AI Summary
5 min readBallet, as Megan Burbank explains, did not begin as the punishing, hyper-athletic, body-obsessed art form we know today. It started in the 16th and 17th centuries as a hobby for fancy men in the French court—including Louis XIV, the Sun King—who did little rises onto the balls of their feet and simple arm flourishes while wearing tights that showed off their legwork. Women were present but hidden under enormous dresses. The entire enterprise looked nothing like the extreme, superhuman physicality of a modern ballet company.
The shift from courtly pastime to the cult of the ballerina came only after the French Revolution, when the association with royalty became toxic. Ballet moved to the opera house, became a professional pursuit for the lower classes, and women—now the stars—began dancing en pointe. The first famous ballerina, Marie Taglioni, popularized the technique in the 19th century, creating an ethereal, floating effect that suited the romantic, often horror-coded ballets of the era like Giselle, where ghostly women (the Wilis) force men to dance themselves to death. Her shoes were soft; she relied on sheer muscular strength to rise onto her toes, not the rigid, paper-mâché-and-satin shoes dancers use today. Burbank notes that going on pointe, when done correctly with proper training and a well-fitted shoe, should not be painful—it should feel like "a really tight hug
Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.
Read Full Summary →Free • No credit card required
Never miss an episode of You're Wrong About
Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
What you'll learn
- 1 (00:24) **Guest Introduction: Megan Burbank's Ballet Journey** - Journalist Megan Burbank joins to discuss her adult ballet hobby and what people get wrong about the art form.
- 2 (06:50) **Ballet's Origins: A Courtly Art for Men** - The history of ballet begins not with ballerinas, but with aristocratic men at the French court.
- 3 (12:45) **The Post-Revolution Shift & the Rise of the Ballerina** - The French Revolution topples ballet's aristocratic patrons, leading to a class shift and the birth of the ballerina as a star.
- 4 (15:10) **The Mechanics and Myth of Pointe Work** - A detailed explanation of how pointe shoes actually work, debunking the idea that they are inherently painful tools of torture.
- 5 (21:00) **The Myth of Ballet as Suffering** - The episode's central thesis: the idea that ballet must be intrinsically painful is a harmful misconception.
- 6 (23:55) **Romantic Ballet & The Uncanny Horror of the Wilis** - The evolution of pointe work created an ethereal, floating effect that was used to depict supernatural, often terrifying, female spirits in ballets like *Giselle*.
- 7 (27:17) **The Balanchine Era & The Problematic Body Ideal** - The 20th century saw ballet become more athletic, but also more exclusive, with George Balanchine establishing a narrow, thin body type as the aesthetic ideal.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Megan Burbank’s gotta dance. The centuries-old dance style known as ballet has been stereotyped in our modern world with images of refined, wispy, frighteningly disciplined young women fighting viciously for roles in ethereal productions. For this episode, Adult Dance Correspondent Megan Burbank shares with Sarah the history and transformation of this misunderstood art from its early days as a fancy French aristocratic performance, to its post-French Revolution embrace by the working class, and finally into 20th century America when the expected body of the ballerina began to take shape. Megan also shares her own experience as a late-onset ballerina, dispelling myths about what ballet is, who can participate, and what we can learn about ourselves through its techniques. Together they discuss the line between art and sport, the aspects of horror found in many ballets, and whether it is too late for all of us to become the prima ballerina of our dreams. Digressions include: Final Destination acupuncture, the smell of the Scholastic book fair, and the questionable advertising employed by Tab soda.
Send your submissions for our Halloween Listener Spectacular (scary stories or Halloween nostalgia) to [email protected] before August 31st!
Referenced:
How Political Anxiety Turned Me into a Late-Onset Ballerina
International Adult Ballet Festival
More Megan Burbank:
Burbank Industries on Substack
Produced + edited by Miranda Zickler
More You're Wrong About:
Bonus Episodes on Patreon
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
More from this podcast
You're Wrong About →