]

@Miloslaw
It isn't about whether or not Russian. Supporting innocent people (including children and babies) being killed is a matter of humanity. War as principal is evil, even if Ukraine is run by Nazis (isn't the president Jewish? My question is why would a Jew be a Nazi when Nazis mass killed Jews? It makes no sense).

@Velund
The world needs a lot of people to keep going, and everything would be destroyed. Society would go back to beginning.

News / Lech Walesa urged to "reduce Russia" to 50 million people [360]

@Velund
Everyone could be dead before winter. There could be no West, no Russia. It just needs a few nuclear bombs and everyone's dead.

News / Lech Walesa urged to "reduce Russia" to 50 million people [360]


Maybe. It isn't a view on life anyone is happy with (well, obviously).


I avoided that, I don't want to waste anyone's time by ranting for hours. I don't want to think of him in a way of hatred either. I can't, mafketis was the first person to reply to me at all on PF, I always liked him, I'm not going to think of him saying things like that (which what is said is something deserving of a punch in the face, but I'm sure he doesn't think that of Russia and all Russians as a whole).


It isn't even Slavs, it's human beings. What's the real point? One person being killed in a war is terrible not only for them but for others. Little children even are killed and their families. That is a horror.


Definitely not.


Like in the Soviet Union (of course not a wall). That is what Putin wants, Soviet times. I hope not.

News / Lech Walesa urged to "reduce Russia" to 50 million people [360]


Most do not think so strangely. Russians are and have always been not much worse at imagining "happiness" as any others.

News / Lech Walesa urged to "reduce Russia" to 50 million people [360]


Happy is fake. Only misery is real.


I know. It's just a matter of realising happiness is fake. Most never do, living whole lives not knowing the truth. Maybe not knowing is better.... What is truth? That turns to a paradox, it can't be known what is without truth. Does it even exist?


Whenever I did that I was even less happy thinking I was alone in misery... Which isn't true, everyone is ultimately just waiting to die, it makes no difference how, it's all just pointless misery.

@mafketis
A lot of Russian art is suppressed. Who knows what geniuses have never been seen because of supression...

News / Lech Walesa urged to "reduce Russia" to 50 million people [360]

@Miloslaw
Not just Russia. Existence anywhere at this time. It will always be the same. Just misery, everywhere. Nothing is better or worse, everything is misery. Who can someone be to complain about life in Russia, they could be shot in Ukraine by horror, just pure evil governs the entirety of the world.

Life is meant to be misery and suffering. There is no true happiness.

News / Lech Walesa urged to "reduce Russia" to 50 million people [360]


Death. It's preferable to this hellhole that is called "life". No one has it better, not even if they think so. Life = misery.
Probably something might be done when people are starving to death and there are dead people in the streets.


Of course. There is a way in art, but it must be kept hidden anything that goes against the rules of the leaders. Not worthless though, it's beautiful.

It goes beyond politics. This is a question of worthlessness... A fair and peaceful world might be worth living in.

News / Lech Walesa urged to "reduce Russia" to 50 million people [360]


No, I see your point of view. By principal, I agree, but I'm not 100% sure about.


Fear, not putting a fair system first, other reasons. It's complicated.


You really think so? With no thought to the achievements even in art forms not mentioning the many other fields. What about the ballet, writings, music, painters? Russia is in purity a country of art, not flourishing as it could under censorship. It's sad really that the government destroys Russia in purity, but I guess it can help art in a way, many Russian people have always used art forms to escape from unpleasant lives.


More war is more destruction, which leads to unfixable evil which leads to permanent misery. Everyone is just in a constant cycle of misery, happiness is just a small escape which has to end quickly. Why won't this horror just end?

News / Lech Walesa urged to "reduce Russia" to 50 million people [360]

@mafketis
A tsar is royal. Putin is not. That is the difference.

News / Lech Walesa urged to "reduce Russia" to 50 million people [360]

@mafketis
There is no tsar. A president dictator, but not tsar.

News / Lech Walesa urged to "reduce Russia" to 50 million people [360]

@mafketis
Russia is different. It's easy to judge, not so easy to be in the situation where nothing can be done, only it's better just to not think about.

News / Lech Walesa urged to "reduce Russia" to 50 million people [360]


Go out and tell people you're a Nazi. Obviously, being a non supporter of Putin is extremely opposite from Nazi, but it's both kind of suicidal idiocy.

Actually, there have been Russian people criticising publicly, though a lot left Russia right after, not all.

News / Lech Walesa urged to "reduce Russia" to 50 million people [360]


I "advise" you to never say that.


Everything? You're forgetting an over large ego. Russia is the largest country in the world but it's smaller than his ego, somehow.

Off-Topic / Stop the SS!!!! [140]


Having met her many times, I can confidently say she is, and very beautiful too.


It's pretty much the only way. Everyone wants a promotion, almost everyone is good enough, it's down to who has the better patron and/or social media, even if they're less talented. It's not fair, of course, but it's just how it is. Traditionally even, for centuries, although less frequent in the 1930s-1960s, which was interestingly one of the best times of ballet.


Not always. Many smarter more talented people use the corruption, although it's generally true.


True, that's undeniable


That's unfair. It isn't like it doesn't happen abroad, though definitely much rarer.

Off-Topic / Stop the SS!!!! [140]


No, it just doesn't work that way. The people in power will always be stronger and more effective, and so even the people who don't like them have to live under their rule. It's just what life in Russia is.

Life / Polish Classical Music [100]

I know it's a classical music thread, but I want to say Nadezhda Batoeva has recently been made prima ballerina of the Mariinsky.