I didn't do ballet but I was a Highland and Irish dancer! I did competitive highland dance, and let me tell you the number of sketchy (read slick) stages I had to compete on was just ridiculous. I absolutely sprained my ankle on stage so many times and just had to dance through it (especially if it happened during the Highland Reel, since that is a four person dance and if one person stops dancing it ruins everything for the other dancers). I feel like falling or twisting your ankle and just getting back up is one of those universal dancer things.
@@avionpiscean33 My dance teacher never would have let any of us modify our shoes! If she saw tape or saw us taking sandpaper to our shoes we would get an absolute earful! I knew some girls from another dance school who would purposely spill soda and walk in it to make the bottoms of their ghillies sticky before a competition!
@@daniellerpace oh dear. That's intense. Reminds me of one of my younger brother's first dance teachers. She was sooo militant, and he has asd, so it was a really messy time for him there. We eventually switched to a much nicer school, and I joined shortly after, since the previous school didn't take adults. I'd wanted to take classes since I was little. The instructor there was so sweet. I miss it so much.
My studio had a tradition where everyone would applaud for someone who fell. It sounds sort of humiliating to draw attention to the person that way, but it wasn't. I can't remember exactly how the intent of it was taught, but basically it was a show of applauding the effort of the dancer to go all in and fumble rather than holding back and playing it safe. Again, it sounds like it would be mortifying but somehow it felt like a super supportive practice.
Also, if you do get used to everyone drawing attention to it, then maybe when it happens on stage with everyone watching, it just feels more normal and you can get up and carry on like you've practised?
There's something similar for figure skating competitions where the audience still claps when the skater falls. Similar effect, too. It's thought of as encouraging the skater to keep going and finish the program!
I think that's great! Not long ago, I saw a video of a musical theater performer make a mistake while singing. The audience applauded, but it was in an encouraging way, as if they were saying, "Keep going! You're fantastic and we love you!"
I know it’s not QUITE the same, but when I worked at a restaurant as a dishwasher, if someone dropped a plate, we’d yell “don’t touch!” But we’d applaud
@@leiliyahdecotta I know right! My husband used to find it ironic that I could dance so gracefully, then turn around and (as he used to say) trip over air 😳🤣
One of my best fails was when we were doing Don Quixote and during a trio choreo, I accidentally threw my fan across the stage. I’m so glad my friend got it on video because I can laugh at it even years after 😂
was in snow rehearsal the other day and someone fell, they were fine but one of the girls said "The sooner you get up the sooner you didn't fall." I think about this every night and it makes me laugh.
"We're not allowing anyone to use rosin anymore because we need to protect the floors." So... umm... who is going to protect me? Because I promise you, it ain't the floors!
At my daughter’s first YAGP competition, nearly every single performer was slipping on the stage, even the grand roux winner. I was sitting in the audience nearly sick with worry that my daughter would fall. However, no one from her studio fell because their teacher pointed out the slippery spots to them before they went on stage (which I didn’t know until afterwards). I cannot tell you how relieved I was when her solo was over.
I love the positive attitude and the kudos for the perseverance of the dancers. you are so supportive and sweet and honest about the needed athleticism AND the fact that we all stumble. I love it.
During our performance run in my high school drama group, one of the actors had to make a small jump into a cauldron at the end of the play. He did it so many times, over and over and over and was totally fine... On our judged performance and the last time we would ever do the play, he messed up. Broke his ankle when he landed in the cauldron, and the guy managed to just sit there in utter agony curled up in the fetal position while everyone else finished out the play around him. We didn't even know he was hurt til the curtain went down and he shouted for someone to call an ambulance.
My only accident on stage (SO lucky!) wasn't a fall. It was a modern piece, and there was this section where we were kinda hunched over in an upper back contraction that had us looking at the floor, all in a close fit line, swaying side to side while our right arms swung out repeatedly. (You can probably see where this is going.) The girl to my left whacked me in the nose so hard, blood immediately started pouring down my face. I could feel that my lower face was covered. The next section involved all this repeatedly running up to each other to partner with someone new, and every time my partner would flinch in surprise for a split second. I could guess it was pretty bad. 😂 But I kept going, as you do. I was told you couldn't tell from the audience, which was REALLY good to hear. Cleaning up before my next piece was interesting and involved multiple dancers trying to help while my "assailant" apologized over and over. I think she felt worse than I hurt.
What I find absurd is the floors are THAT slippery. "Hey hurdlers, we know what you're doing requires tremendous athletic ability and holds a measure of physical danger, but from now on you have to run on what is essentially GLASS". Many of those videos looked like they were at the same event.
The last time I performed one of my solos in high school, I decided to give it a bit extra, went too high on my grand jete en tournant, and pretty much belly-flopped. It felt like I laid on the floor for an eternity, but when I rewatched the video, I just popped right back up! I skipped a bit of the choreo and jumped right into the fouettes and, because I was musically early, I had to throw in a few extra. Our wonderful audience of family and friends gave a round of applause when I was done my turns :)
I took 2 semesters of ballet in college. I was, according to the instructor, one of the better dancers because I used to be a gymnast. So, of course, we're about to do a full saut de chat across the floor for the first time and she's like, "Austin, you go first! Show the ladies how it's done!" I overextended during the jump and ate it on the landing. I was fine, gymnasts know how to minimize damage from falls. I couldn't help but burst out laughing. The class was all, "Didn't you say you could flips and stuff!" Me: "It's not the same!"
I fell (on my butt) during a tap class many years ago when I was pregnant and everyone acted like I'd died. I was like, "I'm fine! I landed on my butt! I'm sure the baby's fine!" (Spoiler: he was, and still is.) Sometimes, the floor just does not want to hang out with your feet and would prefer to hang out with your bum instead.
Different style of dance here, but I have two big 'flops' whilst on stage. I'm a gothic and metal fusion belly dancer. The first was when I almost shimmied out of my panel skirt mid performance. I'd lost weight since buying that skirt, and I thought since I wear a belt and a hip scarf to 'cinch' the skirt into place that I would be fine. Wrong. Very wrong. Mid performance during a big shimmy section, I started feeling my skirt sliding down my hips. Thankfully it stayed on, just lower than I wanted it. But I would have been left standing there in a dance belt and booty shorts if it'd kept going. Second was when I thought my right breast tried to escape my bra during a different performance. Thankfully it was improv so I was able to turn my back to the the audience and subtly check to make sure it was still in place and tuck it with my left hand just to make extra sure. It just looked like I was doing a variation of a sidewinder to the crowd. But my troupe mate realized EXACTLY what I was doing. 😅
College basketball(and football to some extent) flops are the funniest thing to me because they’re always fine but purposely stay down to draw a foul/penalty. I’m always like “aCtInG cLaSsEs WhO? 💅”
I'm a horseback rider as well as a (former) dancer. When you fall in ballet class because you forgot to spot and got dizzy, everyone gasps. 😮 When you fall off your horse you have to buy your coach a bottle of wine. Or a case of Diet Coke. 😁😅
i was doing a vault into the pit at gymnastics and i went for it but i didnt, so i front-flip-flopped into the pit and everyone was like "OMG R U OK" and i was like "yeah" and laughed🤣🤣😳😳 but we all get up and do it again! i can't tell you how many times i've flipped off a bar or slipped out of a turn in ballet.
Last year when I was in my dance class for high school, we did a contemporary piece and at one point I have to slide. Now, I am really good at sliding, like get me on americas got talent just to do slide all over the stage. Anyways, the problem is I can't control how long I slide for, but for this piece I had to end the slide on a very specific beat. So instead of sliding for every practice I would slide and then just land on my knees (which hurt really bad). But, on the last show night I did the slide perfectly. Also we did a fun jazz piece where me and my friend had to slide and somone jumped over me and someone jumped over them. One practice I was sliding (correctly) and they were to close to me and ran and hit straight into my hips. It hurt really bad and I just curled into the fetal position for like 10 seconds before getting up and painfully dancing through the rest of the high energy jazz dance. The song for it was Crusin' for a brusin' - so you can get the vibe of it.
Here's my story: we were doing Nutcracker and I was on pointe and we were dancing waltz of snowflakes, we were on stage and turning, my point shoe broke at that moment and I almost fell, but I kept my balance and continued but I sprained my ankle, I got out and it was hurting badly but I didn't have time to switch pointe shoes becouse I had a choreo in 30 seconds, I dance to a whole choreography for 10 minutes with a broken point shoe and a sprained ankle, then after the whole performance ended I couldn't get on point 2 months becouse it hurted so much... Yeah thats it! 😅
I got physically stuck onstage when my costume caught on the set as I tried to exit 😆 The two people following rear-ended me like I'd stopped suddenly in traffic 🤣🤣
Before ballet I did tap as a kid from 1st through 3rd grade. We were doing a performance that was going to be televised and the finale had us tapping in a huge circle, forming the spokes of a wheel. The powers that be decided they wanted the place to look great on TV so they waxed the stage! Kids were flying off as if we were doing a weird tap version of crack the whip. (Worse yet, the costume vests were covered in glued-on glitter and trust me - glitter burns on the insides of your upper arms are the worst!)
Not my fail, but watched it unfold and knew the dancers involved - during Nutcracker many years ago, Clara took off her pointe shoe and threw it across the stage to scare off the mice. She had a great arm, and the shoe flew all the way off the stage and down a set of stairs (not into the wings!). The Nutcracker Prince usually picked up her shoe from its intended landing place a few feet away and returned it to her, but since it landed below the stage, he couldn't find it and he had no shoe to give her!! Props to Kate (miss you and love you if you're reading this!!) for doing a long pas de deux in one pointe shoe and a toe pad. Someone eventually found the shoe between scenes when the lights were down, and she was able to do the rest of the show as normal, but wow it was stressful to watch!
On time during a recital my friend tripped me while everyone was running around on stage in the beginning( it’s inspired by Alice and wonder land) and I fell flat on my hip and the also my halter top fell forward and that’s my dance horror story
You know, the get up and recover is totally true as a principle and admirable. That being said, I think there's something just really fun and precious about rehearsal spaces where you can just flop, and do a sarcastic "I totally meant to do that" silly pose on the floor and sigh. Like something about the "well that happened" face to me is something I treasure. Because the laughing at it is private to the rehearsals and the people you're collaborating with. It's a fun memory that makes it to the final performance that only all the performers know about.
I wiped out a few times back in the dark ages when I spent my after school time in dance class. I always had a hard time not getting hysterical laughing. I was never headed to be any kind of professional dancer. I just did it because I liked it. It still amazes me how easy the pros make it look. My teachers always told us to act like everything was intentional no matter how bad we screwed up even in a performance.
I do ballet but also used to be a competitive skier, and one of the first things they teach you in skiing is how to fall correctly get up when you fall. Obviously you can’t really keep racing like you can keep dancing if you fall in ballet, but it’s really important because I’ve seen countless beginners stuck on the side of a mountain in some crazy snowball position because they don’t know how to get up.
Your story reminds me of a botched theatre audition I had, where after I fell off the stage and twisted my ankle. I had my first karate rank up test the next day, and I had to take the test with a swollen ankle roughly the size of an orange, maybe a bit smaller. The good news is I got my yellow belt still.
"It's how you recover" Absolutely. Never did dance, but I did theatre in school. One of my first plays in middle school was this comedy about auditions for a play where everyone who was auditioning was some form of crazy or terrible (meta
I once dropped a prop on stage and it bounced off the stage and right back into my hands. No one would have known it wasn’t intentional if my mom hadn’t GASPED LOUDLY from the audience.
I was in the nutcracker a couple years back and i was an angel and slipped but i got up fast and i was also behind the ballerina so we weree good. Man i wana start ballet again and i am reslly starting to regret ever leaving and i reslly wana get points but i dont think i can. idk they seem fun. waiting for my mama to call the studio already >:(. SHE SAID „Well call on monday and discus” WHA???? I TOLD YOU MORE THAN A WEEK AGO :((((((. she gave me permision to keep telling her about it. dont worry mama ima tell you every day and night.....love u mama ( im balkan so excuse my writing mistakes and i use mama because thats how we say it here :))
Back in my dancing days, invariably, I would stumble or trip over tape on the stage on the first night of a performance. However, my first night performance jitters/energy escalated epically the year I was dancing Clara in The Nutcracker. During my party scene/receipt of nutcracker solo, my energy was so high that on my last tour jete (just before Fritz stole the nutcracker from Clara), I was super maxed out on my jump that I messed up the landing and ended up on the ground. Luckily, the timing of it worked out well with the scene and I immediately played it off like it was intentional and part of the choreography, so it worked out. I still lmao when I think of it. 😂😂😂😂❤❤❤😂😂😂😂
I was a party kid in the nutcracker when I was 12. Did not fall dancing. Instead, during the Drosselmeyer-magic-trick-mime sequence, we were supposed to follow Drosselmeyer running in a circle- kind of like a swarm of bees. I fell while running in a circle and ripped a hole in my costume! This was during dress rehearsal and I thought I would be in so much trouble, but the costume mom fixed it and you couldn't even tell.
I was the "fall-er" in my ballet/dance classes, some teachers would get worried and make sure I was okay, (I always was, I quickly learned how to hall correctly) others would hear me thump and with a slight giggle say "Oh, was that Anina?!" I had a teacher tell me that the reason I feel so much, because I was NOT afraid of falling. And I think that is an oddly beautiful way to see the learning experience.
My 2nd yr of highschool. Doing a jazz showcase the wooden school stage for the school principals of the district. Jump, slip in the landing amd proceed to slide downstage so far that my entire bottom half was dangling off the front of the stage. I claw myself back up, and finish the remaining performance. Walk off the stage my ballet mistress, hits me on the shoulder and says, "Its fine you wont fall again." And she was right. I never did. Love from S.Africa!
SFBallet I saw somebody in the corps lose their footing during the Nutcracker snow scene, landed pretty hard and BAM she was back up and on her feet. I was really impressed at how quickly and gracefully she handled it.
I had this lyrical dance I was like seven years old and I was a froends Center for a part I did like a triple turn but the floor is like extremely slippery and I fell out of it and I was it because it was like during Covid and it’s like our first real life competition…
My ballet class (that I actually did not want to be in) had this annual dance for the first Christmas parade in my hometown (weekly parades) I was the reindeer that forgot where the edge of our ‘stage’ was… it was a flatbed truck trailer. Three feet to the asphalt. And I completely just ate it. And decided I would just stay there. Hard for the dancer of Rudolph to just not want to be Rudolph anymore
I have gotten tripped before onstage during a group dance. So I was going to do a round of back tuck by myself onstage, but a girl in the group dance tripped me right before I was supposed to do it. I quickly got up and did just a round off backhand spring. About a week after that we listened to the judges critiques and all three of them said something about how I got up right away and did a trick anyway. The competitions also send out videos of the dances, and luckily from the angle that the camera was on at the moment you couldn’t even see that I fell. So… yea!
We need a review of the Able To Act Act’Pointes!! They seem like an incredibly innovative shoe but they stray faaaaar from what’s considered classical and I’m absolutely fascinated by them.
When I did ballet, I slipped on the stage in the background cause of that talcum powder. The girls following me bumped into me like dominos but there was so much things with the dancers in the front rows, nobody noticed. When I did bollywood dancing, one of my friend behind me lost her earrings, she tried to pick them to prevent the other dancers to step on it cause this type of dance is barefoot and we could risk to hurt ourselves. But, I didn’t noticed her and I had to jump back off to perform one of the steps and I jumped on the Indian veil she was wearing on the top of her head and kept in place with many hairpins … so… she was dragged with veil and fell on me XD Sorry for my butchered English, I’m French
We love your reactions! Hopefully mini Josephine will not be kicking you too much from the stress! Great that you left the baby ballerinas for last...for the little one's sake!
In high school I did colorguard (the people with the flags with the marching band during football games, for those who may not know) and winter guard. On the days we had weekend rehearsals, we spent a good part of our mornings on dance and dance technique. One day we were doing chasses across the floor when I stepped on the hem of my pants and I faceplanted. Thank goodness the gym floor was rubberized and not wood, but it was hilarious. I also did something similar when I was in ballet class, I can't remember what we were doing, but I sure bit it! Falling sure makes the day interesting that is for sure!
I dance ballet as well as Modern, tap, jazz, lyrical, and i do musical theatre, i have been doing this since i was two so i have PLENTY of onstage fails
Hi,i am a 11 year old dancer and i'm about to get my pointe shoes, but like just walking down a hill regularly, my ankle just rolls sometimes? Is there a cause for this? can anyone help me?
I piqued into an arabesque just a little to far and rolled my foot in and imediatly hit the ground. Unfortunately I broke my foot at the filth metatarsal because I landed on my twisted foot when I hit the ground. This was mid nutcracker season and I ended up having to watch my company perform without me because I could not dance in a boot and crutches 😭🤣
Mayara Magri fell in front of the king and queen on the cinema live screen of Don Q, where she was Kitri, the other night. It happens to everyone. She got right back up and kept going.
In figure skating, we literally teach falling and getting back up as one of the very first skills. There may be something to say for taking this approach in ballet...
Hi, okay, I know this is unrelated to the video but can you react to some scottish traditional dancing? I think it will be interesting for you, Josephine.
Not ballet but we had a modern dance where we used really long fans (fans that had like “silk” scarves attached). We would slip on them all the time or accidentally tread on someone else’s 😅
During one of my dances in my senior showcase I had to dance in tap shoes (doing non tap moves) and I fell during both dress rehearsal while sliding from the wings and during the first performance because I was dancing really big
Running around the stage in a U shape (came on down stage left, run around the end up up stage left), slipped making the corner up stage right and slid on my knees across the entire length of the back of the stage. Burned a friction hole in my skirt and skinned the life out of my knee, but came up right into the pattern after we made it to our spots. The only people who realized it happened were girl running behind me and our choreographer in the wings
The thing with falling is if you dont make a deal out of it people tend to forget because you carry on like nothing happened. I never fell on stage but i had a massive ardrobe malfunction. I had a strappy top on and im quite top heavy and the top just kept slipping down so had to do most of the dance holding up it.
The way those dancers slip and fall makes you appreciate what it takes not to all the time. It looks soooo slippery, how can anyone keep up? (Why I mostly only dance barefoot and never tried toe. ) Many of the slip ups seem to happen on easy steps where a dancer is just a little tired or not focused and not trying that hard and goes down.
I danced in the nutcracker and one day if for anyone and one for schools and the school day in the battle dance Clara fell and started crying but we were like it’s Okay continue people might think it’s on purpose
This should be shown to all the Fußball players who sprain an eyelash and stay down, doing the dying swan for half an hour to milk it for all it's worth.
My days on any stage are loooong since over but I think seeing someone get themselves out of a heap back in the day would have been helpful really along with completely cathartic
One day I was on stage and I was doing a dance and we were in a triangle formation and I was the middle and I started doing the choreography on the other half of the dance and everybody was so confused Lol oopsy 😅 oh, and I Also swept and fell in the middle of it
So many years ago I was getting ready to go out and do my jazz dance but guess what I was on the wrong side I ran backstage music already has started I came out late almost crying but luckily I didnt
I was doing a cartwheel in a musical theater dance one year and just forgot that I had arms and did a swan dive downwards. I just slid across the floor and jammed every joint on my right arm
At rehearsal last year I fell mid dance and then there were like seven more falls later that night. And the best part was because we all kept tripping on long costumes
the ad i got before this video had this beautiful asian woman in a hat dancing and then i was greeted with a beautiful josephine in a hat watching dance!! LOL
