Ballerinas defy the corporeal in a quest for the ethereal (2019)

Looser forms of contemporary dance can certainly be done safely. But there's a good case to be made for classical en pointe ballet being inherently physically dangerous to the point of being abusive, in a way that few other artistic or athletic activities are - outside of sports that rely on overt brutality, like boxing or MMA.

Just because it's clothed in swirly skirts and made-up prettiness doesn't mean it doesn't have a barbaric edge to it.

Also, by 12 years old, the kids are motivating themselves. If the parents are pushing them at this point, they will soon quit or move to recreational programs.

The amount of training or practice time is relatively minor for kids until they hit 12+ years old. And, then it is just the few the that remain in competitive/pre-professionsal programs that ramp up the training intensity.

While some families with money do over train kids when they are little, it really isn't much of an advantage because physical/natural talent begins to separate kids around 10-12 years old such that the excess early training during ages 5-9 is washed out. Thus, a 7 year old that is taking 5 lessons a week will excel as compared to most other 7-10 year olds that are taking 1 or 2 lessons per week. But if kids join the competitive ranks everyone is taking 3-4-5 lessons per week and the early lessons don't make that much difference anymore because anyone who is competitive will have caught up.

Ballet training has a similar split, where kids at a certain age/level are invited to the academy/pre-professional divisions that require 3-4+ classes a week. Otherwise, they drop into recreational dance (which can still be grueling but it is not on a professional track).

Source: My daughter was a competitive figure skater. She also competed in rhythmic gymnastics until it interfered too much with figure skating. Her training included a serious amount of ballet, she did a year or two of pointe before moving away from ballet. She turned to Chinese dance after turning down an invitation to join her ballet school academy/pre-professional division.

My daughter retired from competitive skating in her junior year of high school. She kept up the Chinese dance and did track and field until she went to West Point (USMA).

It was an awesome ride while it lasted. Expensive, time consuming, but very much worth it.

However, I could never recommend artistic gymnastics except for little kids. It causes way too many injuries and requires too much gym time. I can't remember the levels - but as soon as the full height balance beam comes into play it is time to switch to recreational or move on. In our case, that is when we switched our daughter to Rhythmic.

Note, my son was doing little league baseball and basketball in elementary school, and then select teams in middle school, select and varsity in HS. He had more injuries than my daughter (some severe ankle sprains in high school).

I am not sure of a good example tech, but maybe something like being the one person in the shop that has completely mastered a subject matter area that others haven't bothered to learn because it is too hard/confusing? Maybe, the device driver coder versus the application coder, etc. The amount of hours put in grinding at the office may be the same, but some people have mastered skills that are perceived as elite over other skills.

Pointe is a first level elite skill in Ballet. Some dancers may learn pointe faster or slower than others, but most dancers never will. By the time dancers are decent/comfortable on pointe and yet still far from professional level, they will be in an elite group.

edit-to-add: A big weakness with my analogous examples is that I feel that any decent programmer can learn device drive programming, difficult APIs, new data structures/algos, and so on, if they put the time in.

In contrast, many dancers that would like to dance pointe will be unable to, no matter how hard they try. Same with figure skaters who want to land a single Axel in competition. Chess mastery might be a good example too.