This week, NPR ran a story on ballet program looking for more boys to participate in their programs and interviewed students and faculty at Canyon Concert Ballet.
From the article:
Canyon Concert Ballet in Fort Collins, Colo., is a sea of pink tutus and giggling little girls with their hair pulled into tight buns atop their heads.
There’s a single boy: Eight-year-old Finn Miller Vaughan, who danced in his first Nutcracker when he was 3 years old.
He says it can be kind of fun to be the only boy, but …
“Sometimes there’s a downside, ’cause the girls kind of tease you sometimes,” he says. “They say I have cooties and stuff, but I know that isn’t true.”
He also knows that the stigmas often attached to boys who take ballet aren’t true either.
“Usually they think of girls only taking ballet, like wearing dresses and stuff,” he says. “They always think that it’s weird and it’s not that cool.”
Canyon’s artistic director Daniel Simmons heard that a lot.
“I was from Texas — Southern Texas. Nobody dances in Texas,” he says. “Because in Southern Texas, you either were on the football team and you got to do everything or if you didn’t play football, you didn’t do anything.”
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