The light fantastic? Ballet dancers and anorexia

a dancer who was accused of promoting anorexia Scala was fired. There is more to this weight problem as it seems, says Judith Mackrell

In recent weeks, it seems that the ballet has just released the new. The first shock was the departure of Sergei Polunin young dancer the Royal Ballet, a story that shook the world of dance and sent reporters running around looking for reasons. Then came the weekend reports that the Italian dancer had been dismissed Mariafrancesca Garritano prestigious La Scala, La. This, too, was a fairy colors: Garritano according to his training at the Ballet School of La Scala had thrust and many of his peers in the body dysmorphia and severe eating disorders, said that one in five dancers now have anorexia, and suggested that many can not get pregnant as a result. La Scala he was shot for "damage the image" of society.

Garritano The question seems outrageous, at least on the face of it: a whistleblower fired for talking. But is it that simple? Garritano, now in her mid-30, we talk about the training that took place 15 years ago, while the school agree not to have been past failures, which calls for a new culture was introduced. Other dancers were quick to condemn their false accusations. Everything that happens behind the scenes is certainly more complex than it seems at first sight

Perhaps this case highlights the broader issues is more interesting than the story itself. As the hype surrounding the disorder and bulimic ballerina Natalie Portman in Black Swan showed, the issue of the dancers and their body weight is an issue we can not ignore. But why?

• Dancers used to be chubby to modern standards, in fact, the great Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova was criticized at the end of 1890 for being too thin (mocked his long limbs and slender, she was dubbed "the broom" by their peers). And during the last century, and beyond the stage of the mode has changed and demand for athletics increased rationalization on the stage, so that the dancers were pushed to become thinner. There is a macabre anecdote recorded in the memory of the American dancer Gelsey Kirkland, Dancing on my grave, which describes the late choreographer George Balanchine in the 1970s, the management of his finger down sternum Kirkland and say "we need to see bones" and even then, he weighed only 100 pounds (45kg). Many dancers have had the confidence of their health and damage by trying to answer an impossible ideal - and we must remember that some of them were men, also
But Balanchine That was another era. Much more is now known about eating disorders, and companies understand they must do more to educate dancers about nutrition, and to use advances in sports medicine to take care of their bodies of dancers other means. When it does, from time to time, see a dancer who is half-starved, you can also see the quality of her dancing.

What exactly constitutes an abuse

, damage, or abnormal behavior? Athletes, musicians and singers have to take care of their bodies so that most people would find extreme. The baritone Simon Keenleyside recently had to cancel performances because he had cast his vote - to talk too much about their children at Christmas. Instrumentalists who rehearse for hours a day must take extreme care to counter distortions and skeletal muscle may occur.

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