Royal Ballet...is this the end?

[ruthgordon123]

I thought in my childhood the whole point of ballet was to body shame. Can you really sue? I had inturned feet and madame pushed them down so I could do an agonising demi plie. Surely sometimes you must be given a chance and then realise it's not for you. Ballet is body dysmorphia surely. Im I being unreasonable.

Well, castrating young boys produces excellent singers, but we don't allow that, do we?

Not quite the same thing

No, it's a different but similar thing. That's why I chose different words.

The point is the same - there's a debate here about what is a reasonable amount of training/body dysmorphia/alteration to inculcate on a young person without a full realisation of the consequences, for the sake of art.

A life-long eating disorder and ruined feet are one point of the scale. Castration is another.

I wouldn't want any daughter of mine getting involved in a world where she would be told her body was wrong and her look was wrong for the art, assuming she could perform well. Young kids are so impressionable. I'd no more want a girl told her body was wrong than a boy have his bits removed.

Exactly. Usain Bolt does not have the same physique as Mo Farah, for instance and neither would have won Olympic medals in each other's chosen field.

There are misconceptions around what constitutes a ballet physique. Ask any member of the general public and they will mention 'extremely thin'. They won't mention the small head, the long neck, level shoulders, a short body and long, perfectly straight legs that are both the same length, a degree of hypermobility, naturally good balance, rhythm, musicality, proprioception, the right-shaped feet that neither pronate nor supinate, or having hip joints that facilitate flat turnout. None of those things can be achieved by dieting.

I'm appalled by what still happens in vocational ballet training in this country, and that applies to all the schools, not just the one in the news yesterday. My dd had an unpleasant experience at another one, and was discarded as damaged goods. Nothing to do with weight or body shaming in her case, although she was aware that some others did have that issue, particularly at another establishment.

A friend's daughter was in the corps de ballet for a major company. The whole place was rife with coke and eating disorders.

Went to boarding school and trained as classical ballet dancer from age 10 to age 19. Danced professionally in the company and had a career. Got paid to do something I love. But. I totally accept that the constant pressure to be a certain physical type was excruciating and I feel for these young dancers who’ve been through this.

We were weighed and measured weekly. My parent's measurements were considered at audition. The critique of the ballet mistresses/masters was demoralising on a daily basis and though I was successful, there was a huge toll physically and mentally. The endless competition was sickening.

It was also an amazing experience and I’m glad (and lucky) to have done it. It’s unfortunate but true; ballet dancers have to have the strength and fitness of an Olympic athlete encased in the ethereal frame of a sylph. No one pays to see a larger girl in a tutu.

I've always understood that the British ballet aesthetic is particularly focused on thinness compared to other countries, but maybe that's wrong?

By and large, ballet dancers are a lot 'bigger' and more muscular than they used to be in the UK. Even more so in America. All dancers here really used to look like they still do in Russia - if you look at someone like Maria Khoreva, that's what most dancers here used to look like. Now our dancers tend to look more like Marianela Nunez, or Natalia Osipova (the top ballerinas at the RB). Obviously, these women are very slim, but they don't appear to be underweight and they have a great deal of visible muscle tone. There are differences, with some dancers still looking very small, and a couple who look noticeably larger.

Women aren't only required to be thin because of aesthetic preference but because a large part of the job is being thrown about; as the women get bigger, so too do the men and it's getting much more difficult for a very short or slim man to get to the top as they just physically aren't able to partner many women. This is particularly the case in the types of ballets the RB's known for, like MacMillan. Have a look at Mayerling final PDD and imagine attempting that with a tall, muscle-bound woman and/or a short, slim man! It would be extremely dangerous. It's also important for technique as being larger is going to affect ability to jump, and can be very dangerous for pointe work. Pointe is obviously not very healthy for feet as you're putting your entire body weight on your toes and metatarsals, so you really want that weight to be as small as possible or you could very easily end up doing some serious damage.

It’s very prescriptive and there’s very little wiggle room. World wide. In contemporary dance there’s more range, I think.

I feel like there are increasing numbers of successful ballerinas with bodies that are more muscular and more rounded than there used to be. I don’t think the starvation diets and body shaming are in any way necessary, though both are clearly endemic in training institutions. I hope this judgment forces ballet schools and teachers to reconsider.

There are and this is definitely the way forward. I think all ballet schools should have everyone watching historic ballet footage and seeing the shape of ballerinas with more natural figures.

I watched really interesting footage of the same ballet solo over generations and the analysis was that as the women got skinnier with less muscle mass they had less strength, particularly in their legs, which made their movements more staccato, less graceful and fluid.

Have you met many 14 year olds?

Part of the issue with classical ballet is the traditional preference for small, light female bodies because women gain so much height when dancing en pointe, and because male partners have to lift them. It’s a ‘heterosexual-couple partner issue’ as much as anything. You notice it when you watch something like Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake, where you have two male leads dancing together, and a male corps de ballet with powerful physiques.

I think back to my 14yr old self in pas de deux, looking at my partner and wondering how he was EVER going to support/lift me. I was 5ft 5” and weighed 6st 10lbs. And one of the ballet mistresses told me I had “let myself go”. Excruciating.

I do not understand why they need to be so thin. It's really triggering for me, making me hate ballet. Even though I do enjoy dance as an art form. The combination of the movements and the extreme skinniness just look actively painful.

I only knew one girl who went to ballet school, but she did leave after a couple years as her mum was worried she was anorexic. I'm not sure if she is or not but she's very underweight to this day, 30 years later.

I think the distinction here is that being painfully skinny does not give you an advantage in Ballet. It's absolutely an aesthetic issue.

This. Much the same as you don't need to be a rail thin 6ft to model women's clothes, it's simply that a series of largely male designers personally like a particular, artistic aesthetic which is not designed to allow for the realities of an adult woman's body (such as breasts and hips). Its solely based on exhibiting their clothes as essentially pieces of creative art, and not on their ability to make the wearer comfortable and look good. But it requires the vast majority of adult women to starve to an unhealthy weight purely for the look of it.

You do not need to be painfully thin to be a strong, flexible ballerina with excellent technique. Its purely about the look - there was a long period where they essentially wanted the dancers to look frail & delicate.

To be at the very top of any sport requires the body to pushed to it's limits and only those who posess the right body type and are willing to make personal and physical sacrifices succeed in the extreme competitions. Injury, physical and mental stress, highly tailored and limited diets etc. are commonplace in all sports. Ballet is no different.

There is no sport in which being painfully, artificially thin with reduced muscle mass is required.

I trained at a big dance school and had a career in the 00s. I would say 90% of us had some element of disordered eating (but only a couple 'full blown' ED), i remember the principal giving a lecture on how she only has one piece of toast for breakfast so we can all say no to the second piece. And our ballet teacher would go round the class commenting on the size of people's love handles.

I later got fired from a job when i went up to a size 10 for being "too fat". Cruise ships did regular weigh ins too on the job.

Overally i had an amazing experience, and i do think things have opened up to "larger" body types than before, but things need to change more imo.

Kendodd · Yesterday 09:20
I love ballet, I hope it doesn't end. It does need to change though. I've said for years dancing en pointe should stop for one

If dancing en pointe were to be banned in UK, would that mean no touring ballet companies from overseas would be allowed to dance en pointe if dancing in UK as it would be impossible to enforce the ban in other countries?

It is different precisely for the reasons suggested above. The aesthetic demands placed on a ballerina go beyond anything required to dance well. And that's a difference that can be changed without detracting from the quality of the end product.

It may actually improve the end product.

It’s a societal aesthetic, though, not just ballet. Dancers used to be much less skeletal, because society( men) used to value curvaceous women. The models in the fifties were slender, but not emancipated as many are now. Film stars were more like ‘normal’ women ; I believe that Marilyn Munroe was a size 16 (although that would be 12- 14 in todays sizing).

I feel that one plank in this is basically misogyny and the devaluation of women, culminating in men being awarded ‘female’ model of the year. ‘Straight up and down, like two boards strapped together’ would have been DG’s memorable description. The designer, the choreographers, the ‘artists’ prefer this un female silhouette ( although most men seem to disagree when it comes to the actual selection of a mate).

Why the fuck would you start a thread like this without providing the context / a relevant link?

Very true and the point at which ballet dancers started to get very thin was at the same time as models in the 60s. In the 50s they still had more womanly figures.

People look at ballet and think that ballet figures were always as they are now and it is simply a requirement of the art - when nothing could be further from the truth.

They also say that dancers have to be light for men to lift them - that’s true to some degree - but it’s also true of other types of dancing eg ballroom, ice dance and cheer squads (in the latter male athletes hold the “flyers” up above their heads with one hand) and while they may be petite they generally have athletic figures.