The Ballerina | Elizaveta Ermolaeva
It is a Saturday evening in early December. Elizaveta Ermolaeva is in her mother’s ballet studio putting on beige ballet shoes. Elizaveta carefully walks step-by-step towards the bar, not letting her heels touch the ground. She swiftly gets up on her tiptoes and slowly comes down several times after which she puts one leg over the bar and starts stretching.
Elizaveta has been doing ballet ever since she was six years old; however, she did take a break for a few years after she turned fourteen because her favorite ballet teacher quit. She picked it up again when she missed dancing and had a lot of free time on her hands. Now she attends her mother’s classes at least twice a week.
Her mother was a professional dancer in the past, and she is the one who encouraged Elizaveta to try ballet. Unlike her mother, Elizaveta sees ballet only as a hobby. “I like it but I never saw myself as a ballerina,” she says. However, according to Elizaveta, she would not be able to perform professionally even if she wanted to since that requires a certain body type.
“I could not be a professional ballerina because of how my body is built. I am skinny but this is not enough. You have to have certain mobility in your hips and knees. My mom has it and she would always tell me that I was not going to be a professional ballerina”
Even though Elizaveta did not plan on taking ballet seriously, the body standard still had an impact on her as a young kid.
“Back then it was still pretty toxic, meaning they kind of cultivate eating disorders in ballet unintentionally and because of that my self-image as a kid was kind of ruined. I was a skinny kid, but you are never skinny enough for ballet.”
According to Elizaveta, a lot of kids in her class were struggling with an eating disorder, including herself, and they did not even realize it at the time because they thought it was normal. Children as little as twelve-years-old thought they were overweight while in reality, they were skinny or severely underweight. She thinks even the teachers did not understand how toxic it was because they were raised in a similar environment.
Elizaveta says she overcame an eating disorder after she quit ballet at fourteen-years-old, but it was not easy. To this day, she is struggling to gain weight, so she tries forcing herself to eat. She thinks the diet in the ballet industry is not as strict as it used to be, especially if one is just taking it as a hobby, but the stereotype of ballerinas starving themselves remains.
While in the past ballet made Elizaveta feel insecure about her appearance, now it is enjoyable for her and makes her feel confident. “I always liked the aesthetic of ballerinas. I have seen my mother dance and I was very inspired by her elegant movements. I am taking ballet to make me feel better about myself. It kind of boosts my confidence a little bit and I honestly really like how it looks.”
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Salome Chekurishvili is a Journalism and Mass Communication student at AUBG. She is interested in different styles of dancing and Elizaveta helped her get acquainted with ballet.