Someone puts broken glass in your pointe shoes? Seriously? Does this even come close to reality? If so...that's just sad.
"You've gotta make decisions, even if they're wrong. If you stop making decisions, you're stuffed." -- Joe Simpson (Touching the Void)
It is my understanding that ruthless, backstabbing things like that happened much more in the past. As time has gone on, ballet dancers have become more civil and amiable toward each other - though there still can be a lot of competitive tension. Dancers are just a lot "nicer" about wanting to beat out their colleagues for roles/positions these days. The ample competitiveness that exists among dancers is often concealed with a veneer of (reserved) friendliness.
When I watched the early episodes of this show, the "cattiness" the dancers exhibited toward one another immediately struck me as exaggerated and somewhat unrealistic. This was part of the entertainment value - knowing that dancers generally don't behave anywhere near that ridiculously toward each other these days.
Don't get me wrong; things are likely not always very "warm and fuzzy" among dancers (who all are vying for a very limited number of soloist and principal positions) - and I'm sure that there are a lot of relationships that are compromised or non-existent. But for anyone who walks into the headquarters of a ballet company expecting to see and hear the things that were in "Flesh and Bone", they mostly would be disappointed.
That's what I suspected. Thank you.
But sometimes a scene in a movie has such specificity that it makes one feel it must have been inspired by reality.
There are old stories about old-time ballerinas putting ground glass in their rivals' pointe shoes.I don't know how true they are, though.
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