rise

What if you reintroduce me to the concept of tenderness and I understand you the way no one ever has and we were both evil wizards?

okay the ppl wanna hear my hollanova thoughts….i personally think the pwhl doesn’t work for their conflict bc its like. the very rigid gender roles and homophobia and central conflicts would be so different in a pwhl context…..but NOT in a ballet context……..

like the snipers will kill me for this but ballet hollanova is kind of perfect to me bc its a very very conservative sport, gender roles are hugely enforced and homophobia specifically against women is huge + rampant…..its sooo delicious to me to imagine shane being this hyper-feminine, hyper-focused ballerina with long hair that she hates the feel of but keeps because it needs to be the right length to put into a bun. she’s spent her entire life trying to repress these feelings she has for other girls and turns it all inwards, focuses on technique so hard she loses almost all of her artistry, she knows where she’s going and it’s straight to the top.

versus ilya, who was raised at vaganova and interned at the mariinsky before getting the fuck out of russia and signing with shane’s company, and she has this short curly hair, and wears shorts and a sports bra to class, and she’s got a reputation for sleeping around and drinking and eating whatever she wants. and eating is huge in a ballet context— shane’s performance diet, in a ballet company, is just a company-sponsored eating disorder. her body matters for it’s performance AND for what it looks like, which is an impossible tug of war.