The untold stories of women fighting against their bodies to pursue their dreams
Colorado native and recent CU Boulder graduate, Anna Cohen, started dancing at age five, taking the classically trained path of jazz, tap and ballet. Throughout her dance career, coaches scolded Cohen for her technique; it would improve if she were smaller and light on her feet, they said.
Ten years later, she left her dance studio to join the Evergreen High School poms. Poms—a style of dance that blends ballet, contemporary, and hip hop with elements of cheerleading, and routines—is often performed at school sporting events. Although the way body standards were upheld in poms differed from classical ballet, Cohen said that the coaches’ commentary about her body worsened throughout her time on the team.
“I remember on a winter break I lost 25 pounds, or something crazy like that,” Cohen said. “I was so proud of myself, because they told me that winter, before break, that I needed to lose weight.” “They would work me out harder than anyone, keep me after class to work me out harder. They told me things would be easier if I was lighter.”
“So, when I got back from that winter break after losing 25 pounds, I remember my coach calling everyone in with the trainer. They said we just want to give out someone a little shoutout for working hard. We can see that this person is working, and this is really because she lost the most weight.”
The experience Cohen had of being made aware that she needed to change the size of her body is not uncommon for young dancers. At the professional level, maintaining a lean body can be stipulated in a dancer’s contract. While a director may tell a dancer that they need to slim down further, it may not be in their best interest, physically and mentally.
Alex Strauss, a CU Boulder graduate, who danced with Cohen on the Evergreen team, quit ballet at age 12 due to the industry’s body standards. Like Cohen, Strauss started dancing at four-years-old, learning jazz, tap, and of course, ballet. After school and on weekends, time at the studio began to consume Strauss’ life. She did not mind the intense routine, as advancing in the dance world sparked excitement, she said. Despite her abilities, her instructors viewed her body weight as fundamentally inadequate in accordance with industry standards.
“I remember my ballet teacher was talking to my grandmother, who would pick me up and drop me off at dance practice, and I was really, really getting into it,” Strauss said. “I was just about to go on pointe. And [my ballet teacher] said to my grandma that I would never be able to be a ballet dancer, because I didn’t have the body type for it.”
Around the age of 12, most dancers transition into going on pointe. The shoes, made of densely packed fabric, cardboard or paper, hardened by glue, represent the first steps towards a professional level. Dancing on pointe allows ballerinas to dance on the tip of their toes, thus creating the coveted long lines, created by the body, associated with ballet.
“It’s difficult because dance is obviously something that’s supposed to be making shape with your bodies, and I think it, unfortunately, took a turn to being more about the shape of your body,” Strauss said. “In dance … the narrative of athleticism has been totally shifted, even though this sort of stuff does happen in other sports.”
Achieving the desirable, elegant lines has been labeled as achievable only through thinness. There is nothing about the pointe shoes or costumes that make it so a dancer must be thin. Rather the toxic body culture has been manifested and passed down through generations promoted by masters of ballet – take George Balanchine, for example.
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Video Credit: Julia Bailey
The Boney History
Balanchine, the co-founder of New York City Ballet, is one of the most influential 20th century choreographers and often regarded as the father of American ballet. Centered around energy and vitality, “The Balanchine Method” rejected classical stiffness and embraced neoclassical ballet, which is a modern expression of movement.
Balanchine wanted his dancers to be long and lean, promoting a preference of thinness that infiltrated ballet companies nationwide. One of his former dancers at the New York City Ballet, Gelsey Kirkland, was told by Balanchine that he wanted to “see the bones.” This unrealistic, “ideal ballet body” has put enormous pressure on female dancers, driving many of them to take extreme measures to achieve thinness.
Heidi Guenther was a victim of this culture. Guenther was a dancer with the Boston Ballet in the last 1990s. In June of 1997, she suffered cardiac arrest at the age of 22-years-old. At the time of her death, she stood at 5 foot 3 inches and weighed about 100 pounds, which is unhealthy by typical physician recommendations but normal for a dancer. Like many of her peers, she suffered from an eating disorder driven by the pressures of her career.
What led to her collapse is unclear, as a preliminary autopsy found no apparent problem with her heart. However, the Boston Ballet and others have speculated that her death was likely a result of her eating disorder.
The year Guenther died, Mayo Sugano, an ex-professional dancer, had recently moved to California, to train with San Francisco Ballet school. Much like Guenther, she was taking classes at the school while training with the company,with the ultimate goal of becoming a company member of the San Francisco Ballet.
With Guenther’s death fresh in the dance community, schools and professional companies were put under a microscope. Sugano recalls there being a shift in the culture at school after Guenther’s tragic death.Teachers were more cautious of what they said about students’ bodies and more aware of students who were becoming “too thin.”
However, this shift was not reflected within the company itself. According to Sugano, the company would tell her and her peers that they were “too fat.” In fact, they all weighed 100 pounds or less at 16 and 17-years-old.
Coincidentally, Guenther’s first experience with diet culture was during her time at San Francisco Ballet, when she was told to lose weight.
It was at this point that Sugano became hyper-aware of her weight, and actively worked to shed pounds to gain the approval of the company directors. Eventually securing a position within the company, Sugano felt a severe disconnect between the progress made within the school and the demands of the company.
“So, it was just a mental game, like, when we go up to the company floor and work for the company, they would tell us we need to lose weight,” Sugano said. “And then when we would start shedding pounds, the school director would take us into the office and say you can’t do this. … And we were like 16 or 17? What are we supposed to do? This is our dream to get into the company. So do we not listen to the teachers?”
Due to the mental games and pressure from directors and ballet masters, dancers are pushed to a point where they develop an eating disorder or use disordered eating habits to control their weight – at rates much higher than the average American.
In the United States, eating disorders impact about 30 million Americans in their lifetime, which is approximately 9% of the population. However, in dance it is estimated that 12% of dancers as a whole struggle with an eating disorder. Further, eating disorders are 10 times more common in ballet dancers than non-ballet dancers.
The upshot is a culture of thinness that encompasses ballet dancers and can lead to life threatening eating disorders such as the one that claimed Guenther’s life.
While not all eating disorders are as severe as Guenther’s became, the toll that disordered eating takes on bone growth and hormone regulation can be detrimental to one’s development, especially among women.
As athletes, it is essential that dancers nourish their bodies to protect their bones. When a dancer is underweight and lacking essential nutrients, their physical health is impacted greatly.
The Female Athlete Triad is a health organization for women and girls who want to excel in their sports, particularly those involved in a sport that emphasizes thinness such as ballet, gymnastics, and other artistic sports.
Three interrelated conditions define the triad: eating disorders or disordered eating, amenorrhea, and osteoporosis. Amenorrhea is when one experiences inconsistent menstrual cycles or the loss of a period. Low bone mass and microarchitectural deterioration leads to weak bones and a higher risk of stress fractures, known as osteoporosis.
Over time, an unbalanced diet and low caloric intake relative to one’s level of physical activity may result in inconsistent periods, amenorrhea, due to hormone imbalances.
Selina Shah, a board-certified sports medicine specialist and physician to ballet companies and USA Olympic Athletes, notes that if you are not consuming enough calories for the amount you are burning, it will impact your estrogen and progesterone levels.
According to Shah, hormone imbalances predispose women to low bone mineral density which can lead to inadequate bone development, especially in their teen years – a crucial time for bone development.
A 20-year-old woman without menses during her critical teenage growth period may have the bone mass typical of a 70-year-old woman, predisposing her to stress fractures and fractures later in life, according to The American College of Sports Medicine.
In her work with dancers, Shah sees patients who are healing from injuries and aids them in their recovery process.The healing process tends to be slower if they are not nourishing their body properly, she said. In this case, she highlighted that she may talk with the patient about their diet, period, etc. to get some context on what the cause of a slow healing process may be. Then, she notes she might suggest eating more dairy or introducing foods into the patients diet to help them heal.
While ballet companies may be wanting their dancers to maintain a skin-and-bones aesthetic, it may not be optimal for their health. Some dancers are born with a metabolism that keeps them at a low Body Mass Index, others are not. These individuals may struggle with the pressure of being as thin as their colleagues – putting their health at great risk.
Like many athletes, dancers spent years of their lives training with the hope of performing in a professional company. The love that dancers have for their sport drives many to put their health at risk, and to do just about anything to be able to perform. Many dancers would agree that after so much hard work, it is a passion that can be difficult to walk away from.
For New York City ballerina Tiler Peck, quitting dance was not in the cards even after a severe neck injury that doctors told her would make it dangerous to walk in crowded spaces.
“The scary thing was that they made me feel like if I was walking down the street and somebody were to nudge me, I could never walk again,” Peck said in an interview with The New York Times.
Her injury occurred in the Spring of 2019 after five or six years of a perpetually stiff neck resulted in a herniated disc. The doctors were unable to determine exactly what happened, but her chances of dancing again were not promising.
“When you’re told that you might not dance or even walk, you start to think, Oh my God, what is there?” Peck told The Times. “What am I? Who am I? Am I more than just a dancer?”
Peck could only exercise on a stationary bike for months, but by August, she was dancing again. In November, she performed as the Sugarplum Fairy in “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker.”
Her’s is not an uncommon experience. Sugano had several herniated discs in her back during her time at the San Francisco Ballet in the early 2000s.
“I was dancing in the Nutcracker rehearsal,” Sugano said. “When I was dancing the finale I did like one saut de chat up in the air came down finished rehearsal, I sat down at all sudden, I couldn’t move my legs.”
After this, Sugano could barely walk. Still, the company said they needed her to at least perform in one act on opening night. So she took a blend of muscle relaxers, pain killers, and other medications to push forward and dance in Snow, a famous scene from the Nutcracker traditionally performed on pointe. The company physician advised against performing, but Sugano felt the pressure from the directors to push through it as the understudies were injured as well.
“I remember finishing Snow and I felt like, this is so so good,” Sugano said. “But afterwards, my friends took me out for a drink. And then I sat down like, oh, god, this is bad.”
The experience drove Sugano to quit for two years and when she did return, she took on a lighter schedule. She said that the time off gave her space to reflect on who she was beyond dance.
Changing Times
In a similar way, dancers during the pandemic have had time to let their bodies rest, and reflect on their careers.
Because ballerinas have not been able to perform in front of live audiences, many of them struggled to maintain their practice. Yet time off can take a huge toll on a ballet career. As New York City Ballet’s artistic director Jonathan Stafford told The Times, “They’re losing a year to a year and a half of their career that they’re not going to get back.”
For most, a forced setback is devastating, though that is not always the case. This year, the New York Ballet principal Lauren Lovette had a haircut that changed her perspective. She had been thinking about retiring for a while and on her 29th birthday, she chopped off her hair, left the salon and posted a statement of retirement on Instagram.
She said that this decision was not a result of losing her love for dance, but rather wanting more of her life back. As a ballerina, she could not take vacations or attend spontaneous events, and she came to realize that life is greater than just a single stage and the pandemic played a role in that decision.
“I think (ballet) burned me out,” Lovette told The Times. “That’s something COVID taught me. And to be honest too, the backdrop of life — that’s been a factor as well. If my life was a stage, I’ve had the same set in place for my whole adult life.” Lovette plans to continue dancing but is shifting away from traditional ballet into a more contemporary field.
In February, she took part in a contemporary residency in Tivoli, New York where choreographer Kyle Abrahamn was working on contemporary pieces. She highlights that his ingenuity reminded her of her love for dance while allowing her to reframe her relationship with ballet.
Former dancers, Cohen and Strauss, can sympathize with the experience Lovette had and have followed a similar path – to pursue their life’s goals outside of dance.
Strauss has taken the negative experiences she faced with nutrition as a dancer and has turned it into a positive. She currently works at Skratch Labs, a hydration sports drink company based in Boulder, where she is doing research on optimal blood sugar levels for athletes. This summer, Strauss worked directly with part of the Olympic cycling team to gather data.
Today, Strauss and Cohen continue to share a deep-rooted love for dance itself due to the freeing and expressive nature of the sport. Cohen does hip hop workouts on YouTube at least once a week, while Strauss can be found on the dance floor whenever it is an option.
“I love to dance, so I still have a fire for dance,” Cohen said. “I think I got out soon enough so that I could rebuild my relationship with dance. But I think emphasizing, you know, the expression of heart and soul through your body in dance couldn’t be overemphasized. I think that’s where my ideal future of dance would lead, is this understanding. Everyone dances at points in their lives and dancing should be inclusive for everyone.”
Contributing reporting from: Julia Bailey
Originally produced for CU News Corps
