The Nutcracker – the beauty and pain of ballet 🩰

When discussing the alarming negligence in wearing protection in many men’s sports, one commenter made a very harsh comment I should not stick my nose in men’s business but rather do something more feminine, for instance ballet. This comment just got me. Actually, I did take ballet classes when I was a teenager. Well not for long, I soon realized that neither do I possess enough talent nor the necessary endurance to continue.

Ballet means both beauty and pain

Ballet is not for weaklings. Any aspiring ballerina or danseur learns from the beginning one of the basic rules of ballet—pain means gain. Forgoing bodily comfort and embracing pain as a part of the training is essential to achieve the desired goal, in this case a flawless performance. In the comments we already touched upon the so-called ‘sympathy pain’ men feel when seeing other men being hit in the testicles. Honestly, I feel something similar when watching the party scene from the movie Titanic when Rose (played by great Kate Winslet) got en pointe just in her pantyhose.

I got a backlash from some of the commenters when I wrote that Peter and Bob offered their bodies, often without any protection to us girls for achieving realism in our self defense training and some argued that the pain they inevitably experienced (including the testicular pain) was not justified. Here I ask the question why an artistic performance is worth the pain more than the ability of young women to defend themselves in a life-threating situation.

I quitted ballet soon after I started, but my dear friend Amalie continued in her endeavor to become a professional ballerina. She studied an academy of performing arts and now has a contract in a ballet company. When we meet from time to time for a chat, she tells me a plenty of interesting stories, so I got a quite some insight from the professional ballet world. I wanted to see her in The Nutcracker so badly just before Christmas, but it was cancelled due to another covid wave. It is so sad how this pandemic took a toll on some professions.

Dance belt prevents testicular
injuries and hides the genitals

But to the point of this post. If you haven’t noticed yet, male ballet dancers do protect their testicles. Not only from the injury but also from the sight of spectators. They wear a special garment called the dance belt. In a way it is similar to the jock strap I already talked about before, but in a form of a thong. It has multiple functions both protective and aesthetic. When wore correctly, it lifts the male genitals up and onto the body and holds the testicles in the front and the penis pointed upwards.

Amalie explained me it is not a very comfortable piece to wear. Her dancing partner and her boyfriend is always relieved when he can take it off. Although not very convenient, without it any routine would be difficult or maybe not possible at all. Why to keep the male organs in such an awkward position? Well surprisingly the worse enemy for a danseur’s testicles is his limbs. Hanging loose, the testes would be frequently crushed between the thighs. And a danseur should fully focus on the dance not on his aching balls.

When Tom learned that I attended the ballet classes in the past, he started to brag in front of his friends he dates a ballerina. This is of course bullshit; I hardly remember the basic positions. Last time he demanded I show him some steps. I promised to do so only if he tries to do a changement completely naked for me in return. Well, not that easy move for a beginner but even more difficult with a swinging tender scrotum between the legs 😊.  As I expected, he ended up upset on our sofa ‘manspread’, giving his baby makers a bit of rest, and angrily commented “What a stupid activity, this should be done by women only.” I just laughed, patted him on his head and told him “My dear Tom, I told you, pain means gain, and not only the pain here.”  I pointed with my index on my toes.

Frequent compression of testicles between thighs might be quite uncomfortable, however, some of the most dangerous situations for the testicles happen during pas de deux, the dancing in pairs. For instance, when a ballerina does a pirouette and her knee spins around in a great speed very closely to the danseur bulged-out testicles. Look at the GIF how the danseur is focused when performing this routine. At this point a sudden loss of balance or misestimation of the distance can result in a horrible injury.

Another risky move are lifts. In this case a ballerina’s leg travels up and down inconveniently close to the man’s most sensitive parts. Any momentary hesitation or loosing the firm hold and her leg instead off the ground meets the danseur’s bulge. In the GIF below you can see such an accident. Luckily, this time the ballerina’s foot missed the partners groin by just a couple of centimeters. 

Amalie told me in her ballet company they have a nickname for such an accident, they called it the nutcracker 😊. So now you know The Nutcracker is not only the famous ballet piece I miss so badly because of the pandemics. Amalie also mentioned that these mishaps rarely happen during the actual performances but are quite common when rehearsing. The more inexperience the dancers are, the higher likelihood and frequency of such fails.

She admitted that once she accidentally kicked her ballet master in the groin when she was practicing the grand battement at barre. It is a move involving quick swings of the straight leg forward, sidewise and backwards. Unknowingly she is about to practice this move, he approached her to ask something when she suddenly thrusted her leg backwards and in her words “My heel just lifted him up off the ground by his balls. It was so funny as he was trying to keep composure and pretending like nothing serious happened, but it was obvious he was in great pain. I felt so sorry for him; he lost all his previous cockiness but luckily no ball. He avoided to talk to me for days.”  

She noted that some of these ‘accidents’ are not accidents at all, there is a lot of rivalry and competition between the dancers. Dirty tricks are often used to freeze out adversaries to gain opportunities etc. Outside the theatre stage, ballet is not such magical and glamorous world as many people believe. 

Some ballet steps resemble
self defense moves 

Amalie was very interested in the Linda’s self defense course. As all ballerinas she is beautiful with a perfect body, so she receives a lot of unwanted attention. She was thinking some of the techniques are similar to the ballet steps and it would not be difficult to learn them at all. She also added, “Well, I don’t need to be taught about the sensitivity of the testicles this I know already.” We started to laugh so loudly that the all the café guests’ eyes were on us.

Back to the topic of this post. It is important to note that the question of wearing a dance belt is not solely the danseur choice, it follows the visual preferences of the audience and enables to wear tights. The light padding smoothens the outline of the male organs, so they become less noticeable. Also, ballet involves vigorous movements and flopping and bouncing balls and penis would be quite distracting and embarrassing. It can even hide (at least to some extent :) any spontaneous boner. This also happens believe me, Amalie told me quite some hilarious stories. 

In conclusion, do I have the right to speak about the necessity of protective cups during sports? Yes, I think so. Do I support wearing a protection of male genitals during any sport or artistic performances? Yes, I do and not only for safeguarding the most sensitive and precious male parts.