Ballet Beauty Tips: 18 Things We Learned From the Ultimate Hair and Makeup Pros

If you’ve ever dreamed of floating across stage in pointe shoes and a beautiful fluff of tulle, you’re not alone. While we might be green—or soft pink—with envy over their careers (not the painfully blistered toes, though), what really makes our jaws drop is the fact that ballerinas are also pros at hair and makeup. As many ballet lovers might be surprised to learn, there is no beauty team backstage—the dancers are responsible for their own onstage looks. Before curtain call, they hustle backstage to paint on their characters’ faces and slick back their hair into perfect chignons. In celebration of the National Ballet of Canada’s performance of The Sleeping Beauty, three dancers let us snoop behind the scenes while they prepped a performance.

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Photography by Kayla Rocca

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ballet dancer beauty tips

“With lining, you need a really a steady hand. It’s just practice,” says Chelsy Meiss, second soloist at the National Ballet of Canada (she was prepping her makeup for her role as the Finger Fairy). “Just taking your time and, obviously, if it’s new to you, get up against a good mirror and start slowly. If you’re using liquid, don’t move your eye around too much or blink, because it smudges instantly. Now, because I’ve had so much practice, I can be on the bus putting on mascara no problem over the potholes in the road.”