241 replies to this topic

[Mashinka]

Quote

It is not every day that one finds oneself sharing a cigarette with a pair of Russian ballet dancers outside a south London pub .........

A quote from an article in today's Telegaph.  There really are a great many dancers that smoke.

http://www.telegraph...t-for-real.html

[Nanarina]

If a person wishes to smoke, LET  THEM DO SO ON THEIR OWN PREMISES, NOT IN PUBLIC AREA'S.  If it could be arranged and they cannot manage to last without a puff of a cigerette,  provide smoking area's outside, but still ban it inside public buildings especially in restuarants etc.  As for Drink/Driving the authorities should come down hard on these people.

[Nanarina]

As my final post to this thread it  has come full circle. I have just spent three days in hospital, due to it pouring of rain, I was forced to stand in a bus shelter, when two women came and stood by me, they both lit up a cigerette
and the fumes spread into the small amount of air which surrounded me. I could not move away(which I would have normally done) my bus was almost due, so I had to stay there. I am allergic to cigerette smoke, and ended up having to call an ambulance later that day. I did not want to cause problems and ask them to stop., as they were perfectly entitled to smoke.  It was my bad luck I had the allergy. Foruinatly it does not happen very often.

[Simon G]

Nanarina, on 06 July 2011 - 02:59 AM, said:

As my final post to this thread it  has come full circle. I have just spent three days in hospital, due to it pouring of rain, I was forced to stand in a bus shelter, when two women came and stood by me, they both lit up a cigerette
and the fumes spread into the small amount of air which surrounded me. I could not move away(which I would have normally done) my bus was almost due, so I had to stay there. I am allergic to cigerette smoke, and ended up having to call an ambulance later that day. I did not want to cause problems and ask them to stop., as they were perfectly entitled to smoke.  It was my bad luck I had the allergy. Foruinatly it does not happen very often.

How terrible. But you seem to have recovered quite nicely and up to your old form. So that's something to be thankful for?

[Nanarina]

Simon G, on 06 July 2011 - 04:39 AM, said:

Nanarina, on 06 July 2011 - 02:59 AM, said:

As my final post to this thread it  has come full circle. I have just spent three days in hospital, due to it pouring of rain, I was forced to stand in a bus shelter, when two women came and stood by me, they both lit up a cigerette
and the fumes spread into the small amount of air which surrounded me. I could not move away(which I would have normally done) my bus was almost due, so I had to stay there. I am allergic to cigerette smoke, and ended up having to call an ambulance later that day. I did not want to cause problems and ask them to stop., as they were perfectly entitled to smoke.  It was my bad luck I had the allergy. Foruinatly it does not happen very often.

How terrible. But you seem to have recovered quite nicely and up to your old form. So that's something to be thankful for?

Yes thanks, appart from a shortness of breath and cough, I am okay.

[cubanmiamiboy]

Nice to have you back, Nanarina, and I hope you were well taken for by the nurses while in the hospital.  

[Yvonne]

canbelto, on 20 June 2011 - 04:06 PM, said:

I don't smoke, but agree that these dancers are adults and it's their business. I also wonder if dancers smoking has to do with being so tired in class, rehearsal, etc. So what's a foolproof way of giving their toes a rest? A smoke break! I only say this because I know some people in high-pressure/long hours jobs, and most of them smoke. Many of them say it's the only time their boss isn't constantly haggling them over conference calls and the blackberry to do this, do that. Their cigarette breaks are their alone time.

When I was in Army basic training, smokers were allowed take extra smoke breaks.  Those of us who didn't smoke, had to remain standing in formation.  Many "trainees" took up smoking just to get those extra breaks.  The worst part was that even if you didn't smoke, you still had to pick up the butts if you saw them anywhere.  I spent much of my basic training with butts in my pockets because trash cans were not always around when you needed one - ugh!

[Stage Right]

4mrdncr, on 20 June 2011 - 08:08 PM, said:

ne particle of their smoke gets in my lungs, they just destroyed my right not to smoke.  Sorry, but I totally agree with every ban they devise, unless a smoke is both downwind and a good 200 yards away from me.  

I agree too. I have similar responses to second-hand smoke, and can also actually smell it coming from other cars near me on the road. It's a truly filthy substance. And it is a destructive, addictive drug, no question. So why do we all tolerate cigarette smoke, and maintain it is a person's right to smoke it, when most people would have a totally opposite reaction to a person smoking pot (they'd get put in jail!)? It's all in what you're used to, I guess. I don't blame dancers who smoke, because there are all the pressures enumerated in the posts above. But I do feel sad for them, unwitting victims of both unreal standards of body weight, and the advertising/cigarette industry.

[shedances]

Having read through these posts, I don't think I have seen much of a discussion about how smoking might limit a dancer's stamina.  I am not an expert on all of this, but I would think that doing anything that has an impact on oxygen intake, would, over time, keep their bodies from performing as athletically as needed.  I was very surprised to observe a group of professional dancers all taking a smoking break out on the fire escape of a small company recently.  At first, I thought the people in the company who smoked were only the AD, whose professional career was in the late 1970's and early 1980's, before the health hazards were made public and when smoking was still so popular.  But soon I noticed that even the younger members of his company all smoked.  And I thought to myself how he probably had normalized this bad habit in their eyes by continuing to keep it up years later.  Older generations do set examples.  So my thoughts, as an observer, were that here are dancers in their mid to late twenties, who have been given all kinds of information these days about how to keep their instruments in top shape, but for the reasons stated in previous posts, and for the lovely addictive factor of nicotine, are now cutting their dancing careers even shorter than they would have been if they just had chosen not to start the lousy habit.  I also know dancers who will not drink coffee and will only eat organic and unprocessed foods.  I would be really confused if I found out that they smoke.  But anything is possible.

[Helene]

Joining someone for a cigarette break is a standard way of getting to know someone better and getting ear time in a setting where the person -- boss, team member, person of influence -- is doing something pleasurable.  It doesn't take that much effort to coordinate.

[Kerry1968]

There's a very famous photograph of Lola Montez from about 1850, showing the dancer holding, and presumably enjoying, a cigarette. In 1850, people would have interpreted Montez's decision to be photographed with a cigarette as a blatant rejection of bourgeois conventions. In 1850, ladies did not smoke. Nor did gentlemen, for that matter, since the pipe and cigar were still the preferred smoking instruments among the leisured classes.

It's interesting to see how smoking bans in the US and Europe are causing the meaning of the cigarette to revert to what it had been in the mid-19th century. The cigarette has again become an way of expressing social defiance. I have a feeling that smoking will always have a certain cachet among writers, dancers, actors, etc because artists as a group are transgressors: people who challenge conventions, push limits, and so on.

[Nanarina]

Just as a footnote, it has now been banned that any smoking products are to be allowed on view in large stores etc in the UK, they have to be hidden behind doors.  I cannot quite understand the logic in this, as surely having these items on view in smaller shops is equally is just the same.   It is meant to stop encouraging young people to buy the goods.  The next move is to make the producers pack the  cigerettes in plain wrappers.

[cubanmiamiboy]

Edited: double post

[cubanmiamiboy]

Nanarina, on 15 April 2012 - 11:33 AM, said:

Just as a footnote, it has now been banned that any smoking products are to be allowed on view in large stores etc in the UK, they have to be hidden behind doors.  I cannot quite understand the logic in this, as surely having these items on view in smaller shops is equally is just the same.   It is meant to stop encouraging young people to buy the goods.  The next move is to make the producers pack the  cigerettes in plain wrappers.

There's a bit of double moral in there of course. "See no evil, hear no evil". I hope the example that I will mention next is not banned territory, for which even in nursing school the term exist in textbooks. Well, "poppers" are, at least here in Miam, legal to sell, as long as they are advertised as "room deodorizers". Can't get any more "double" than that.

Kerry1968, on 19 January 2012 - 11:20 PM, said:

I have a feeling that smoking will always have a certain cachet among writers, dancers, actors, etc because artists as a group are transgressors: people who challenge conventions, push limits, and so on.

...AND it surrounds them with bit of glamour also...let's not forget that.

[jayeldee]

Johnny-come-lately, here (that is, Jeffrey-come-lately) .... I just read through every post. No one seems to acknowledge that smoking can also offer benefits to a person--the nature and degree of such depending entirely upon the preferences and consititution (both physiological and psychological) of that person. Given that, it can be entirely reasonable for a person to smoke, rather than to not smoke.

But--that said, it IS hard, awfully, to comprehend a dancer smoking! One would think that the lung capacity would be so diminished as to make it wholly unprofitable. But again, it all depends upon the individual; some can probably withstand whatever ill effects smoking might induce, better than others can. In the end, it's their decision, and they ought to be left alone to make it.

(As for the legality of it, the key is property rights: one is free to allow smoking or not, on one's own property--be it a house, a restaurant, a theatre, or a stadium.... That is, one SHOULD be free to allow it within the domain of one's own property, or not: but not in this totalitarian era, when individual rights are vanishing faster than the execution of a grand jete.)

(As for smoking "in public", there is no viable solution: "public property" is not, by definition, governed by principles applicable to private property. Since it's effectively "owned" by everyone, it's owned by no one--and unending, irresolvable conflict is the inevitable result. Economists refer to this conundrum as "the tragedy of the commons." The solution to which conundrum is obvious: abolish "public property", as such, by transferring it into private ownership.... Yes, even the streets--and the highways, too; and the oceans; and the airspace.)