Dear friends,

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Amid the intense flow of current events—which, unfortunately, are often heavy and tragic—two major, highly anticipated events have stood out this month in the worlds of sports and the arts: the Winter Olympics and the Prix de Lausanne. I’d like to share with you some thoughts that have particularly struck me, especially from the perspective of a teacher of children at a formative age.

How much we admired Ilya Malinin. How many of us held our breath watching his successive quadruple spins on the ice, his indescribable technique, and his unique jumps. And yet, in just two days, this exceptional athlete, overcome by anxiety and panic, left everything behind and walked off the ice sobbing uncontrollably.

What went wrong? How much pressure can a 20-year-old really withstand when, in reality, he has never lived carefree, never enjoyed his childhood or adolescence, following a training regimen that left no room for anything else?

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The participants in the Prix de Lausanne, on the other hand—most of whom are teenagers—have also never seen the light of day… You don’t have to be an expert to realize that a fifteen-year-old girl who has already achieved the highest level of technical perfection has spent her life in a dance studio and follows an extremely strict regimen of diet, exercise, and sleep… a life organized down to the second around the unique competitive nature of dance. The already enormous demands are growing even greater year after year, a fact that infuriated the well-known ballet teacher, who angrily asked, “What on earth are we asking of these children?” What do we expect from a nine-year-old competing with Esmeralda’s variation—a sensual and provocative role that is completely unnatural when performed by a child? What are the potential consequences of accepting such phenomena as normal, when they are gradually being normalized while endangering children’s mental health and their right to childhood and carefree innocence?

This is a vast topic, and it certainly cannot be exhausted in just a few lines, but I wanted to raise this issue, as it concerns us all—especially since we’re talking about future generations for whom we are responsible.

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Read here what Runquiao Du has to say about Esmeralda.