The Performance
Opening night. The dancers are backstage warming up, getting dressed, and putting their makeup on. The orchestra is in the pit tuning up the instruments, and the theatre is opened to the public. From backstage the dancers can hear the audience chatting before the performance. As the house lights go down and the dancers take their places most of them are quite nervous. This is what they have spent months preparing for, and there is a paying audience out in the auditorium. As the performance progresses the dancers will forget their nervousness and enjoy dancing. Hopefully, all goes well and at the end of the ballet the audience leaves thrilled with what they saw and the entire cast and crew is relieved that it went well.
Usually a ballet will run for several nights and sometimes do matinee performances as well, so it is not over yet, but once the performance has run well once they know it will run well again.
A full ballet is not the only place a ballet dancer may perform. There are many other performance opportunities including talent shows, music festivals, and ballet competitions. If a ballet dancer is good enough he or she may enter one of the international ballet competitions such as the U.S.A. International Ballet Competition in Jackson, Mississippi, or the International Ballet Competition, Varna, in Varna, Bulgaria. These competitions are huge events that attract the best dancers in the world, and if a dancer wins one he or she can almost choose the dance company in which to perform, to dance, to live, (and work!), his or her dreams.
