"Yes. Even on Broadway, there are cattle calls. I haven’t had the experience of auditioning for an actual company. The School of American Ballet does a whole tour, and there are a lot of people in the room, and you’re selected from that group of people.""Any audition I ever took consisted of a class. No mumbling directors had us line up afterward to step forward or back [like in the episode]. The audition process shown did look exactly like what my Broadway-aspiring roommate experiences — including the crying girl.""I have been to a lot of auditions, but I have never experienced an audition where you have to stand in a line, and they make a cut when you haven't even danced yet. Every company runs their auditions however they want. Sometimes, they'll make a cut after two combinations at the barre, and some will wait until center combinations. I've also never had to perform a variation in an audition. As far as attire goes, not everyone is wearing the exact same thing.""Actually, if anything, it’s the guys who are a little bit more, ‘Who’s this dude coming in?’ more so than the girls in my company... Granted, the whole idea about inserting into a company is you’re at the top of your game. You’re usually [coming from] a school situation where you’re the best in the school. You’re given a contract, then you're knocked down to the bottom of the totem pole again. It’s an adjustment for these people. If you come in and you think that you’re the best thing for ballet, you’re not going to be accepted... It’s more so of a helping along and a mentoring nowadays. It used to be a lot meaner. I think now, generally, the older dancers are far more accepting and are willing to help.""Showing this level of unacceptance would look weak, as though the dancer were worried he or she were lacking in talent.""I feel this show falls into the trap of overdramatizing competitiveness within a company. Yes, there will be newcomers who turn out to be amazing talents. But for the most part, a new girl is no threat to a prima who is well established.""There's not a lot of energy left at the end of the day in a real company situation to do anything like that. People can hardly date.""No, I think this a fantasy attached to dancers. We have the skill set to strip, I have no doubt. But it doesn't seem like an easy, stress-free side job. Most of my friends work in retail if they're not performing.""I've never heard of anyone stripping as a second job. Maybe go-go dancing, but not stripping.""There's always been this underlying idea. You look at the story of Degas' "Little Dancer "... You are there to be this ethereal creature, and that could always be the case... We work in close quarters; we're lifting each other up; we're touching each other... Are things said that are completely out of line? Yes. Are you occasionally grabbed in places you shouldn't be grabbed? Yes. Is it on purpose? Who knows? There's a certain desensitization to it. However, in its blatant form, everything that's on TV is so magnified... It's how you handle it as an individual. You can set those boundaries, and you should respect yourself...but then you're in a workspace where there's many different generations of people. What might have been okay in a previous generation might not be okay now... I know a colleague who unfortunately lost his job over a sexual harassment situation.""There was so much joking around [about] it that something must have been true. I heard rumors that one might gain power by sleeping with a director or conductor, but I did not personally know anyone who did this in the dance world. It has happened to someone I know in the singing world. If I had to generalize, I found men more self-absorbed than misogynistic.""I have had to deal with some pretty demanding and sometimes crazy directors and choreographers, but it's never come to a point where they are telling me to sleep with a board member. Yes, some directors can really beat you down in terms of self esteem, but that is something that we all fight through on a daily basis."