I'm so frustrated with dancing as an adult. Primarily with ballet, although this has limited applications to other styles of dance. I have performed other styles as an adult though, and ballet is definitely the worst ageism wise.
Before getting into my rant, I was a pretty serious ballet dancer in high school. Never was professional level, but I have been taking dance lessons my whole life. I stopped performing after high school, but kept up with classes and performed different styles in college and post-college. It's not a priority anymore, but I don't consider myself to be an adult beginner by any means.
I've been trying to find somewhere, some studio, where I can perform in the Nutcracker again (or any ballet but that's the most widespread). And it is so hard. From looking online, your only options are if you go to a smaller studio that happens to put on its own production and takes its students. If you live somewhere that has a professional company that already puts on the Nutcracker, you're out of luck because odds are they're taking all of the audience. Or if your studio focuses entirely on the pre-professional kids, also out of luck because less resources go to the adults.
Since I'm in graduate school, that's more or less where I'm at. I still take classes through the university but since I'm not a dance major I can't perform anywhere (I'm getting my PhD in genetics for context, I'm not in the dance school). I start looking for something, anything, in the area that 1. has auditions where you don't need to be a student there, and 2. takes adults. There's nothing! So few places do this.
I found exactly one studio that's 2 hours away from me and says it takes community members. I reached out to confirm, and the woman on the phone said that "there's plenty of roles" and that since I'm 2 hours away they could "give me a part where I wouldn't be needed every weekend." And I thought that sounded perfect.
Audition comes, I drive 2 hours, do the audition, and drive back the 2 hours. From my perspective, it went really well and the students they had there weren't that much better than me. Casting announcement drops and I get a whole email saying "Congrats! We are so proud of all of you" and I didn't get cast. At all. All of the people I auditioned with have at least 4 roles each and not a one could be spared for me.
I'll be honest, I feel a little like I was hustled into paying the audition fee. Because they probably decided they wanted to prioritize their own students, or the distance would mean I couldn't attend enough rehearsals, or there's something that they knew in advance would limit me and they still encouraged me to audition anyways! What a waste of my time.
I've been like low-key in a depression since then, and my heart super hasn't been in dancing since that. And I'm terrified that if I reach out and ask what happened I'll get told any number of silly things from "my body type was wrong" to "you wouldn't be able to attend enough rehearsals." Because what's the point, I can do this thing my whole life and I'll likely never get on a stage again. Ballet is just such a young person's game, there are so few resources if you want to continue past the age of 18 non-professionally. I wish that this would change, but I doubt it.
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