I took a dance class yesterday for the first time in over a month. It was great as always – dancing makes me happy and energized! Most of the time anyway. I have had kind of a love-hate relationship with ballet for a while. Taking up ballet after 15 years made me realize how much I had missed dancing but also that I am not at the level where I was in my early 20s. But the class yesterday went well, which meant feeling strong and gracious – almost weightless. Today, I am paying for it, of course, and especially my feet hurt here and there. I browsed around to see how to get rid of the pain and came across an article in the Guardian describing foot injuries among ballet dancers. The article told stories of bleeding feet, toenails falling off, and dancers performing night after night with fractured feet. And when I read the article, I couldn’t help asking myself if dancing ballet really is that wonderful, or if it’s just insane?

The Swan Lake is apparently the most painful ballet to dance for a female dancer’s feet.