ABSTRACT
This chapter examines aspects of the social world of ballet, embodiment and identity of young ballet dancers. It also examines how young ballet dancers view and treat their bodies, apply their belief in the body strategically in order to maximise their capital and take for granted that their body is an aesthetic project. In striving to meet a particular ballet body aesthetic, young ballet dancers are influenced by the power of the social world of ballet, role models, teachers and peers. Classical ballet is a career in which emotional and physical pain and bodily restrictions are a core feature in the forms of constant bodily scrutiny, prejudice, muscular and overuse pain and injury, and potential rejection. The social world of classical ballet depends on a uniformity of body shape and size that is predicated on physical architecture as the balletic body emphasizes preciseness in line, placement and visual design.
