masterkurt, I'm actually very surprised that you seem to have met dancers who weren't very unstable. Are you sure they were professional ballet dancers? Professional ballet academies admit you when you're a child, you are there literally all day from morning to night. You are not allowed to go out and be social, you are not allowed to date. I had hardly ever met a straight guy until I was 18. For dancers, the treatment I described literally all they know.

I don't, however, think it's fair to say that dancers are masochists. I don't know anybody who didn't hate the way we had to live. It's just that dance is absolute euphoria, to the point where you see dancers with blood squishing in their pointe shoes and they literally haven't even noticed. The more depressed you make a dancer, the more she'll need to dance and the more beautiful her dancing will be. This is exactly why Balanchine "revolutionized" the ballet industry to ensure that dancers were depressed and anorexic. He was very frank and open about that.

mythicat, another dancer! Very nice to meet you! Actually, I'm trying not to give away my identity here, but I'm American. I've only been in Sweden for the past few years. That kind of thing doesn't exist in Sweden, the people before profit attitude is very strictly enforced. Are you still dancing for fun? I hope so, it's so good for you.