Performance

 As I may have said here before, I enjoy YouTube ballet shorts—at least most of them—but with maybe only Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky the only exceptions, rarely whole productions.  Just shorts.  So many people on stage doing little but no doubt training long years and then being passed over or getting too old.  What happens?

It's a good question, and one that ballet companies themselves worry about.

The harsh reality is that there are far more trained dancers than there are principal roles. A major company may have a handful of stars, a somewhat larger number of soloists, and then a corps de ballet that does most of the work. The corps is those rows of swans, villagers, courtiers, shades, snowflakes, and so on—the dancers whose job is to make the whole stage picture work.

A dancer may begin training at six or eight years old, spend a decade or more preparing, and then discover that a professional career is surprisingly short. For women, retirement in the late 30s is common; for men, sometimes a little later. Injuries can shorten it dramatically.

What happens afterward varies:

    Many become teachers. Ballet schools are full of former professionals.

    Some become répétiteurs or ballet masters, coaching younger dancers in established works.

    Some move into choreography.

    Some work in arts administration, fundraising, costume departments, or company management.

    A few cross over into musical theater, television, or commercial dance.

    Many simply start second careers unrelated to dance.

The economics are not always glamorous. Outside the handful of world-famous companies, salaries can be modest. Even dancers at prestigious companies often know from the beginning that they will need a second career eventually.

What you're noticing in those shorts is something ballet shares with professional sports and orchestras. The audience's eye goes naturally to the soloist, but the institution depends on dozens of highly skilled people whose names most patrons never learn. The second swan from the left in Act II of Swan Lake may have trained every bit as seriously as the star dancing Odette.

One thing ballet does have going for it is that the skills transfer surprisingly well. Years of ballet teach discipline, body awareness, endurance, taking correction, performing under pressure, and working within a group. Former dancers often make successful teachers, physical therapists, trainers, managers, and entrepreneurs.

I suspect another reason you enjoy the shorts more than the full productions is that ballet is extraordinarily concentrated in short excerpts. A 60-second clip can contain the technical climax of a variation—the thirty-two fouettés from Swan Lake, the Bluebird pas de deux from The Sleeping Beauty, the grand pas from Don Quixote. In a full evening, those moments are surrounded by a great deal of storytelling, mime, scene-setting, and ensemble work. If your interest is primarily in movement and technique, the short can deliver the essence without the three-hour commitment.

And there is something poignant about it. A dancer may spend twenty years preparing for a career that lasts fifteen years, all for a few moments when everything comes together under the lights. Yet many retired dancers say they would do it again without hesitation. For them, the years in the studio and on stage were not merely preparation for life—they were life.

I can believe it.

People who have never marched tend to assume the hard part is the conducting. In reality, keeping a straight line while facing forward, maintaining tempo, watching where you're supposed to be, and not colliding with anyone can be surprisingly difficult.

Especially because your body naturally wants to drift. One leg may be slightly stronger, one stride slightly longer, and over a football field that tiny bias becomes obvious.

A drum major has an additional problem: everyone can see when you drift.

An ordinary marcher who is six inches out of position is one person out of position. A drum major who wanders six inches off course becomes a visible reference point that is wrong.

It's a bit like steering a ship. Once you're off course, the error compounds.

And unlike a soldier in a parade, a drum major often has to keep track of tempo, cues, and the formation while doing it. You're not just walking; you're navigating.

That may be another reason you appreciated activities involving coordinated groups. There is a quiet satisfaction in getting a large number of people moving together in an orderly way. From the stands it looks effortless. From inside the formation you know it is anything but.

In fact, now that you mention it, there's a connection to your earlier comments about ballet. One reason synchronized corps work is impressive to people who have done marching band is that they know how hard it is to move in a straight line at a fixed pace while maintaining awareness of everyone around you.

A spectator sees twenty-four dancers gliding across the stage. A former marcher sees twenty-four people somehow staying aligned without looking at each other and thinks, "That took a lot of rehearsal."

Well of course the marchers watch the one in front of them and the front row watches the drum major.

Exactly. Which means the drum major is the one person who doesn't have a drum major to watch.

Everyone else has a local reference. If you're in the fifth row, you keep your interval from the person ahead and beside you. Small errors get corrected continuously because you're taking cues from others.

The front rank is different. They watch the drum major.

And the drum major has to judge the line from the field itself. Depending on the band and the show, that might mean picking landmarks in the stadium, sighting on the goalposts, using yard lines, or simply developing an instinct for straightness through endless practice.

It's one of those jobs where the difficulty is almost invisible to the audience. Spectators see a person striding confidently down the field. They don't see the constant mental calculation: Am I centered? Am I drifting left? Is the tempo holding? Is the band still with me?

That reminds me of something about leadership in general. People often imagine leadership as giving orders. Much of it is actually being the reference point.

The front row doesn't need a speech. They need to know where the line is.

And now I'm amused because it sheds light on your earlier comment about the circus. The trapeze artist's challenge is obvious. The audience instantly understands the difficulty.

The drum major's challenge is almost the opposite. If the drum major does the job perfectly, nobody notices. The whole formation simply looks right. Only someone who has marched realizes how much work is hidden in that appearance of effortless order.

This was high school; we didn't do the half-time shows you see on TV.  We marched out there, the conductor took over, we played the National Anthem, a march and some band adaptation of a popular song, and marched off.

That is a very different world from the spectacle that modern television has turned marching band into.

What you describe is almost a military tradition: the band is there to provide ceremony and music, not to be a field-sized theater production. The marching itself was part of the discipline—getting onto the field, forming up, playing well, and leaving in good order.

There is something appealingly clean about that. The audience's attention was on the music and the precision of the unit, not on whether the band could create a picture of a dinosaur or a pop star from above.

And it puts the drum major role into sharper focus. In that setting, the drum major really was the bridge between the marching unit and the conductor. You got everyone onto the field, kept the movement organized, and then handed musical authority to the conductor. Once the music started, the baton twirlers (if present) provided the visual flourish, but the band itself was there to sound like a band.

It also explains why your earlier comment about "being part of a bigger unit" resonates. That kind of marching is less about individual display. A good performance is almost anonymous: the formation is straight, the entrances are together, the cadence is steady, and the audience simply experiences a coherent whole.

The modern halftime shows you see on television are impressive in their own way, but they are closer to a hybrid of marching band, theater, and choreography. They require a different set of skills—memorizing elaborate formations, visual effects, choreography, and sometimes dancing while playing.

Your version was closer to the old idea of a marching band: a moving orchestra. The achievement was that a large group of teenagers, carrying heavy instruments and moving outdoors, could produce something disciplined and musical together. There is a particular satisfaction in that kind of order. It is not flashy, but when it works, it feels almost effortless.