My boys and I were so interested to read this article about Fabrice Calmels, the world’s tallest ballet dancer! This man is 6′ 6″ tall, and after you see him, you’ll no longer think of men in ballet quite the same.
I really enjoy sharing this article and photos with my sons for several reasons. First, he’s a guy in ballet. That alone takes guts. What a great example of following your interests! Second, he started ballet at the age of four, and loved it so much that he overcame a lot of industry prejudice in order to stick with it. He obviously works incredibly hard at his craft.
This video shows Fabrice Calmels and Julianne Kepley dancing The Dream. Beautifully done. Now, I will admit, your kids might only be interested for a couple minutes. It’s pretty mellow. Still, let them take a couple minutes and see some beautiful ballet, ok? Leave a comment and let me know how they liked it.
[mashshare]
My comment will probably produce some flak but here goes anyway. Our older daughter took ballet from the age of 9 and did very well at it. The main thing about it that began causing us concern was the lack of modesty in many of the costumes (not the ones our daughter ever wore), but for that reason we never let her baby sister even start (they were 10 yrs apart so the older one was married and out of it by the time the younger was 9). The dancers in the video were very good, but the guy’s “costume” was way too risqué ~ very immodest. Sadly, society has desensitized people to accept immodesty these days, and I think we’re all the worse for it in many ways. 🙁
My son is a professional ballet dancer, most recently with Ballet Tucson. He is 6’5″. He was a homeschooler who started dancing at age 14. He was disappointed when he grew too tall to dance with Disney, but has found that he fits a need companies have to find partners for taller ballerinas. It is fun to see a dancer even taller than my son!
Hi Cindee! Thanks for your comment. Somehow this got buried in an area of my site and I didn’t see it til today.
That’s cool that your son is a professional ballet dancer. Wow!
So are male dancers also called ballerinas? We were just discussing this the other day and wondered about that.
~Erica