Quote Originally Posted by masterkurt
The ballet world, for instance ..... certainly a very demanding environment, but is it really such that pupils are willfully constantly abused and that every man in that milieu is a sadist and " every female destroying herself to please them" ?

If this was true, only truly submissive and masochistic females would stand and survive ballet schools and become professional dancers.... (I have to look for a dancer)
I studied dance here in America for most of the 14 years between ages 5-19 (primarily modern and jazz, just 1yr ballet) and it was a universal joke across all genres of dance that to be a dancer you HAD to be a masochist!

But in America, we do it to ourselves. If I'd had a teacher who was abusive I could easily have found another. Whereas in a lot of the rest of the world, the choices are fewer. In some places athletics are practically a form of slavery where the parents ship the kids off to training facilities and hardly ever see them again. In some places, as brutal as training can be, it's the only chance at a life above the poverty level and if you have the talent you'd be a fool to squander it. And sometimes a love of dance is just undeniable and you do what you have to in order to make it your life. As for the trainers, they don't always have much choice either. When the state runs your program, you have a lot of pressure on you to turn out stars as efficiently as possible. Plus that's the way in which they were probably trained themselves, it's all they know. If they didn't have it in them to work their students hard, they'd likely soon be trying to find other work. And what else would they be qualified for?