By Heejin Kim
According to Gordon (1983), “[ballet dancers] are not ordinary people with ordinary needs and ordinary desires; they are a breed apart” (p. 7). The ballet world is unique that it has its own set of norms and customs (Hamilton, 1998). Dancers are famous for their extraordinary dedication for their pursuit (Hamilton, 1998; Hamilton, Solomon & Solomon, 2006), and “art does not exist to serve life; life exists to serve art” in the ballet world (Gordon, 1986, p. 102). Ballet dancers are required to sustain their deep sense of commitment and single-minded focus from their early childhood to adulthood (Hamilton, 1998; Kelman, 2000; Pickard & Bailey, 2009) to perform on the professional level. Ballet dancers endure exceptional adversity not only during their training (Montanari & Zietkiewicz, 2000), but also in their performance career (Hernandez, 2012; Kelman, 2000). The adversity experienced by ballet dancers are well documented in the existing literature, and the majority of the previous studies on ballet dancers has largely focused on one specific challenge, such as psychological distress (Mainwaring & Finney, 2017), body image (Radell, Keneman, Mandradjieff, Adame, & Cole, 2017), physical injury (Smith, Gerrie, Varner, McCulloch, Lintner, & Harris, 2015), nutrition (Lee, Kim, & Kim, 2015), eating disorder (Peric, Zenic, Sekulic, Kondric, & Zaletel, 2016), or retirement and career transition (Roncaglia, 2008; Wainwright & Turner, 2006; Willard & Lavallee, 2016). It is worth noting that there is dearth of research on a more integrative exploration of ballet dancers’ experiences using their voice (Gray & Kunkel, 2001).