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I'm a professional ballet dancer and have always known that sports training has so many parallels to dance training. Listening to the show this morning made it even clearer to me than ever how similar the two pursuits are. Dancers aren't training for one ultimate competition like the Olympics, but there are still concrete and quantifiable goals we strive for that define our achievement levels as dancers.

Anyway, as far as the so-called sacrifices young kids make to study and train in one discipline, aiming for elite levels of ability--- I don't believe there ARE any sacrifices! There is simply no comparison between the gratification, emotional and psychological development, and pure joy and satisfaction that come from training hard at something you love, and the "regular" or "normal" teenage lifestyle. And the maturity a young person develops from such focus puts them light-years ahead of kids who don't have something so meaningful and powerful to delve into.

I never, ever felt I was missing out on anything as a kids or teenager training for a professional ballet career. In fact, I pitied my schoolmates that didn't have something like ballet to do after school! The last thing I wanted in the world would have been to just hang out, maybe play softball, go to the mall, go to the prom... I didn't miss a thing, and I don't think any kid who does feel like they're missing out will stay with their sport long enough to actually miss it.

posted 4 years, 10 months ago
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