Skateboarding and Ballet

Skateboarding and Ballet

Similarities Between Skateboarding and Ballet

Growing up I used to skateboard a lot.  I really enjoyed it.  I would crave it.  I couldn’t go too long without feeling the need to head out to a parking lot, a smooth banking, or find a decent set of stairs.  Even as I got older I was still skating all the time.

I recently realized that I haven’t been skateboarding since I started taking ballet.  In fact, I haven’t even thought about it.  This post isn’t about which is better, skateboarding or ballet, but I wanted to think about the reasons my interest in skateboarding suddenly dropped when I began ballet.

Sure, as people get older, they probably tend to drop activities that they were involved in when they were younger.  I know I’m not as brave or daring with the skate tricks as I used to be.  But I think there is a major reason that I stopped thinking about skateboarding, and started to concentrate on ballet:  ballet and skateboarding are quite similar.  They are similar enough that each excited me in certain ways, and were an outlet for expression.  There definitely are differences between skateboarding and ballet, and that is why I’ve ultimately chosen one over the other, even if subconsciously.

I believe that one of the main reasons I loved skateboarding so much, was because it was about movement.  Skateboarding is about using and controlling your body to such an extent that you perform moves and tricks that seem impossible.  Ballet is similar here.  Ballet is of course about movement and very technical.  Jumps must be executed according to a specific technique.  It requires a lot of bodily control.  With practice and control, you begin to pull off tricks that seem impossible.

Ballet is very much about tricks.  A lot of these tricks are even similar to skateboarding.  When I used to skateboard, I would love to do manuals, which is when you ride on two wheels, balancing the board, kind of like a wheelie on a skateboard.  Balance is a major part of ballet.  Many positions require standing on one foot, on tippy toes, while shifting positions.  I also used to love to do all kinds of jumps in skateboarding.  Ollies, drops, grabs, 180s, kick-flips, etc, I loved getting airtime on my skateboard (especially when I landed and didn’t eat it).  And of course, ballet has jumps.  Men’s ballet often includes a bunch of big jumps.  Those too are pretty technical and awesome.  They also resemble skateboarding jumps.  A double tours en l’air is a 720.  A développé always reminds me of the motion to do a kick-flip, except the legs are turned out.

Ballet and skateboarding both interested me.  They both gave me a place to move and express myself, but one really drew me more than the other.  Ballet is similar, but different from skateboarding, and it is the differences that made me appreciate ballet.

Skateboarding is often competitive.  You can do it by yourself and not be competing, but look at skate competitions.  If you go pro, you are competing against other people.  I don’t really give a crap about competing against other people and beating them.  The competitiveness kind of put me off of skating.  Ballet can be competitive, but mainly against yourself.  As Martha Graham once said, dance is a competition between you and only one other: the dancer you can become.

Ballet combines movement and expression with music.  I really enjoy that.  I think everyone does appreciate the combination of music and movement to a pretty large degree.  This is especially true for skaters.  Look at skate videos and see how music and movement are integrated there, it is a true art.  But I do enjoy music and movement being integrated on the spot, while I’m moving.  That is a lot of fun.  Also, I feel that I am able to express more through dance.  In the ballet and dance world, confidence is often expressed, but so is beauty, desire, and all those other artsy-fartsy, touchy-feely emotions that real men aren’t supposed to feel, never-mind express.  They are human emotions though, and I do get to express those in dance.  I think it would be weird to express those emotions through skateboarding.  Aggression is often expressed, in the form of throwing skateboards and getting mad when a trick is missed.  I really admire the expression of confidence in skateboarding, and how it is best to make a hard move look easy, very similar to ballet.  However, I feel that emotional expression in skateboarding is often stopped at aggression and confidence, similar to most sports.

I respect both ballet and skateboarding as amazing forms of movement, art, and expression.  Both of them have elements that drew me in and made me use my body in ways I didn’t think it could be used.  Everything I loved about skateboarding, I found in ballet.  I find it fun to think about the similarities, and I imagine that if I ever got back into it, my skateboarding would probably be improved by the control, strength, and balance I’ve learned through ballet.

Tagged as: skateboarding