Ballet taught me a very particular way of looking at things, especially at my own body. It taught me to notice tiny things, minuscule imperfections, to spot them in the mirror from all the way across the studio. A pinkie finger out of place. A stray hair poking out of a bun. A smudge of schmutz on otherwise pristine pink tights.
Part of the pleasure of practicing ballet is the deep satisfaction of correcting tiny mistakes, repeating a step over and over again until it’s perfect, and the perfect version is committed to muscle memory. The angle of the arm is just right, the toes sweep across the floor just so, and the body will remember forever how to place its parts in proper way. The slow creep toward precision, and the arrival at it, can feel sublime.
I’m no longer dancing on a regular basis, but my attention to some details is still sharp and unshakable, and that’s not always a good thing I don’t want to notice that new stretch mark on my outer thigh, but when they appear I always do. I don’t want to notice a bad dye job on another woman’s hair, either, but I can’t not - ballet taught me not only to observe my own body’s minute mistakes, it taught me to compare my own body to everyone else’s, to look another dancer and immediately observe and catalogue the ways in which her body was or wasn’t better than my own.
I was reminded of how ballet trains young women to be precise and exacting this week, during an interview with a young dancer in the second company at Ballet West, in Salt Lake City. Second companies are like minor league baseball teams: they’re proving grounds for young dancers who are trying to make it to the next, uppermost level, and they’re often a dancer’s first paid dancing gig. Second company dancers get practice at being in a professional company - taking company class every day, learning new ballets quickly, touring and performing - and often end up in the big leagues after a year or two.
This dancer is 18 and in her first year in the second company. As she was getting ready to graduate from her elite residential ballet school and applying for company jobs - sending out audition packets with videos and headshots, and then auditioning in person - she was told by the teachers at the school that she’d be more successful if she “lengthened” and “worked on her lines.”
That’s ballet code for “lose weight.” That’s not uncommon in the ballet world, and there’ll be much more about that in the book, and it’s not really the point of this story.
In our interview, I asked her: how much she did she weigh at the time?
Oh, she said. About 121 pounds.
I managed not to laugh. “About” 121? About 121. Approximately.
She started cutting back on snacks, she remembers, and went to a daily elliptical class for a month, accompanied by her mother, a former professional ballerina who also agreed to an interview. She lost weight, and went down to “about 113.” Between 112 and 113. Or so.
Ballet teaches you to pay attention to details. For better, and for worse. For this dancer, it “worked.” She was offered jobs at two companies.
In ballet news this week...
The woman who ran the prestigious Austrian ballet school that former students said encouraged dancers to smoke to stay skinny has been removed. A profile of Nardia Bardoo: Washington Ballet dancer, model, college student (and, interview subject for my book! We had a great conversation). A woman Nutcracker!
That’s it from me. Thanks for reading.