“The Level of Toxicity” — Ballerina Lists Rules Dancers Need to Follow, Internet Is Horrified

It's a well-documented fact that dance culture is one of the most toxic, judgmental, parsing, and petty environments — there are tons of posts uploaded by people online who have described it as such, especially when it comes to ballet.

One Redditor flat-out asked about professional dancers: "Why is everyone in the dance industry either cocky, filled with toxic positivity or both?"

Unfortunately, this post uploaded by a TikToker named Liv @livonpointe_ doesn't do much to sway anyone's minds about the stereotypes associated with professional dancers either.

As a professional ballerina, she shared a list of rules that she says probably wouldn't fly in the "regular job[s]" people have. She looks in a notebook in her video and begins to rattle off these stipulations that are closely associated with her vocation.

"This is a list of things I think would shock regular people with regular jobs who don't know anything about ballet," she states at the onset before getting into the first rule: Number one — no talking. No talking in class, no talking in rehearsal, no talking when a rehearsal director is talking, or artistic director: no talking."

She continued, "Disrespectful, you will get penalized." Next up, she said, was that leaning against the bar or "sitting down" was completely against the rules. In fact, the only time anyone is allowed to sit down is when they're "doing an exercise or stretching."

Leaning against the bar or sitting down is considered "disrespectful."

Another sign of disrespect? Not looking "present," or appearing "lazy ... that's a big, big no-no."

She then revealed how "dancers literally dance on broken bones, raw skin, bleeding toes, no toenails, bruised toenails, literally more things that I can count on my hands." She goes on to state it's because "we're psychotic and a bit masochistic," before adding, "but that's just like a regular thing that we do."

"We, yeah, we could be in excruciating pain but you won't know."

Another aspect of that #balletlife, Liv says, dispels a lot of rumors about suppositions people may have about the intelligence of ballerinas. "We rehearse many different ballets at once. So people may be like, 'oh ballet dancers aren't that smart, like a lot of them don't go to school.' We have five different ballets and five different levels of choreography going on in our brain almost all the time."

She adds, "It's a lot of choreography; normal people do not understand what that skill set takes to build," before adding that for all of this effort, ballerinas aren't really making that much money: "We don't get paid very much at all. A rookie in the NFL gets paid $750,000 in their first year of contracts ... no," she says, pointing to the camera.

While one may argue that the ballets aren't packing stadiums (well, outside of this episode of Bubble Guppies), the amount of trauma and the athletic demands that ballerinas have to undergo is quite rigorous for the amount of money they receive. Glassdoor writes that a professional ballerina can expect to make anywhere from $72,000 to $130,000 per year.

"No," she went to simply say of ballerina pay, before divulging that there is no such thing as "rookie pay" for ballerinas: "Most entry-level company positions are not paid. Just think about that."

She then set her sights on another aspect of being a ballerina: "Ballet fashion, ballet core, which a lot of people are trying to create a trend about ballet core."

Liv continued to state that ballerina core in fashion isn't representative of what ballerinas actually look like on the day to day: "And it's all very dainty and pink and cute but in reality the more you look homeless the more you're actually participating in ballet core. If you're wearing ripped up tights as a shirt, you've got it, girl."

According to the TikToker, being a ballerina doesn't come cheap, either: "How expensive everything is, like, you know, take a ballet class — you need basics: leotard, tights, maybe a skirt, maybe some leg warmers, ballet shoes, pointe shoes. Pointe shoes cost over $100 by themselves; a leotard is like, what, $75? It really adds up."

She went on to mention that these expenditures are made all the more costly due to the fact that ballerinas' salaries aren't that high to begin with.

"And we don't get paid that much so good luck with that," she says. And there's another aspect people don't consider, Liv says in her next point: "How competitive it is."

"People are like 'oh that's cute, you do ballet.' Like no, it's not cute. Only 3 percent of people make it to professional careers. It's not cute. I've done a lot to get here. And I feel like because a lot of people don't know all these facts, they think it's just, it's just ballet. And it is just ballet, but we're insane," she said at the end of her video.