Wrong Body Type?
A Valentine's Heart To Heart
February 17, 1998

Dear Dancers,

Last month I featured a very young ballerina who is already living the dream of dancing with one of the most famous companies in the world. Yet while stories like that one are awe-inspiring, they can also be discouraging. I received several letters to that effect, including one from Stacy Reis, an 18-year-old in Minnesota, who wrote: "I have been dancing since I was eight years old . . . Dance is truly my passion . . . I want to dance more than anything . . . but I really don't think I have much of a chance . . . I'm not exactly the perfect Balanchine Ballerina. However, I believe that the true beauty of any dancer comes from inside."

I've never met Stacy, but unless she is over 5'5" tall, with long legs and a short torso, a long neck, perfectly arched feet, high extensions and a slight build, she is probably right about not being "the perfect Balanchine Ballerina." But is she right about the true beauty of any dancer coming "from inside"? Those of you who have been rejected from prestigious summer courses or companies on the basis of "body type" will quickly say she's wrong.

But let's put this into perspective. When Balanchine was brought to this country in the '30's, he was taken with the women here -- long-stemmed American Beauty roses in contrast to the women in Russia and Europe who were typically quite small and compact. Mr. B gradually developed his neo-classic style in order to take advantage of the taller, lankier dancers in the United States, and many of his so-called "leotard ballets" really don't come off as well when they're danced by short women.

By the same token, however, ballets which are reconstructions from the Romantic era, such as the "Pas de Quatre," look far better when danced by petite ballerinas. That's why the Joffrey, which has a many historical ballets in the repertoire, is mostly a "short company." So is the Boston Ballet. Jennifer Gelfand, one of Boston's principal dancers, is 5'1". And Tina LeBlanc, formerly with the Joffrey and then with San Francisco, just grazes 5". Also, historically, most ballerinas were tiny. I have one of Margot Fonteyn's pointe shoes and it can't be more than a size 3. And Natalia Makarova is a mere slip of a thing. Even Balanchine's early favorites included small women such as Patricia McBride. As for male dancers, Baryshinikov -- who seems larger than life on stage -- is about 5'3". Yet, Charles Askegaard, a rising star who just moved from ABT to City Ballet, is easily 6'5". In other words, if you can dance, there will be a place for you no matter how tall you are.

However, height is obviously not the only issue when we're talking body type. An anonymous pundit once wrote "Dance is the only art wherein we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made." More than any other artists, we are dealing with the instrument we were born with, and there is no doubt that body proportions, turn-out, the arch of the foot and other factors can work for or against would-be dancers.

Even so, the anonymous quote has a double meaning, at least for me, and takes us back to Stacy Reis's comment about the beauty inside a dancer. In this country, anyone who wants to study dance seriously can find a place to do that, whether in a professional school or in a college or university. Many a person who has the heart and soul of a dancer but not the body has used this fact to become a choreographer, or a teacher or a choreologist or a dance historian. And plenty of others with unlikely bodies or even disabilities have gone on to have highly-lauded performing careers.

One notable example is Kitty Lunn, a New York-based dancer who slipped on a patch of ice outside of her apartment building and was paralyzed from the waist down. Kitty refused to give up. She has two wheelchairs, one motorized for getting around town and one lightweight model for taking class. She shows up faithfully for Peff Modelski's class at STEPS six days a week, doing her version of the barre and center with ports de bras and chair spins. Not only that, but she has formed her own company for physically challenged and older dancers. The troupe played to magnificent reviews at the Riverside Festival last year and got Kitty a full page article plus photographs in the New York Times. The piece was entitled "She Cannot Walk, Yet She Dances." And she does. You have to see it to believe it.

The lesson? If your passion truly is dance, you will find a way to make it a vital and ever-present part of your life. You will accept your limitations and you won't bang your head against a brick wall by going to auditions where you'll be "typed out." You'll also make sure you have a way to be gainfully employed other than waiting tables. Maybe your work will be totally unrelated to dance (law, medicine, scientific research) or maybe it will be an aspect of the dance world (dance criticism, arts administration, stage managing, lighting design, costume design). And you'll thank your lucky stars that you live in a country where those with the beauty of dance inside of them can find a way to let it shine through, instead of being turned away at the age of eleven as children with unpromising bodies still are in places like France and Russia.

Rejection hurts and giving up on the dream of being in a big time ballet company isn't easy. But you don't know what life has in store for you. Maybe you would have been bored to tears doing "Swan Lake" and "The Nutcracker" year after year, and maybe you'll turn out to be an innovative choreographer who finds the creative act more thrilling even than performing.

But whatever happens, keep dancing. And dance your heart out.

Sondra