I'm at a bit of a loss as to where to put this, so moderators please move if it would do better somewhere else!
I've been doing some major cleanup work on Wikipedia's dance-related entries, and adding some new ones. Unfortunately the site seems to lack much input from knowledgeable people, and most articles are written by helpful people who have probably only seen ballets or took a few classes when they were younger. And the lack of articles is very depressing; yesterday morning there wasn't an article (in English; the French, Italians, Dutch, and Swedes beat us to it) for Alessandra Ferri, and there still isn't one for Maria Kowroski, Gillian Murphy, Allegra Kent, or Patricia McBride, just to name a few! Not to mention the sad state of many articles on dancers and almost everything relating to ballet itself.
My next project is to fix up the entry "Ballerina". I'm not an expert on the non-dancing side of ballet, but a few things look a little funny to me. First of all, "A ballerina is a female ballet dancer." I know that the term "Ballerina" is now generally used for any female who does ballet, but is that the correct usage? I thought that it still indicated a certain rank of dancer?
I know that different styles and companies use different terms, but are there general guidelines I could write as to the ranks? For example, I seem to remember something like 'Corps, Second Soloist, First Soloist, Principal.'
Guidelines for kinds of roles, using The Nutcracker as an example, being:
Corps = snowflakes, etc.
Second Soloists = Dolls in party scene, etc.
First Soloists = Main Snowflake, etc.
Principals = Sugar Plum Fairy, etc.
Am I making sense, and am I even close?
Thanks in advance!
~Nefertari
