Good Grief!

[claire797]

So just how thin ARE ballerinas? 5'7 and 110 sounds pretty thin to me. Depressing.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=638&e=2&u=/nm/20031201/en_nm/russia_ballerina_dc

[JHolcomb]

Yep. My best friend's sister was a professional ballerina and was very thin but used to take a lot of jibes from the costuming dept. and her trainers because she had a large ribcage! She was around 5'8 and 100-110 lbs. but she had a big ribcage, so she was considered too large for some parts. The pressure to stay thin means most ballerinas consume little more than coffee and cigarettes, and some do illegal drugs to curb their appetites. It constantly amazes me that they can abuse their bodies like that and still dance. FWIW, she got sick of the whole scene and no longer dances professionally.

[greysangel]

actually most dancers have very short careers due to the damage done to their bodies both in terms of physical dancing (foot/knee problems) and/or diet/pressure to be thin. In college I worked for the Hartford Ballet/School of the Hartford Ballet. There were lots of really horrible habits that I won't go into great detail here. I even housed one temporarily for about 6 months who had serious binge/bulemia disorder.

JeAnne

[CompassRose]

There have been other stories about this, back when she first was kicked out... and I thought it was pretty obviously NOT about her weight in this specific case. Volochkova might've indeed put on a kilo or two summering at the Black Sea, but it was quite evident that weight was being used as a trumped up excuse to get rid of her because she'd either done something politically inconvenient, or had quarrelled with somebody important.

Although eating disorders and severe underweight are rife among even dance students, let alone professional dancers.