More Than Ballerinas

Watching American Ballet Theatre perform Swan Lake at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House last month, I found myself revisiting a crossroads from many years ago. As a child, my life revolved around two passions: ballet and mathematics. I chose mathematics, which led me to a career in applied mathematics. As the audience rose to applaud the dancers, I found myself thinking not only of the ballerinas on stage, but also of those whose lives had taken them beyond the stage.

After years of intensive training, many of the girls I grew up with fulfilled their childhood dream of becoming professional ballerinas. In their early twenties, however, several chose to return to university and begin entirely new careers. Today, one is an attorney, another a businesswoman, another a physician, and another a scientist. Some still teach ballet on weekends—not because it is their profession, but because ballet remains part of who they are.

When we think about ballet, our attention naturally turns to the few who become principal dancers. They are the ones we celebrate. They represent only a tiny fraction of the children who once stood at the barre dreaming of becoming Odette. If reaching the top of the profession were the only measure of success, then almost everyone else—including me—would have to be considered a failure.

Yet that cannot be the right way to measure success.

Years in the ballet studio teach lessons that cannot be measured by medals, titles, or careers. Students learn to arrive before everyone else and leave after everyone else. They repeat the same movement hundreds of times, accept corrections without losing confidence, and return the next day despite bruises, blistered feet, or even injuries. Ballet teaches that excellence is not a single performance but the result of thousands of ordinary days. Those lessons do not disappear when the pointe shoes are put away.

Perhaps that is why so many parents willingly invest years of their lives in ballet—driving their children to rehearsals, spending countless weekends backstage, and paying for lessons, performances, costumes, and pointe shoes. They understand that the value of ballet extends far beyond the small number of children who eventually dance professionally. The discipline, resilience, humility, and quiet perseverance developed in the studio stay with them for the rest of their lives.

Looking back, I now understand that my parents’ investment was never just in ballet lessons. It was in me. At that crossroads, I chose a different path, but I never really left ballet behind. I simply carried them with me.

The greatest legacy of ballet is not the ballerinas it creates, but the lives it quietly shapes.

By Tipaluck Krityakierne

Bio: Tipaluck Krityakierne, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Applied Mathematics in the  Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University. Her research focuses on mathematical optimization, machine learning, and discrete mathematics. Before pursuing mathematics, she trained in ballet for more than two decades. She now enjoys ballet from the audience rather than the stage.