Sweden had a secret nuclear program that they abandoned back in the 60s; they were 6 months from completing a viable bomb when they decided it might not be worth it. It really would not be hard for them to do it again.

Listen to the corrections your teachers give you. If you receive a correction and they see you actively apply it in the rest of the exercises (not just the one you're doing currently), then they'll have more confidence in your abilities. A correction doesn't just apply to a single step, but to all the steps which grow from it.

His books were great until he took that hard turn into climate change denial. That was just a huge disappointment

I trained pre pro and we were all always too scared to talk in class. Before or after sure, and in rehearsal sometimes, but I think that's one of the first things they really focused on once we started doing things seriously

At that point it's up to teachers to shut that down

They are not, but there is an amateur football (ie soccer) team run by the Vatican and mostly staffed by Swiss Guard troops

I was carrying a girl offstage in a fish and ran her right into one of the curtain wings. She wasn't hurt at all, but it looked very dumb

Mercedes has the cup dance in Don Q

There are a small number of ballet fans of the type you describe, but they tend to be incredibly well off. The reality of ballet as an artform is that it is very expensive, and that makes it inaccessible to a lot of people

BBC had a decent write up. It was a month ago, but this isn't something you just walk off

No, it was because the AfD started letting the mask slip and questioning whether the little kerfuffle in the 40s was really that bad

Congrats, and merde for your performance

Doing Don Q, a ring flew off the suitor's hand and smacked me right in the face (I was playing one of the toreadors). Jewelry can be a real hazard on stage it seems.

You should try the Hammer's Slammer stories by David Drake. The tech is peak noncredibility, while also being some of the most realistic military scifi I've read

I started because I saw the Nutcracker as a young child and wanted to do it. I didn't really deal with bullying over it. mostly because I was too shy as a kid to talk to anyone, much less let them know I did ballet.

The downsides and upsides both come from the lack of male dancers generally. You usually end up with worse dressing rooms, you'll be outnumbered and overlooked in some respects, and there are many negative outside perceptions. The positives are many studios really want male dancers, especially smaller ones, and you're more likely to get a featured role. A lot of studios also offer scholarships for male dancers, but this is more varied.

My studio never charged for costumes, but tickets were always pretty steep, I think they're up to $40 now, just for theatre costs.

Congrats on graduating. I know several studios I've been with have invited rgaudates who have become professionals back to teach as guest artists, on both short and long term timelines (some active professionals come back to do Sugar Plum or Cavalier in the Nutcracker, or retired ones come back in twenty years to teach a couple of guest classes during the summer intensive).

That may be a longer timeline than you're looking at, but saying goodbye doesn't mean forever, only for now.

Nice line in the fish

Do you have a link, this sounds like the sort of thing to produce plenty of buttery drama on its own

Laurencia and Ivan the Terrible are other ballets with similar style by the same choreographer if you want to watch something similar

Spartacus is my personal favorite neoclassical ballet, the Bolshoi's version is definitive, and I think you can find that on youtube pretty easily