Shaping up to dance......................

Whilst researching article after article to do with body imagery and dancers it has always been difficult finding anything specifically relating to other genres of dance other than ballet.  While the literature abounds with studies examining classical dancers, considerably less has been published about modern dancers so  I was really pleased to come across a couple of articles that discusses these issues with a contemporary dancer.

The first is an interview with a male and female dancer with a contemporary dance company called Pilobolus. In my case I was more interested in what the female dancer had to say as I am concentrating on the female dancer for my inquiry question but the whole article is an interesting read.......... see reference and link to read the whole article.

Interview with dancer............... Annika Sheaff

1. How does being a professional dancer affect your body image? Self-image?
Unfortunately I think dancers tend to have a very skewed sense of self. Dancers are conditioned from a very young age to be very disciplined. They are told what to do and exactly how to do it. And that mentality of always trying to get the step perfect spills over into the way dancers think about everything, I think. For me personally, my body was never an issue until I went to college and gained about 20 pounds. Then the school started to tell me I should slim down and that feeling of having someone watch your body, and keeping an eye on you to see if you lost weight, well it stays with you for a long time. Some dancers never let it go … lucky for me I joined Pilobolus and they wanted me to be strong and healthy so I gained a lot of confidence back!  

2. Did you feel differently about your body before you began performing professionally? How so? Is the climate different in school or training?
Yes, during training and school I never thought I was good enough, and I always found something about my body that I didn’t like. I never had any eating disorders or physically hurt myself, but in terms of the way I viewed myself … I wasn’t in a good place. Then leaving school and joining a professional company I gained so much self esteem! My directors told me in the beginning to trim up, but that happened automatically just by dancing so much each day. After about the first 3 months of touring and dancing my body looked great, I felt great, and I started to find myself again. It was wonderful! Pilobolus has a very healthy attitude towards body image.

3. How do you think your expectations of your body differ from those of a professional athlete?
I never thought about this before! I guess a basketball player just needs to get the ball in the hoop, and at the end of the day it doesn’t matter what his body looks like, only that he or she can accomplish this task. For me, I have to be able to do 130 rigorous shows a year and look great doing it! I expect my body to be strong and injury free, and the audience expects a beautiful body onstage to look at. So, I think the difference is that athletes probably don’t worry if their butt is getting a bit big if they can still run and jump just as well. Whereas a dancer would worry about it a lot because people are paying to come see us move.


4. What do you value most about your body?

When my body is feeling great and pain free is when I am super happy with it. It is hard to dance through pain and injury, and it happens. I also love the fact that that I am 5’7″, curvy, and strong!!


5. Do you struggle with food and eating? If so, how so?
No! I love food so much! Sometimes I feel guilty after eating a huge piece of cake … but it won’t stop me from eating it! It will just make me run a little further the next day! ha ha!

6. Do you compare your body to other bodies? Whose? Why? When?
Of course! All the time every day! I compare myself to the women on the cover of Sports Illustrated, to other dancers, to any woman who I think has a great body! I think that is only natural. I try not to, but I always do, especially at dance auditions. An audition is just a big fiasco with lots of judgment in the air … it is hard to not compare yourself to the competition.

7. Do any aspects of the dance community fuel negative body image? Or are dancers generally pretty supportive of each other in this area? Does it vary from style to style?
I think it does vary from style to style. I think dancers try to always be supportive of each other. I would assume in the ballet world that it is extremely important to be very skinny, that is their aesthetic. Whereas in the break dancing world, or the hip hop world being skinny wouldn’t matter. They might be worried about a 6 pack, I am not sure! Dancers are very aware of their bodies no matter what style they dance.

8. Do the members of your troupe work out together? What does a dancer’s workout look like, roughly?
I wouldn’t say the dancer of Pilobolus work out together. We warm up together before a show. There are 2 women in Pilobolus, sometimes we hit the gym together but most of the time we don’t. A dancer’s warm up or work out if going to vary a lot depending on what genre they are in. Ballet dancers will take a ballet class every day. Jazz dancers may do a ballet or a jazz warm up. I have no clue how street dancers, hip hop artists, or breakers warm up! At Pilobolus we run around, jump, do push-ups or sit ups, do our “dailies” (moves that are hard for us that we have to do in the show). We just make sure our bodies are very warm before we start rehearsal, and the process of getting warm is different for each dancer.

9. Does being acutely aware of your body make you hypersensitive to the aging process?
Not really, I mean everyone is getting older! The only thing I ever think about is the fact that I know I can only dance as long as my body lets me. If I treat my body well, hopefully I will dance for a long time … or until I have kids anyway!

10. What is the most amazing thing you’ve ever done with your body?
Well, once I did 6 pirouettes on pointe! That was pretty amazing! I also challenged myself to go canyoning in New Zealand … that was scary and awesome! But honestly, joining Pilobolus and learning how to move in a completely new way at age 22 is probably the most amazing thing my body has ever done for me!

I found this article really useful as it reiterated for me that many dancers regardless of the style see others as perfect and ourselves as imperfect. It also is further evidence that dancers do have issues and worries and struggles with body image especially during their years whilst training. It seems even in the contemporary world there is  evidence that dancers suffer from a heightened sense of his or her own body, because they know they are being judged by their appearance every time they step on stage.

The second article I reviewed was printed in the Observer on 15th April 2007  entitled , "Size zero cast aside as dance shapes up", by dance critic Luke Jennings.

Jennings reveals how the emaciated waifs he remembers from his ballet training days have been replaced in some dance companies by strong-muscled women, while three top dancers tell how they learned to love their curves.

Jennings comments; "Dance and fashion have so much in common. Both are body-centred. Both involve performance, display and self-expression. They also share a dark side - a potentially fatal obsession with weight and body-image. Since the cultural revolution of the 1960s, female dancers and fashion models have presented near-identical symptoms of damage, with failure to live up to extreme physical ideals resulting in drug and medication abuse, mental health problems and even death from starvation. While fashion is on the rack, however, dance has moved on, establishing a new and liberating aesthetic which puts it way ahead of the curve. The size issue has been confronted, dance is in recovery, and as performers like Rambert's Mikaela Polley and Angika's Mayuri Boonham attest, the medium has become a celebration of women's experience, intelligence and power. How did this happen? How did a minority art-form come to make fashion look so unfashionable? How did strong come to be the new thin?"

Jennings goes on to reveal his experiences as a dance student; "When I was a ballet student in the 1970s, when things were very different. Thinness was everything, the manifestation of an extreme aesthetic which idealised the ethereal and shrank with horror from the 'civilian' body-shape. All female ballet dancers subscribed to this ideal but it was never made clear how it was to be achieved. There was no nutrition advice or counselling, no understanding of the effects of dieting on the adolescent body. Instead, everyone smoked like chimneys, and many of the girls lived on little more than cottage cheese and black coffee. There was also an unofficial, semi-secret trade in 'slimming pills' (actually amphetamines), for those vital crash weight-losses before Solo Seal exams or company auditions.

Clare Park was in the year above me, and severely anorexic. 'No one talked about the state I was in,' she remembers. 'There was no support. And I was only 16. The school's attitude was: if people fall by the wayside, too bad. There's always another dancer waiting to take her place.' Park left ballet, became one of the most iconic fashion models of the 1980s and is now a photographer. A self-portrait, inspired by her memories of anorexia (in a box, naked, with her mouth bandaged), became the cover-image of Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth.

For us boys, never giving food a second thought, female body-angst was part of the wallpaper: always there, never directly addressed. We were vaguely sympathetic, but there was stuff we didn't want to know, like when a friend, after a birthday blow-out at Patisserie Valerie in Soho, breezily announced that she was going downstairs 'for a quick chuck' as she had a costume-fitting that afternoon. For all its weirdness, I loved my time as a dancer, but it was not, overall, a happy world. Four colleagues I knew well died of heroin overdoses".

He goes on to say that "the gothically skinny 'bunhead' with her sunken cheeks and freaky eating habits - once such a staple character of ballet schools and companies - is now becoming out of favour". He reports that; " 'If a girl or boy looks too thin or unhealthy, they are not allowed to perform,' says Jane Hackett, director of the English National Ballet School in London. 'As performing is the main motivation for these young, talented people, it quickly has the desired effect.' At the Australian Ballet School in Melbourne, resident psychologist Lucinda Sharp agrees that the days when dancers lived on cigarettes and coffee are over. 'There was a time when very, very skinny dancers were fashionable, but we have a very strong holistic approach to the health and welfare of our students.' At the Melbourne school, as in London, students aren't allowed to perform if they fall beneath a healthy weight".

Jennings goes on to say that; "There are still thin dancers in ballet. But ballet is only a part of dance, and thin is no longer the standard. If there's a physical ideal in dance now, it's one of sleek, streamlined, long-muscled power. Forget the vaporous sprites of yesteryear, today's dancers are as likely to be lifting the men as being lifted. Look at the women in British ensembles like Random Dance or the Henri Oguike Dance Company. Look at Sylvie Guillem with her ripped physique and steely limbs. They're amazing. Like comic-book heroines, like Promethea or Lady Deathstrike. What dance has achieved, and fashion hasn't, is a change in its core aesthetic. Strength is a democratic ideal, because anyone can be strong - anyone can be a super-version of themselves. A dancer can look like a real woman, and her performances are all the more believable because of it. Do-anything types like London Contemporary Dance Theatre's Linda Gibbs, Rambert's Lennie Westerdijk, and Nederlands Dans Theater's Mea Venema. Those women, and others like them, remade my perception of the female dancer".

Included in the article are three interviews with professional dancers from different genres of dance:

Mayuri Boonham, 36
Angika Dance Company
I was born in Birmingham, and was sporty at school. Captain of netball! I was tall for an Indian girl - 'Where are we going to find you a husband?' my parents used to say despairingly - and I was dark-skinned. I was aware very young of the hierarchy of shades of brown. The ideal look was fair... so I took up sunbathing! I'm fine with the way I look.

I always admired Bollywood dancers, the way they moved, their womanly figures, and I used to create my own shows in the living room. At 13, I began to study Bharat Natyam (North Indian classical dance), and I've been studying, performing and choreographing ever since. My guru is Prakash Yadagudde. I got married at 21 [to the sculptor Nigel Boonham] and this enabled me to pursue dance single-mindedly. Without Nigel - no career. I owe him everything.

Anglo-Saxon supermodels are like another species to me. I've never admired thinness, and I don't identify with the images in fashion magazines. I analyse what I see intellectually and move on. Abnormally thin people are just ugly. I see someone in the skinny jeans, the shoes, carrying the expensive handbag, and I think oh no. They've fallen for it.

As a dancer, you have to control your diet, but technically and responsibly. You also need fitness of mind - at the moment I'm reading a book about mathematics, Bob Dylan's autobiography and a Salinger novel. It's harmony of the body, mind and feelings that brings dance alive. You're trying to transcend your physical form. Right now the company's just back from Germany. A sell-out tour of our Urban Temple programme. It was fantastic, but it was hard work. You've got to be strong.

Laura Morera, 29
Royal Ballet
I lived at home in Madrid until I was 11, then went to the Royal Ballet School. I was very homesick, I didn't speak English, and I didn't have that slender British look. In Spain you're doing fouettes (advanced turns) by the age of nine, and I was muscly. I've had to learn how to avoid muscle-bulk, to lengthen the body out, to balance strength against line.

My ideal at school was Darcey (Bussell). Beautiful, tall, glamorous and strong. Later, though, I realised that picture-icons are negative. You have to be your own icon. Beauty comes from happiness, and I'm happy with the way I am. There are things I'd change but I've learnt to meet myself halfway. If I look at my body it's for dance, not fashion. I don't have any vanity but I'm a perfectionist, professionally speaking.

I look at fashion magazines and frankly I don't know what designers are thinking. To look like some of the models you'd have to be half-dead; I get angry that designers play with people's lives that way. And the editors make me angry too: you see a picture of some celebrity, she's clearly anorexic, and they put her in the best-dressed list.

The truth is that if you become half a person in weight, you become half a person in spirit. So for the sake of my relationship (with dancer-fiance Justin Meissner), I stay whole. I feel passionately about this, and I want young dancers to know that, yes, you have to make sacrifices, but at the end of the day we're not models - we need strength.

At the Royal Ballet no one's fanatical about your weight and look - they want you how you are. That's why Britain is the most theatrical country in the world. I'm truly spoilt here.

Mikaela Polley, 35
Rambert Dance Company
I grew up in Essex and trained locally and at the Royal Ballet School. A friend had anorexia; it was horrifying seeing her mother having to feed her up before dance competitions. Some girls at the Royal were on the thin side. We had no nutritional information given to us. We were very aware of our body-shapes though - everyone wanted longer legs and slimmer calf-muscles. My strength was jumping; I was always very toned.

I joined Birmingham Royal Ballet, but I was always picked for the modern stuff. I felt more comfortable with it, there was something to attack, something with real physicality. I joined Rambert in 2001. There was more individuality among the female bodies. At 5ft 3in I was one of the smaller ones but my upper body strength grew fast, and that was fine. I've always felt confident about my body, and content with what I've been given - breast size, bum size and so on. I've put my body through a lot as a contemporary dancer, but I've come out fairly unscathed.

You can tell when women are underfed. You see the legs; they're all knee-cap. You can tell from the chest-bones and those thin arms. Looking at other female dancers, I'm moved by people who are grounded, who can move through space, who have weight. I like to appreciate that it's a woman on stage.

Right now we're rehearsing Anatomica #3 by Andre Gingras, which sees bodies as exhibition sites. We're looking at people who exhibit themselves - politicians, models, porn-stars - and at new and extreme ways of presenting the body. It's a high-energy, very physical work. All of us are strongly influenced by performers: they have power, negative as well as positive.

I found this article informative for my line of inquiry as it discussed body image issues with a real honesty and discussed the issues with three professional dancers, getting veiws straight from the horses mouth so to speak. Interestingly the reporter Jennings himself had trained as a ballet dancer and whilst as a male did not feel the same pressures to conform to certain aesthetics in body image he was able to give the benefit of his own experiences that he witnessed with female peers who suffered and ended up with eating disorders.


The article was also further evidence that the expectations in the dance world have been so closely and intricately linked to the fashion and celebrity world and the pressures to achieve the perceived 'perfect body' have been historically embedded on the dance world to conform and increasingly so since the 1960's. It was encouraging to read that all three dancers despite the pressures within the industry have embraced their bodies and accepted them as they are. Again all three dancers are mature and experienced and have learned to live with their bodies and accept who they are but as young dancers felt pressures.


It was interesting that Jennings thought the article was evidence that there was a definite shift taking place in the dance world that was not happening in the fashion world. "Increasing numbers of women have been turning to choreography and taking control of the dance-making process. Women who are empowered and have no time for the traditional, passive image of the female dancer - their performers are athletic, assertive and pro-active".
He concludes his article with, "fashion continues to view the image of the physically and emotionally adult woman with horror. If there is to be a change in aesthetic, however, it's precisely those adult women who must initiate it, as they did in dance. With luck, there's a generation of whip-smart new designers out there, waiting to kick the old order into touch. Waiting to prove, as in dance, that strong is the new thin".
There is no evidence that the revolution in dance has completely taken place as Jennings advocates in his article, but there is some evidence that some improvements are happening in the dance world and there is some initiation there but with a lack of conviction from all walks of the profession. I think the link between the two (ie: fashion and dance) from the research I have conducted is still intricately there and there is still a long way to go.
The article was written in 2007 just as I was a 16 year old entering my first year at vocational dance college. Certainly at my college the traditional aesthetic image of the 'thin' dancer was advocated as the 'perfect body for dance' even in the contemporary classes. Muscle and strength in the female dancer was often labelled as 'fat' and those who were larger were advised to lose weight. The findings from my questionnaire's, interviews and observations would suggest that the revolution that excited Jennings and inspired his article is still in its infancy for the dance profession but at least is the start of something positive to initiate a change. I do agree with him though that it is dance practitioners themselves that need to bring about the change and challenge current accepted ideals.

Reference

http://www.alreadypretty.com/2010/03/dance-and-body-image-interview-with.html..............

http:// www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2007/apr/15/dance.healthandwellbeing&urlHash=-1.9315457902082914E-184

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2007/apr/15/dance.healthandwellbeing
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1083/is_7_82/ai_n27945073/