Content note: This piece includes references to physical punishment and emotional abuse in dance training.
In my last piece, I explored the tension of revering the “greats” of dance while also naming the harm some of them caused. Not all revered teachers were abusive. Many gave students a foundation of artistry and care. Yet the challenge arises when reverence for greatness is used to deny or dismiss the harm others endured. For many, this creates a conflict between gratitude and acknowledgement of abuse.
This pattern reflects what trauma theorists describe as the transmission of generational trauma. When systems of abuse are left unexamined, they shape the identities of those within them long after the training years have ended.
From these systems emerge two broad psychological positions. Some adapt through unconscious defences such as minimisation, rationalisation, system justification, or what Anna Freud called identification with the aggressor. Others take on the role of trauma-bearers, a term in family systems theory describing those who carry symptoms for a wider group. In dance, trauma-bearers often hold the embodied impact of humiliation, coercion, and fear. Both positions arise from the same conditions, determined by how individuals adapted to survive.
There is another layer to this story: the experience of the bystander.
Often, within coercive authoritarian environments, there were students who escaped the most severe punishments. They were not the ones singled out for humiliation or emotional abuse. They stood in the same studio, often watching it happen to others, yet left with a different story: a memory of brilliance, discipline, and greatness.
Social psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley described this dynamic as the bystander effect: in groups, individuals often fail to intervene because responsibility becomes diffused. Although this research originated in emergency situations, the same principles apply to chronic environments like the dance studio, where authority and fear could keep silence in place.
It is important to remember that most bystanders in dance were minors. Silence in those moments was not complicity, it was survival: a way to avoid becoming the next target, to maintain approval, or to preserve the dream of a career. The responsibility was never theirs as children. Yet as adults, the responsibility is different. To forget, minimise, or deny what was witnessed continues the harm, while remembering and speaking validates those who carried the greatest scars.
I recall in ballet class as a young girl, watching an older ballerina being hit repeatedly with force. In that moment, I felt torn between shock, fear, and an overwhelming wish that it would end. I froze. That stillness was not indifference; it was self-preservation. In the decade I trained there, I too was struck often enough to know the risk. I was both a witness and a victim, trying to navigate a system where survival depended on compliance.
Years later, this absence of intervention can harden into denial. Former students who went on to thrive may feel loyalty to their teachers. To acknowledge the abuse they witnessed feels like betraying both the teacher and their own identity. Preserving the narrative of greatness can feel safer than facing the discomfort of contradiction: holding both gratitude and recognition of harm at once. Psychologists describe this as system justification, a way of preserving belief in the legitimacy of the very structures that caused harm. This is closely related to cognitive dissonance theory, which explains how people reduce psychological tension when their values and experiences conflict.
The cost of this silence is significant. Survivors who name their experiences are often dismissed: “That never happened to me,” or “We just knew how to handle it back then.” These responses, even when unintentional, minimise harm and deepen wounds.
These dynamics were rarely random. Studios marked by coercive methods often operated on unspoken roles: some students became the scapegoats, receiving the brunt of criticism or punishment, while others were elevated as golden children who embodied the teacher’s approval. Psychologists note that intermittent reinforcement, the unpredictable cycle of reward and punishment, is one of the most powerful conditioning forces. In the studio, this created dependency and competition, keeping students striving for approval they could never fully secure. Add to this the gaslighting that reframed cruelty as “discipline” or “tough love,” and you have a culture where denial and silence could thrive.
In my next piece, I will explore these roles more closely: how scapegoating, golden child dynamics, and triangulation shaped the psychology of students, and why they still influence how dancers interpret their training today.
To move forward, dance culture must reckon with the role of the bystander:
- Witnessing shapes memory. Even if silence was survival at the time, remembering what was seen helps us understand the full picture of a training culture.
- Your story is not the only story. That you were not harmed does not erase the experiences of others.
- Loyalty can coexist with honesty. It is possible to respect what was given while also naming what was damaging.
- Solidarity matters. When those who were spared harm validate the voices of survivors, they help dismantle the silence that keeps abusive practices alive.
Real transformation in dance requires both survivors and witnesses to speak. The integrity of dance does not rest on the myth of the untouchable “great.” It rests on our collective responsibility to face the truth, even when it implicates our own silence.