Ballet dancers too thin says Tamara Rojo
Deborah Cowan
WVoN co-editor
It may have won Natalie Portman an Oscar for her electrifying performance, but the film Black Swan caused more than a few feathers to fly.
Ms Portman’s character is a mentally disturbed ballet dancer who forces herself to throw up in order to stay thin.
It would seem, however, that there are more than a few painful parallels with reality highlighted by Britain’s leading female ballet dancer who spoke out this week about the dangers of eating disorders among ballerinas.
Tamara Rojo, recently appointed to take over the artistic directorship of the English National Ballet (ENB) from Wayne Eagling in the autumn, said that female ballet dancers must lose their obsession with thinness.
‘Audiences want to see beautiful and healthy-looking dancers, yet there is still that pressure to be thin’ she said.
She added that extreme thinness was a self inflicted obsession of the industry that had to be firmly addressed, and sent a clear message that eating disorders were an unacceptable by-product of life as a ballerina.
It’s a brave move on the part of Ms Rojo, not only because she is about to become head of the very credible ENB, but because she may well be tackling a subject that is otherwise considered taboo among the ballet elite.
Only a few months ago, a leading dancer at La Scala was dismissed from the company after claiming that there was a ‘plague of anorexia’.
Mariafrancesca Garritano described how dancers became caught in the grip of eating disorders as they desperately pursued the perfect body in order to please teachers and theatre directors.
She said: ‘Sadly, this is a phenomenon that affects the whole of the ballet world but is very rarely discussed – it’s as if there is a Mafia code of omerta [silence] that rules over us and as a result, it must never be broken.
‘Dancers are having their bodies taken to the limit by teachers and theatre directors who are demanding that the dancers have the perfect body, and as such this is a sore that needs to be treated.
‘Ballet and the world of dance is a beautiful form of art that should not be exploited and put the lives of ballerinas and dancers at risk.
‘They resort to this extreme course of action because they are being told that if they don’t lose weight, they won’t get picked.’
While she was still with La Scala, and despite weighing a tiny 6.8 stone at her lightest, Ms Garritano says she was subjected to taunts such as ‘Chinese dumpling’ and ‘mozarella’.
She also said that she didn’t have a period for nearly two years, still suffers from intestinal problems and regular bone trauma due to malnutrition.
Since making these comments earlier in the year, and claiming that one in five of the company’s ballerinas suffered from anorexia and that some are now unable to have children because of damage caused by anorexia or bulimia, Ms Garritano has been dismissed by La Scala, for ‘damaging the image’ of the company
Ms Garritano said she knew she risked losing her job when she made her comments.
A former colleague, Michele Villanova, agreed, saying: ‘Dancers are afraid to speak out, and what happened to Garritano shows why.’
Step forward Tamara Rojo – widely regarded as the best female ballet dancer in the country, and someone who is clearly not afraid to speak out. On the contrary, she has been very vocal in her wish to rid ballet of the scourge of anorexia.
‘When you are in a ballet company you often lose perspective of reality. So you go for extremes in order to stand out and be noticed,’ she said.
‘I have preached and will continue to preach. I have never been thin and I want for myself and others to have long and healthy careers.’
She also criticised the fashion industry as being partly responsible for perpetuating the obsession with being super thin.
Rojo is, by all accounts, a formidable woman. But will it really be that easy to eliminate what has become, for many, an uncontrollable disease?
In Black Swan, Portman’s character is ultimately destroyed by the pressures of her profession.
What Tamara Rojo has highlighted is that this is not just fiction.
The perpetual pursuit of the perfect body is a problem that is far from uncommon among ballerinas and dancers.
But the damage caused when eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia take hold is severe, destructive and prolonged.
It’s a high price to pay for one’s art.
I applaud these women that speak out against the rampant anorexia in the ballet world, and I belive that most would agree that ballerinas nowdays are waaaaaay too thin! I was watching a Margot Fonteyn video on youtube and EVERYBODY was commenting about how beautiful, womanly and feminine she looked and how these bag of bones now are absolutely repulsive. I don’t understand why if the audiences want to see something different and are so turned off by the dancers boyish bodies, then why do the dancers still belive that thinness is the way to go?