Talk:Ballerina

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[edit] Redirect "prima ballerina"

This page has a link to the wikipedia article "prima ballerina" which in turn redirects back here. I don't know if that's a problem since I'm not so sure about the way Wikipedia works, but I just wanted to point that out.

Thanks --Ghirlandajo 18:51, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
It was my fault: I wikified "prima ballerina" and did not realize the redirect. I've repaired the two pages. --Roland2 20:41, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] general ballet facts?

the part about ballet terminology originating in france should probably be under ballet rather than ballerina. i'm not sure if im just supposed to change it or not, i'm new to wikipedia.

Ilovemonsters 04:17, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Plural

Does interest anybody that the correct Italian plural for prima ballerina is:

prime ballerine

and for prima ballerina assoluta is:

prime ballerine assolute

Just to be fair to the original language... Gioland71 (talk) 21:06, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] loan words

I mostly work in the Scandinavian languages; and Swedish, at least, handles loan words well; English does not. "Ballerina" has been made a naturalized citizen, plural "ballerinas;" and, for lack of plural adjectives in English, "prima ballerina" becomes "prima ballerinas", which isn't so bad. While "prima ballerina assolutas" is wrong on all counts, neither you nor I are going to get the rest of the English speaking world to change their wicked ways. While fifty million Frenchman can be wrong — and on the Internet often are — Google remains an effective way of determining usage. Prima ballerina assolutas has 21 "hits" vs. 9 for prime ballerine assolute and prima ballerinas 19,900 to 1,690 for prime ballerine; if one restricts the searches to English the figures become more extreme; 12:1 and 18,400:40. Pity the poor male ballet dancer, with foreign sounding danseur or ballerino to describe what he is! Robert Greer (talk) 23:52, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


This is why I haven't changed the entry. It would be silly to try to teach Italian to hordes of English people, but it still pains my ears to hear "pizzas" "calzonis", "gelatos", "ballerinas", "lattes" etc.. It would be fair though to point this out in the article, so that the English speakers are aware that this is not a perfect loan - and won't use it while visiting Florence. In Italian we use "footing" as translation for "jogging", but this must be pointed out in the corresponding entry so that Italians do not sound like idiots if they tell their friends in the UK 'they're going "footing"'. Gioland71 (talk) 16:51, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Some possible corrections...

I feel like there should be some reference here to the fact that, to dancers, "ballerina" refers specifically to a professional dancer, as opposed to just anyone who studies ballet. Also, in addition to the information on the original rankings it should have the rankings as they are commonly used today (principal, soloist, and corps are the terms I've usually heard). Lastly, I'm pretty sure that "big wenny" is spam- I've never heard that before, either legitimately or as an insult, but the lack of capitalization or punctuation leads me to believe its a joke on someone's part. Actually, I'm not sure about any of the names for professional male ballet dancers; Aren't they just a "ballet dancer"? The only other term I've seen is "danseur"- "ballet man" and "ballet master" seem antiquated.130.64.136.47 (talk) 06:07, 7 April 2008 (UTC)


"Ballet master" usually refers to a teacher in the more advanced classes/professional level - more or less the male equivalent of "ballet mistress". In English I heard "dancer" or "danseur" for a male dancer. As for the rankings, I have no clue whether there are official rankings in the main companies - in Italy (teatro alla Scala) they have primo ballerino for the main male performer and étoile for both male and female primi ballerini assoluti. Gioland71 (talk) 16:59, 9 April 2008 (UTC)