"Must see the bones"

There’s a famous scene in the memoir written by former New York City Ballet star Gelsey Kirkland, in which she describes taking class with the company’s co-founder, the father of American ballet, George Balanchine. It was the very early seventies, and Kirkland was in her late teens at the time, having joined the company at just 15.

“He halted class and approached me for a kind of physical inspection. With his knuckles, he thumped on my sternum and down my rib cage, clucking his tongue and remarking, ‘must see the bones.’

I was less than a hundred pounds even then… He did not merely say, ‘Eat less.’ He said repeatedly, ‘Eat nothing.’”

The name of Kirkland’s memoir, tellingly, is Dancing on my Grave.

It’s a well-known one in the dance world, perhaps because Kirkland’s spiral into drug addiction, and her obsession with using plastic surgery to correct what she thought were flaws in her body, made her a high-profile cautionary tale.

And this anecdote is one that gets quoted a lot. What doesn’t get quoted is all the other women who told similar stories -- very similar stories -- about how Balanchine told them to get and keep their weight down. Some of them remember him saying the very same words, or prodding and appraising their bodies in the very same way. Gelsey’s not the only one, but I didn’t know that until I started researching this book.

It’s easy to ignore women when they’re isolated and telling their stories alone. It’s easy to dismiss a story when there’s just one of them, or when the person telling it is (or has been, or is perceived to have been) unstable and erratic. And it’s easy, when you’re writing or editing or researching, to leave out additional voices that might make the difference between taking one woman’s word for it, and observing a trend. Between a one-off, and a pattern of behavior.

If we’ve learned anything in the last two years, it’s that one woman’s story is almost never enough to change our collective cultural understanding of a powerful man or an important institution. And, we’ve learned that when one woman has a story to tell, chances are she’s not the only one. 

Dancers you should follow

Lauren Lovette is a principal dancer at the aforementioned New York City Ballet, and she’s spent the last few years carving out a space for herself as a choreographer, as well. Her most recent work, The Shaded Line, premiered last month; it was about “the future of the art form: how ballet might a find a way to sit within the larger world, where gender norms are unraveling.” I profiled Lauren for HuffPost in 2017, and she’s one of my favourite performers to watch.

laurenlovette

I don’t believe that competition in itself is what causes us to turn bitter, resentful, or arrogant...I think comparison is what throws competitive people into dangerous mindsets. Competition with ourselves and others around us is actually a healthy thing in my mind. It keeps life entertaining, motivating, interesting, and ultimately fun! How boring would a life without competition be? We would have no ESPN, no family games, no iron chef, no awards shows, and no variation or standard to climb to... So how do we keep competition, but not let it poison our ideas about ourselves, or depress us into inaction? We can place the competition on OURSELVES. We can always be a little better today then we were yesterday. We can wake up a little earlier, be a little more patient with our children or pets, straighten our rooms a little better, cloth ourselves more thoughtfully, sharpen our minds with study, or be slightly more refined in our work.... do it for yourself. Maybe you got cut from an audition or came in last place in the race... comparing yourself to others just makes you feel like a failure. But if your competition lies within? Well maybe you came in last place, but made your personal best time? You can hold your head up high then! Maybe you didn’t get the job, but you hit that high note you didn’t know you could hit? Comparing yourself to anyone else will only distract you from the value you could bring to your own life today. So I dare you to challenge yourself today in whatever way makes you feel the most powerful. @nisian #doitforyou #iammycompetition #everydaybetter

February 12, 2019

Talk to me!

If you’re a ballet teacher or a ballet parent, I’d like to interview you for this book. Whether your ballet student is in Baby Ballerinas or pre-professional, I want to talk. Ballet dads are very welcome. If you’re interested, you can reply to this email, or tell me a bit about yourself at turningpointebook@gmail.com.

And if you know anyone who might be interested in speaking with me, please don’t hesitate to forward this along to them.

That’s it from me. Thanks for reading, and see you next week.