Men in Tights
Ballerinas wear their shoes out pretty quickly, and their male counterparts can say the same about their tights.
As durable as lycra may look, it is no match for hours of training and performing. The general estimate is that a professional male ballet dancer will use about 4,000 pairs of tights throughout his career.
Male Ballet Dancers Are Mega-Lifters
Do you even lift, bro? Even if you do, odds are male ballet dancers lift more. Sure, the ballerinas they lift are usually petite women that don't weigh much, to begin with, but when you combine the weights of all the lifts a male dancer has to do in a single show, you reach about 1-1.5 tons!
By comparison, it's like the combined weight a weightlifter would lift in 4-6 events!
Ballet Used to Be a Guy Thing
Ballet is usually perceived as a feminine dance, but it was actually danced exclusively by men for more than 100 years!
You see, in the past, women weren't allowed to dance in public but that only changed in 1681. Before that, the female parts of any performance had to be danced by younger male dancers.
Ballerinas' Toes Are Super Strong
When you see a ballerina dancing en pointe, looking lighter than air, it's important to remember that our toes aren't meant to support that much weight.
But being en pointe is like sending your toes to the gym, end ballerina's end up balancing on their big toe about three times the weight it normally carries.
Pointe Shoes Aren't Forever
If there is one piece of equipment that is an absolute must for a ballerina, it is her pointe shoes.
Professional ballerinas who perform in pointe shoes regularly can wear out as many as three pairs of them in a single week! The Pittsburgh Ballet Theater, for example, spends about $100,000 a year on its dancers' pointe shoes.