February 28, 2023 • 53 mins
PART SEVEN - "Who decided this? ... Did the skies open up, and the ballet God said, 'This is how it has to be'? No, it's just what we've all been programmed."
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Before we get started, I want to let you know
we'll be discussing body image, eating disorders, and suicide. There's
research showing that exposure to details about eating disorders can
contribute to symptoms. So if you find those topics triggering,
please take care or just skip this one. What do
you think is the biggest issue or the most difficult
(00:25):
issue to tackle in the world of ballet?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
That phobia one.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
I firmly believe that ballet culture in general will compromise
on basically everything else before it compromises on the body ideal.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Chloe Angel is a journalist and she's interviewed dozens of
dancers about what happens in the classroom. She wrote a
book called Turning Point, How a new generation of dancers
is saving ballet from itself. In her book, Chloe explores
an idea dancers of any generation will recognize. It's this
(01:07):
concept of the line. Dancers talk about lines, or their line,
or the line all the time. It could mean slightly
different things in different contexts, but basically, from outstretched fingertip
to pointed toe, dancers strive for a long, slender shape
with their body uninterrupted by what are seen as extraneous
(01:30):
angles or curves. I'm curious what you think of the
idea of the dancer's line and what is what? Why
does that make you laugh?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Because so much harm has been done in the name
of the line, and it came up all the time
when I was reporting turning Point, mostly in young people
who had been told they needed to work on their lines,
which is usually code for you need to lose weight.
They just can't say it out loud anymore. So many
people have been encouraged to starve themselves and done so.
(02:09):
So many people have shoved their feet under couches so
that they can get the foot arch that they know
they're supposed to have. So many people have developed a
really dysfunctional relationship with exercise and with food, simply because
most people in the ballet world are more interested in
(02:30):
their experience of watching it than in the dancers experience
of executing it. You're there to see the movement be
executed in And I'm going to start using problematic words
that I can unpack in a little bit in the cleanest, purest,
(02:54):
most undistracting way possible. Are unclean, butts are impure, and
hips are distracting. That's the way we talk about lines,
clean lines, long lines, pure movement, which implies that people
who are not incredibly slender with a pre pubescent body
(03:18):
for girls and women, not for boys, they're allowed to
hit puberty and become men. People who don't look like
that are somehow unclean, impure and distracting. And it's incredibly damaging,
and it's incredibly pervasive, and a lot of those assumptions
never get unpacked, never get made explicit. And I mean
(03:40):
that stays with you forever if you don't unpack it,
and if you don't face it, if you don't think
about what it really means, that shit stays with you forever.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Vallerina's starving themselves is practically a tired trope at this point.
Everyone's heard about it, everyone agrees it's not healthy. Dancers
have pushed for change in how they're by a discussed
and considered But that's why, in a way, it's so surprising.
It's still a prevalent problem, and it's kind of a
mystery exactly where and how this standard unfurled itself and
(04:11):
crept its way into the back of almost every ballet
dancer's mind. As I spoke with Chloe, I wanted to
understand where these strict standards came from. It's a complicated question.
There's definitely not one person or one company who decided
it had to be this way. Ballet evolved over the
course of centuries as it moved from France to Russia
(04:31):
to America, and there are many people who have nourished
and spread the thin ideal in ballet. Sometimes I almost
wonder if it's a force that at times has taken
on a life of its own, powered by culture and
implicit social pressures, like a weed you can't get rid of.
At the same time, there are some people who had
more influence on the culture of ballet than others.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Balanching reshaped American ballet. He is understood to be the
father of American ballet. That's what they call him. And
he was not the first person to bring ballet to America.
He was not the first person to try and impose
his vision of ballet on America.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
But his stuck.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Why do you say that One of the things that
he modeled in his company in New York City Ballet
was the unquestionable, all powerful artistic director boss. They loved him,
they worshiped him, they desired his approval and his affection,
(05:35):
and that model is so damaging, It is so ripe
for abuse and mistreatment and a general feeling of powerlessness
in the workplace and obedience to hierarchical authority that did
not begin with him. As he became sort of synonymous
(05:58):
with American ballet, people replicated because it quote worked. And
the other thing that he left us with is his
bodily ideal, particularly for women dances, and that is long legs,
long neck, long thin everything that is part of his.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Legacy from iHeart podcasts and Rococoa Punch. This is the
(06:42):
turning Room of Mirrors America Lance, Part seven. The line
as toxic encoded as invoking the line can be. When
I watch a Balanchine ballet, I'm overcome by beauty, and
(07:05):
I find it hard to divorce the line from what
makes it beautiful. Like in Balanchine's Tchaikowsky Patada, a lonely
violin's bittersweet melody is embodied by a dancer and her partner.
The ballerina flits across the stage. She takes her partner's
hand gently, and he lifts her over his head while
(07:27):
she extends one leg in the air like a thin arrow.
Then she reverses direction mid air. She stretches her legs
apart so they're almost parallel to the floor. Her arms
lift to a delicate v, like the outline of a
swan's outstretched wings. She's floating. It draws me in, and
(07:54):
it did the same thing for Sophie Fleck the first
time she saw it.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
It seems like it was almost ridiculous, how big she
was moving. It was like almost funny.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Sophie Flax saw Balanchine's choreography for the first time in
the mid nineteen nineties. She was around ten years old.
Balancine had been long gone from New York City ballet.
He died a decade earlier, but Sophie found herself in
a ballet class, huddled in front of a TV screen
next to her peers, watching a woman who'd been molded
by Balanchine himself. The woman was Patricia McBride, and she
(08:36):
was dancing the Tchaikovsky Potida.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
And I literally I was floored. I remember at some
point I saw something with a cord to ballet.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
The Corps de Ballet as a group of dancers that
typically serves as a backdrop to the soloists, but in
Balanchine ballets, the core is often more active and focal.
In a piece, he might have dozens of dancers move
in unison, dashing across the stage and speedy twirls or
dramatic jumps.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
And I was like, oh my god, that looks so fun.
Like it all just looks so fun.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
I think for me it was the music, though, you
become the music, as George Balanchine once said, see the music,
hear the dance.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Catherine Morgan also discovered Balanchine when she was about ten.
It was when she saw the New York City Ballet
perform The Nutcracker. Like Sophie, Catherine fell in love with
the excitement and the dynamic movement she was seeing from
all the dancers on the stage.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
I remember walking out of there and going, I'm going
to be up there one day. That's where I want
to dance.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
I came home and I was like, I want to
dance in New York City Ballet. I want to dance Balanchine.
And then my mom did the research.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Catherine and Sophie both started to dream about entering Balanchine's
world one day. These two young girls a few years apart,
each started to work on that goal, one in Massachusetts,
the other in Alabama. As they rose through ballet school levels,
they each got a with the language and the ways
of ballet, how to tie a bun in their hair,
how to point their toes, and along with that, they
(10:06):
began to learn about expectations for their bodies.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Because I was never the smallest one. You know, teachers
who are trying to be helpful would pull me aside
and be like, you know, you're talented enough for this,
but you're always gonna have to watch your weight. You're
gonna have to be careful. You're not the thinnest one,
so you're gonna have to work twice as hard because
you're not skinny.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
You just need to be careful.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
At like twelve, thirteen, fourteen, it was always a thing
in the back of my head that was put there.
I remember thinking, well, I'm not worth anything until i'm skinny.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
I mean, also, you're just I feel like groomed is
a very charged word, but I don't know what else
to use, but like groomed to accept like a very
specific ideal from a very young age, So it's not
even really something you have to talk about a lot
it's like your front should be completely flat with your
(10:57):
hips and your stomach and your chest. If there's something
jutting out, it ruins the line. I remember people talking
about my body like there was a physical therapist I
saw regularly, just sort of like to check that I
was developing well as a dancer. And my mother asked
(11:20):
like if she thought that I had like a appropriate
body for ballet, like in front of me, and she
was like, yes, it's like ideal or something. And my
mom was like, do you think like it will change
over time, like with puberty, And the woman was like, no,
I think like if you know her thighs aren't overdeveloped now,
(11:40):
like it would probably just stay that way. Like they
were talking about me as if I wasn't there, So
I mean that messaging is like, okay, my thighs like
can't get bigger.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Basically, how old do you think you were?
Speaker 5 (11:53):
Then?
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (11:54):
I you know under ten? For sure?
Speaker 1 (11:56):
You were under ten And they're like talking about the
size of your thighs.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
Yeah, yea.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Catherine and Sophie both still aimed to dance Balanchine's choreography,
so on their own timelines. They each audition for the
School of American Ballet, the feeder school to the ballet
company founded by balancing.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
I also remember at the SAB audition School of American
Ballet this particular one before we did anything, the teacher
went around and checked our feet, so we each had
to point our foot so she could see what.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Our arches were like.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
So it just shows like, if you have a really
pretty foot, it's.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Good for ballet. Catherine had been to so many auditions
for ballet schools that they all seemed to blend together,
but she says, very close examination of the body was
part of it.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
When you show up for an audition, they'll look at
the parents because they'll go, what is this kid going
to turn into? What are the genetics? Oh well, her
mom's a little bit kirvy, so we'll have to see
what happens with that. Oh well, her mom has hips.
My mom remembers at many auditions being given the full
body scan to see what I was going to turn into.
(13:10):
And funnily enough, I'm adopted, so it's irrelevant.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
So in their auditions, both Catherine and Sophie were evaluated
and they both got into the School of American Ballet
SAB for short. About two thousand had auditioned. Just a
couple hundred made it.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
So my mom and I made plans with my father,
and that's when we decided that she would move up
with me because she didn't want her fifteen year old
Southern girl because I was from Alabama staying in the
dorms by herself in New York City. That would not
have gone well. I would have been just lost in
a hole somewhere, honestly.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Unlike Catherine, Sophie left her family and moved into the
three floors in a New York high rise just below
the Juilliard Dorm. An elevator ride down from the kids
dorm rooms was the studio, and then the cafeteria was
on the bottom floor.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
So your whole world is in this one building. You
had to check in and out by writing your name
and the time, and you had like a certain amount
of time I think that you had you could be
out before coming back. In the lounge, we would watch
Sex and the City. The person at the desk would
like throw a movie night or something once a week
(14:32):
where you'd have like all this junk food laid out,
and we would use the stairs for exercise for burning calories.
You'd run up and down them. We got really competitive
about burning calories.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
In between ballet classes, Sophie went to Professional Children's School
in New York. It's a school for kids pursuing careers
like actors, dancers, musicians. A lot of movie stars go there.
Each day, Sophie would have to hurry back for ballet class.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Literally running along Columbus Avenue, racing the other girls in
my class to get a good spot near the teacher
or at the skinny mirror. And then we'd go back
again for another class. And like our meals were eaten
while walking. And I remember noting to myself, I am
doing this like I'm going to give it my all
(15:22):
or I'm going to go home, like that kind of thing.
I really worked hard.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Every day. When Sophie went down to the SAB studios,
she passed a giant bust of balancing. It reminded her
who this was all for.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
What you're doing is larger than yourself, almost like a religion,
Like this is bigger than you. I was serving something
larger than myself. If it's not God, then's the art
form or balancing? For me? It felt like it's like
balancing's ghosts or something.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Valancine's ghosts loomed large at SAB, but to progress, Sophie
and Catherine had to grab the attention of a mortal man,
the head of the New York City Ballet who had
final say in their futures, the artistic director of the
company at the time, Peter Martin's. When Sophie Flack was
(16:44):
a teenager at SAB, it was still years before an
internal investigation would take place and Peter Martins would resign.
To Sophie, all that mattered was if Peter liked her.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
He held a lot of power, but it also was
very apparent in his body, just the way that he
moved through space and the way he regarded people.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
He spoke with this light, sophisticated Danish accent.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
He was quite tall, sort of like Ramrod Pasture. So
when you enter a room, it's not just like a
pedestrian walking into her room. You're making an entrance. He
seemed very aware of his presence. He was like a figure,
not a person.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Later, when Sophie was in the company, she says dancers
would point out the cameras that monitored the stage and
joke there were cameras everywhere with a live feed to
Peter's office. It felt like he was always watching, like
you were always on display.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
He never spoke to us. He had like a very
small circle of people who he seemed to know or
gab with a little bit. That seems sort of like
on the inside, or like knew a secret that no
one else knew. I didn't quite understand how one gained
entry to that. It's very small social circle. They definitely
(18:07):
existed on a higher plane. I'll just say that. And like,
you know, we're in charge of our everything, our lives,
our roles, validation, uh, you know everything.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Sophie knews she had to please Peter's inner circle, but
ultimately Peter made all the decisions about who would join
the company.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
He would observe class at the school and occasionally teach,
which was terrifying. The balancing technique is like the whole
idea was to push yourself off balance, to reach beyond
what you thought you could, so there was never quite
an end to it.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Sophie worked harder than she ever had, but it wasn't
enough to execute a certain number of fattes or drill
hundreds of perfectly formed tondues to gain entry into that
inner world. She felt she'd have to do something more.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
I think I started developing like an eating disorder actually
when I was about twelve, because I started developing breasts
and I didn't want to because I was concerned they
were too big for the company.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Sophie wanted to look like a balancing dancer. She had
four tapes of balancing repertoire. She watched them on repeat.
She studied the movement and the dancers, and she noticed
a pattern.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Everybody was completely flat chested in the videos that I
was watching. I'm not talking about like small boobs. I'm
talking about like like almost like a man. And then
I started getting like little boobs, and they just kept
getting a little bigger like I and I that was
not okay, And like the only way I knew how
(20:03):
to control it was through diet. So yeah, you definitely
aren't allowed to grow up.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
You know, with women in ballet, when they naturally become
what they're supposed to become, which is a woman, it's like,
you know, oh she's getting hips. Oh she started to
look like a woman. Oh she's you know, and you're like,
that's what's supposed to happen, Whereas with men it's the opposite.
Oh he's so scrawny. Oh he's becoming a man. Finally
(20:31):
he looks like a man. And for us it's the
flip side. They want us to stay looking creepybasant.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Yeah, it's weird that the look they're going for is
a grown man partnering, dancing with a child, a child,
a young girl. So when Sophie was about fifteen, she
even saw a surgeon about her body. She hoped her
breasts could be reduced.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
They didn't have enough fat in my boobs to like
reduce them. And he's so he was like, well, you
can just lose weight, sort of nonchalantly, and I put
myself on a diet. After that, it took over me.
It got out of control.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
After all of the years of pressure to be thin,
something started to happen to Sophie where her eating behaviors
took on a life of their own. It was like
a force beyond her control. Afore she couldn't stop. While
recovering from an injury, Sophie says she lost a lot
of weight in a short amount of time.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
I got a lot of praise from the boys in
the school in partnering class to.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
The school's credit. Sophie says her teachers pulled her aside
because they were concerned about her weight loss. They referred
her to a.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Nutritionist which I saw, which I basically laughed off. I
remember she said I had to eat twenty five hundred
calories a day, and I literally laughed when she said that,
because I was sustaining myself on so little that amount
seemed ridiculous. Instead of talking myself out of eating, in
my technique which I won't share, I made myself eat
(22:08):
like one bad food a day, and after the intervention,
I bottom muffin from the bake sale at my school.
It was a mini muffin and I was really proud
of myself. I ate half of it. I couldn't eat
the other half. I was scared for myself.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
I don't want to underplay the severity of this. Eating
disorders can lead to heart failure, neurological problems, structural brain
changes like the brain shrinking in size, intense emotional turmoil,
and death. Anorexia is the most lethal mental health condition
there is. It has suicide rates sixty times that of
(22:55):
the general population. That's also higher than for depression or
by pole disorder or schizophrenia, but from Sophie's perspective, being
thin would help her achieve her goal.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
I got a ton of attention from Peter Martin's that year.
I remember him holding my hand as I demonstrated in
the front of room. I felt like I had a
real shot at being in the company. It seemed to
be a good thing. But the problem was I didn't
know how to maintain it. I only knew how to
(23:35):
keep going. I never learned how to eat properly at all.
It was like binging or extra dieting.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
One day, a ballet mistress, the person who led company rehearsals,
pulled Sophie and a couple other students into an office.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
She closed the door and there was like three of
us in the room or something, and she said, so
you probably know you've accepted.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
She said, Peter would like you to join as an apprentice.
That's the first step towards gaining a permanent position in
the company.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
It was almost like I should have known it the
way she said it, The way she spoke was in
the the speak of the theater. Basically, like nothing was direct,
ever or explicit. Every kind of communication was like sort
(24:31):
of an afterthought and it was sort of a power
that they held over us.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Maybe Sophie didn't get the praise or warmth she'd craved,
but at least she was going to be an apprentice.
At age seventeen, she'd given everything, her family, her home,
her body to this cause and she'd been accepted. Like Sophie,
(25:01):
Catherine Morgan was also seventeen years old when she got
her apprenticeship with the New York City Ballet. An apprenticeship
is a huge deal, but it's still nerve wracking because
there's no guarantee you'll become a full time hire. At
the end of the year. It could be the end
of the road after years of work.
Speaker 4 (25:18):
So two weeks in, we're in company class. I'm doing
Swan Lake rehearsals. I'm Swan number seventeen on the left.
You know nobody and one of the principal dancers tears
her calf muscle in class and literally falls has to
be carried out of the room.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
It was very scary.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
A few days later, Peter Martin shows up to teach class.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
And whenever the director teaches, it's sort of a mini
audition because the director doesn't always teach, especially Peter. He
wouldn't teach weekly. He would just show up on the schedule.
And so when Peter Martin shows up on the schedule,
the entire company is there. So you're in this room
of like ninety something people, and I remember just not
(25:59):
being able to do anything that day, Like I fell
out of every turn. I couldn't stay balanced to save
my life because I was still a baby. I had
been in the company maybe a week at this point,
and I thought any moment I could be fired, any moment.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
After rehearsal, the ballet mistresspeconed Catherine over with a curled finger.
Catherine froze.
Speaker 4 (26:21):
She was like, Sean wants to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Sean was like number two in command to Peter.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
And he comes over and he says, so, as you know,
a couple days ago, the principal got hurt and I
was like, uh huh, And he said, you know, well
she's supposed to dance Juliet in Saratoga. Uh huh, Well,
we very much like for you to replace her. And
it was one of those like are you talking to me?
Did you see the rehearsal I just had? Did you
(26:46):
see me fall in my face?
Speaker 1 (26:49):
She'd just been given the part of Juliet and Romeo
and Juliet.
Speaker 4 (26:53):
And then Peters comes running over like did you tell her?
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Did you tell her? Catherine was the only apprentice who
was being asked to perform this type of solo role.
She was being singled out. It could be that moment
when she would turn into a star. Opening day finally came.
It was held in an outdoor Amphitheater in Saratoga, New York,
(27:16):
where the New York City Ballet performs every year. It's
a company's summer residency where Peter Martins tries dancers in
different roles and make some of the critical decisions on
which dancers will make it.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
I remember being really nervous because this was sort of
do or die for me.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
The stage wings were full of company dancers waiting to
see how she would do.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
And I just remember doing my turn and all of
a sudden seeing blood on my costume and thinking, oh dear,
what happened. And then all of a sudden, Tyler glaring
at me, wiping blood off his nose. He's halfway staying
as we're dancing. He whacked me in the face, But
just keep going.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
But the people she needed to impress didn't seem to mind.
Speaker 4 (27:58):
Peter was pleased, and I remember one of the other
ballet masters who was very difficult to please, coming up
to me going that was that was beautiful. That was beautiful.
That's when I knew I had it.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
After that, Catherine quickly moved through the ranks from a
core member to soloist, landing role after role.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
It's funny because Peter Martins told me exactly what it was.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
He.
Speaker 4 (28:24):
I know a lot of dancers had issues with him.
He was nothing but lovely to me. I can't speak
for anybody else, but he was always very encouraging and
mentoring to me. He said, you know, you're not the technician,
but you tell the story. You're the artist. Your artistry
is going to give you a career.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
When Sophie, the other young dancer, joined the company, she
was just focused on how grateful she was to be there.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
I felt like I just won the jackpot, you know,
being accepted. I was very proud because I was very
aware of the prestige of being a part of it.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
One day, after rehearsal, the ballet mistress kept her late.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
You know, my heart stopped. I was, you know, really worried.
I was gonna lose my job first, because I was still.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
A new core member, she told Sophie.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Peter says, he notices you've gained weight.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
It's what Sophie calls her first fat talk. A lot
of professional dancers use the term fat talk because they're
so common. As a soloist in the company, Catherine wasn't
immune either.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
It's never we need you to lose weight, because they
can get in a lot of trouble saying that kind
of stuff. So there's different phrases. You need to get
in shape. Get in shape is the phrase that's code
for lose weight. I don't think you're in your best shape.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
I think I said I just got my period or something,
and she took that to mean that I had gotten
it for the first time recently, and I let her
believe that. But I thought that was really interesting that
nineteen she thought it was normal for a dancer to
have her period for the first time. I mean, she's
a woman, like she knows that around the time of
(30:15):
your period, your body, you know, gots floated, whatever, So
she seemed to have some understanding. I didn't feel like it.
I really didn't feel like it was coming from her
actually she was the messager. I don't blame her. It's like,
(30:36):
I bet she didn't want to have those conversations. She
might not have agreed, but that was her job.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
The same institution that had an intervention to address her
severe eating disorder only a few years prior was now
telling her she needed to lose weight.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Everyone at the theater was very cold emotionally, so I
didn't expect any warmth. I think I probably started crying
and just sort of really worried, and that was the
first thought. I think, like, I'm screwing this up.
Speaker 5 (31:13):
This is this is not good.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Catherine Morgan, the dancer cast as Juliet, was twenty one
when she landed another major role, this time Aurora and
Sleeping Beauty and Princess.
Speaker 4 (31:32):
Aurora is not only the crown jewel role of ballet,
but it is, in my opinion, the hardest one. It
is the most technically demanding, the most physically demanding. You
feel like you've run six marathons by the time you're
done with this ballet. And I remember all the other
Auroras were like, oh, I lose like five pounds of show,
and I'm like so skinny, and da da da and
(31:54):
I remember thinking, I'm kind of starting to gain weight
doing this.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
It is really odd.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
I just thought, okay, well, I don't lose five pounds
a show. I have like gain a pound a show.
I hadn't changed my diet, but I started ballooning up.
And then I started to get really, really tired. And
Peter Martins was doing a new ballet at the time,
and we were in the studio eight hours a day
choreographing this thing, and so I just thought, I don't
have time to eat. I can't get through this ballet,
(32:24):
like what is happening to me? And ballet masters had
started pulling me aside, going are you aware that you
are putting on weight? And I wanted to go No.
I had no idea. You know, it's my job to
stare at myself in the mirror twenty four to seven.
But no, not a clue. Of course I was aware.
And then I would go up to point or go
up to balance and my muscles would give out. So
(32:46):
it was like my body was just starting to collapse.
And I gained forty five pounds in six weeks, barely
eating anything, and people were going, what is happening?
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Catherine says, doctors were confused about her weight complaints. Even
after the weight gain, she was in a normal weight range,
but her standards as a ballerina were totally different. She
couldn't fit into the costumes and she struggled to get
through rehearsals and she didn't know why.
Speaker 4 (33:16):
So eight doctors later and two years of battling this,
I was so miserable. So finally I was cast as
Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is one of
the two lovers, as they say in Midsummer and Peter
came to watch my rehearsal and he said nothing, and
(33:36):
he said, let's go talk. So we went to his
office and he was just like, how are you feeling?
Speaker 1 (33:41):
And I lost it.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
I just burst into tears and I was like, I can't.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Do this anymore.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
I'm so ill and sick and huge and d D.
I said, Peter, I think I need to like not
come back next year. I think I need to let
my contract run out, go home and get well. Because
the pressure of trying to be in the New York
City Ballet, I was now a soloist. By this point,
I was like, I can't do this anymore. I'm on
this hamster wheel of misery, and he just gave me
(34:07):
a huge hug, and he was like, I knew you
were smart. Put your health first. There'll always be a
place for you here.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
But in the ballet world, is health ever first? Catherine
would have to make a choice. She went home to
her parents' house, but things would never be the same again.
(34:38):
Year after a year, Sophie worked diligently as a quarter
to ballet ballerina, but as time we're on, she wanted
more opportunities to stretch herself creatively. She kept being put
in more traditional ballets when she created something else. She
wanted to dance Balacine's angular abstract works, the Stravinsky ballets,
where movement and music ruled what they referred to as
(35:01):
the black and white ballets. Less story, more abstraction. She
scheduled a meeting with Peter Martin's to ask if she
could study some of those roles. She might never perform them,
but at least she could learn.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Even like walking down the hallway to his office, you know,
made you like stressed out. You know, it's like going
to see the wizard.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
I know, Peter's office was like a relic.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
It's like a tiny built in sofa that looked like
it had been built in like the seventies, and it
probably had been an old carpet. The whole theater was
that way, like it hadn't been touched since Balanchin's era.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Peter walked out from behind his desk.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
He was fairly warm, and he came like physically closer
to me, and I felt heard, and you know, it
was terrified and really nervous and stuff. But I said
the things and he responded to it like okay, like
why don't you come back with like some specific roles
and ideas? And I felt encouraged.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
But when the casting and rehearsal schedule for the next
Black and White ballet was posted, Sophie didn't make the list.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
I wasn't even called to understudy, as if we hadn't
ever spoken.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Then, in the economic downturn of two thousand and nine,
there was buzz about a possible mass layoff.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
And there was a lot of anxiety. I didn't want
to believe that it was true.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
One afternoon, Sophie was hanging out with her boyfriend on
the Lower East Side, Sophie's stomping grounds on her days off.
She was walking down the sidewalk when she got a
call from Peter's personal assistant.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
She didn't say what it was, she just said, Peter
would like to meet with you. And I never had
a meeting where Peter called the meeting before, so I
knew exactly what it was about. I knew that I
was gonna be laid off, and I literally fell to
the pavement. I was just completely distraught. I felt like
(37:00):
I'd just been diagnosed with some terminal illness. It felt like,
you know, there was an end to the sidewalk. Basically,
I just remember cars going by, people going on with
their lives, and this abyss that opened up before me.
It felt like facing death. I don't mean to be dramatic,
(37:23):
but that's really what it felt like. I didn't know
another way to live. I didn't know what was next
at all. I didn't ever consider a life after dance.
That's what we were sort of taught to do, because
how could you possibly give yourself completely if you're always
looking ahead.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
They had the meeting, Peter stuck to his line. They
didn't have the funds. Sophie danced several more months until
her contract ran out.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Which was really really difficult. I would just sort of
like went through the motions as little as possible. I
was extremely upset and mad. It was hard to like
look people in the eyes. It was hard to like
just navigate the day in the theater. I just want
to stop. You know, people are surprised why I didn't
(38:16):
want to continue dancing after all that. Why would I
want to continue dancing in the company or at all
at all?
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Sophie would never dance professionally again. She left the company
with lots of questions, but there was one she couldn't ask,
too afraid to make it explicit.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Was it my body?
Speaker 4 (38:45):
You know? I blamed myself. I felt like a failure
because I thought it was my fault.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
After Catherine Morgan left the company to focus on her
health and these mysterious symptoms and weight gain she'd been experiencing,
she went home to her parents' house in Alabia. She
still felt tired all of the time, the symptoms hadn't subsided,
hair loss, weight gain, and still no answers.
Speaker 4 (39:09):
Part of your identity as a dancer is how you
look in the mirror, and it's also how what makes
you feel good about yourself or not. It's what gets
you rolls or not, and usually your job as a
dancer is to be criticized to fix it. Nope, your
knees not straight, Nope, point your feet. So you get
into this mentality that everything is fixable. I just have
(39:31):
to do my part. If it's not right, it's because
I'm not doing it right.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
And she had no fix for the body she saw
staring back at her in the mirror.
Speaker 4 (39:40):
My only definition of success was being a skinny ballerina
on the stage of New York City Ballet, and so
once that was taken from me, I had nothing. I
had absolutely nothing. I lost completely who I was, I
had no outside life. I felt totally worthless because it
was my identity. I committed to it for teen fifteen
(40:01):
and I knew nothing else in this. I felt like, oh,
I'm letting my younger self down because I sacrificed so
much in my childhood to do this, you know, like
I didn't go to prom, I didn't go to high
school graduation, I didn't go to sleepovers, I didn't get
you know, because I was so committed to this and
then to have it fall apart, I felt like I
was letting myself down.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
One day, she stood at the top of her parents'
stairs on the second floor, and the thought flew through
her mind.
Speaker 4 (40:29):
I had that flash moment of what would happen if
I just threw myself down the stairs and ended this
because it was I was so unhappy.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
There wasn't one thing that helped her get beyond the
pain and depression or filled the void that ballet left
in her life. She got a counselor a dog, and
finally a diagnosis how she motos thyroiditis, an autoimmune disease
that affects the thyroid, which helped her manager symptoms, but
what really helped the most was distant. For nine years,
(41:02):
she stayed away from the stage.
Speaker 4 (41:04):
So with ballet, I was literally in it twenty four
to seven until my illness hit, and then I got
out of the system for a long time, and then
suddenly you're like, oh hm. I was able to see
the kind of weird quirks of the ballet world that
I had never seen before because I was just in
it and didn't know of any other way. You hear
(41:25):
from the people who were not in the professional ballet world,
and I remember a couple of people being like, well,
why why is it like that, and then you start
to go, well, I don't know why, And it was
being out of the professional company world for a while
started me.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
To question things.
Speaker 4 (41:43):
You start to realize that, oh, these people are brainwashed.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
What are the points of brainwashing that ballet dancers experience?
Speaker 4 (41:51):
That you have to starve and that you have to
have a certain look to you. Another one is that
you must push through an injury. I see so many
dancwers push through injuries because they are so terrified to
say something, because they don't want to get in trouble,
or they don't want to be deemed as lazy, or
they don't want to lose a spot. So many teachers
again operate on scare tactic and well, if you can't
(42:15):
do it, someone else will. We have four more people
in line. I'll put your understudy on. I think it's
also this thing of the person in the front of
the room is the do or die dictator. The teacher
of the director is literally God, and you must do
what they say at all times without question, even if
the step is being taught wrong or the choreography is wrong.
(42:38):
You're scared to speak up out of fear of your job.
It's sometimes like well, you know, you should be grateful
to be here, be seen and not heard. So dancers
have no say, no control. And really it's a career
based on other people's opinions, literally other people opinions, and
(43:01):
that's why it's so hard. It's not the Olympics that's
decided by who ran the fastest, you know, it is
one hundred percent someone else's.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
Opinion, which means then that you have to constantly please Yep. Gradually,
Catherine got back into the studio, this time on her
own terms.
Speaker 4 (43:22):
Suddenly, when I wasn't trying to impress anybody, things heard work.
That's when I could finally like dance again.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
And when she learned Miami City Ballet was looking for dancers,
she auditioned. It was in her wheelhouse because the company
was founded by a balancing dancer. They frequently perform as choreography.
After four days of auditions, Catherine was offered a soloist
position with the company. She was frank with the director.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
I'm never going to be the thinnest one in the room,
and I was told, oh, well, don't worry about it.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
You look absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 4 (43:56):
We liked it. You're different.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
She thought, maybe this time she wouldn't have to choose
between health and ballet. Her first performance back was in
a balancing ballet called Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, which.
Speaker 4 (44:12):
Was so much fun. I've never had more fun on stage.
You play a nineteen twenties strip tease girl and you're
you know, it's just so much fun.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
Catherine was dancing every day. She'd reclaimed her identity. She
had left the pain and disappointment behind. It felt amazing.
Speaker 4 (44:30):
But at half hour call to one of my shows,
I was called in and I was the whole spiel again.
You're not looking as you should, you're not in shape.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Have a good show.
Speaker 4 (44:42):
It was became very apparent to me that the ballet
world had not changed. So at that point I was like,
all right, I'm going to show them stupid. Went back
to seventeen year old brain. After having worked through, you
know a decade of what I worked through, I stopped eating.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
And as you can imagine, that didn't go well.
Speaker 4 (45:05):
Three days later I strained my calf muscle in a
nutcracker rehearsal.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
Which can happen when you're underfed.
Speaker 4 (45:11):
Then I was very quickly taken out of every ballet
I was learning for the rest of the season, and
it just sort of spiraled and wasn't good.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
Then all of her old autoimmune condition symptoms flared up.
Speaker 4 (45:25):
The line that was said to me that I will
never forget as long as I live. I know you're
supposedly this inspiration to all these people, but I don't
think you can be a true inspiration until you're back
on the stage looking like a ballerina in point shoes.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
And I was just like, humph.
Speaker 4 (45:41):
At that point, I knew I was done, and she
left all the things that had been said to me.
I was back in that place of I literally couldn't
look at myself in the mirror. Hi, everybody. So I
(46:04):
have a bit of a more serious video for you
guys today, as you can probably tell.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
Rather than spiral again, she went public with her story
on her YouTube channel one.
Speaker 4 (46:14):
I kind of don't even know how I'm gonna go
about this, to be honest, it's a bit daunting to me,
as a lot of you have done your readers.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
The author we talked to earlier, Chloe Angel, heard about
it and.
Speaker 3 (46:25):
It was a huge deal. I mean, she'd been out
of professional ballet for years and there was a lot
of fanfare, There was a lot of publicity around it,
and then they wouldn't put her on stage.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
To Chloe, it confirmed what she already knew. The problem
runs deep.
Speaker 3 (46:42):
There is this suite of euphemisms and code words that
is being delivered to dancers, and most of them understand
what it means. But it's being couched in terms of
health and length and getting fit and getting in shape
and getting toned. But what you're asking is for most
(47:02):
dances is not a healthy outcome. And it's a mind fuck.
Speaker 4 (47:08):
Who decided this? Who decided you know that this you
have to have twig like arms or legs? Did the
skies open up and the ballet god said this is
how it has to be. No, it's just what we've
all been programmed. I didn't understand that you're worthy because
(47:30):
you're a human first, not because you're a dancer.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
Instead of having a full time company job, Catherine's found
another way to dance. She freelances as a soloist, teaches ballet,
and coaches dancers. And when our videos came out in
twenty twenty, dancer after dancer told her they had similar experiences.
Other dancers have also gone public, like a new York
City Ballet principle and an Instagram live last year, or
(47:55):
another soloist who wrote that Peter Martin's pointed from her
knee to her butt and said she didn't fit in
from there to there. She'd struggled with bulimia and she
ended up getting liposection on her thighs. And it's not
just scrutiny from within the company, it's everywhere. Critics set
the tone too. For example, a dance critic at The
(48:16):
New York Times mocked the weight of a principal dancer
in a review after she'd been open about her eating disorder.
He said she'd had one sugar plum too many. He
defended himself afterward, he said, quote, ballet demands sacrifice in
its pursuit of widely accepted ideals of beauty. If you
want to make your appearance irrelevant to criticism, do not
(48:39):
choose ballet as a career. I am severe, but ballet,
as dancers know, is more so. End quote.
Speaker 3 (48:48):
The idea that you want really a ballet dancer until
you look like a ballet dancer is really pervasive. You know,
if you are uncomfortable watching a cross in bigger than
standard ballet dancer do ballet If it doesn't look right
to you, that is something that you need to sit
(49:09):
with and think about and think about why, and think
about the cost, the human cost, the physical, psychological, emotional
cost of that kind of gatekeeping of who doesn't get
to dance, of who has to suffer in order to dance.
It's so deep seated, it's so harmful, and it's just
(49:31):
completely unjustifiable.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
So often the idea of the line is talked about
like this geometrical fact, like an artistic truth that can't
be argued with. But the older I get, the more
I question that I start to think, Yeah, I have
been brainwashed. I've been so inundated with images of thin
bodies dancing ballet that I eventually believed that that was
(49:54):
objectively better. On a gut level, I've been programmed to
think a certain bodies these make lines that are more
beautiful than others, that a flowing arm that curves is beautiful,
but a curvy body is not. I don't believe that anymore,
because I've been working to deprogram myself for more than
a decade. Is the idea of the line, I mean,
(50:22):
how real is it?
Speaker 2 (50:23):
Even?
Speaker 1 (50:24):
I mean, is the line better.
Speaker 3 (50:29):
And my answer is who cares? Because people are suffering.
The audience having a good experience of ballet and enjoying
what they see on stage is dependent on that line,
And that line is dependent on people starving and people
collapsing in the wings from exhaustion, and people getting early
(50:52):
on set ostereoporosis and bone fractures and long term musclear
skeletal damage and rexia and body dysmorphia, and a permanently
messed up relationship with food and with exercise and early
retirement and the kind of disillusionment that a lot of
(51:13):
formal dances feel.
Speaker 5 (51:15):
Who gives a shit about the line?
Speaker 1 (51:45):
Next time?
Speaker 6 (51:46):
On the turning, imagine as a black ballet student at
the time, hearing that that was the thought the ballerina
should be the color of appealed apple, and I remember thinking, well,
if you leave appealed apple out on the counter for
a minute, it turns brown anyway, So what does that mean?
Speaker 1 (52:09):
The Turning is the production of Rococo, Punch and iHeart Podcasts.
It's written and produced by Alan Lance Lesser and Me.
Our story editor is Emily Foreman. Mixing and sound designed
by James Trout. Jessica Crisa is our assistant producer, Andrea
assoahe is our digital producer. Fact checking by Andrea Lopez Crusado.
(52:32):
Special thanks to Chloe Angel, who you heard from today.
Her incredible book about the world of ballet is called
Turning Point, How a new generation of dancers is saving
Ballet from itself. Our executive producers are John Paratti and
Jessica Alpert at Rococo Punch at Katrina Norbel and Nikki
(52:54):
Etur at iHeart Podcasts. For photos and more details on
the series, follow us on Install at Rococo Punch and
you can reach out via email the Turning at Rococo
Punch dot com. I'm Rika Lance. Thanks for listening.
Before we get started, I want to let you know
we'll be discussing body image, eating disorders, and suicide. There's
research showing that exposure to details about eating disorders can
contribute to symptoms. So if you find those topics triggering,
please take care or just skip this one. What do
you think is the biggest issue or the most difficult
(00:25):
issue to tackle in the world of ballet?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
That phobia one.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
I firmly believe that ballet culture in general will compromise
on basically everything else before it compromises on the body ideal.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Chloe Angel is a journalist and she's interviewed dozens of
dancers about what happens in the classroom. She wrote a
book called Turning Point, How a new generation of dancers
is saving ballet from itself. In her book, Chloe explores
an idea dancers of any generation will recognize. It's this
(01:07):
concept of the line. Dancers talk about lines, or their line,
or the line all the time. It could mean slightly
different things in different contexts, but basically, from outstretched fingertip
to pointed toe, dancers strive for a long, slender shape
with their body uninterrupted by what are seen as extraneous
(01:30):
angles or curves. I'm curious what you think of the
idea of the dancer's line and what is what? Why
does that make you laugh?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Because so much harm has been done in the name
of the line, and it came up all the time
when I was reporting turning Point, mostly in young people
who had been told they needed to work on their lines,
which is usually code for you need to lose weight.
They just can't say it out loud anymore. So many
people have been encouraged to starve themselves and done so.
(02:09):
So many people have shoved their feet under couches so
that they can get the foot arch that they know
they're supposed to have. So many people have developed a
really dysfunctional relationship with exercise and with food, simply because
most people in the ballet world are more interested in
(02:30):
their experience of watching it than in the dancers experience
of executing it. You're there to see the movement be
executed in And I'm going to start using problematic words
that I can unpack in a little bit in the cleanest, purest,
(02:54):
most undistracting way possible. Are unclean, butts are impure, and
hips are distracting. That's the way we talk about lines,
clean lines, long lines, pure movement, which implies that people
who are not incredibly slender with a pre pubescent body
(03:18):
for girls and women, not for boys, they're allowed to
hit puberty and become men. People who don't look like
that are somehow unclean, impure and distracting. And it's incredibly damaging,
and it's incredibly pervasive, and a lot of those assumptions
never get unpacked, never get made explicit. And I mean
(03:40):
that stays with you forever if you don't unpack it,
and if you don't face it, if you don't think
about what it really means, that shit stays with you forever.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Vallerina's starving themselves is practically a tired trope at this point.
Everyone's heard about it, everyone agrees it's not healthy. Dancers
have pushed for change in how they're by a discussed
and considered But that's why, in a way, it's so surprising.
It's still a prevalent problem, and it's kind of a
mystery exactly where and how this standard unfurled itself and
(04:11):
crept its way into the back of almost every ballet
dancer's mind. As I spoke with Chloe, I wanted to
understand where these strict standards came from. It's a complicated question.
There's definitely not one person or one company who decided
it had to be this way. Ballet evolved over the
course of centuries as it moved from France to Russia
(04:31):
to America, and there are many people who have nourished
and spread the thin ideal in ballet. Sometimes I almost
wonder if it's a force that at times has taken
on a life of its own, powered by culture and
implicit social pressures, like a weed you can't get rid of.
At the same time, there are some people who had
more influence on the culture of ballet than others.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Balanching reshaped American ballet. He is understood to be the
father of American ballet. That's what they call him. And
he was not the first person to bring ballet to America.
He was not the first person to try and impose
his vision of ballet on America.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
But his stuck.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Why do you say that One of the things that
he modeled in his company in New York City Ballet
was the unquestionable, all powerful artistic director boss. They loved him,
they worshiped him, they desired his approval and his affection,
(05:35):
and that model is so damaging, It is so ripe
for abuse and mistreatment and a general feeling of powerlessness
in the workplace and obedience to hierarchical authority that did
not begin with him. As he became sort of synonymous
(05:58):
with American ballet, people replicated because it quote worked. And
the other thing that he left us with is his
bodily ideal, particularly for women dances, and that is long legs,
long neck, long thin everything that is part of his.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Legacy from iHeart podcasts and Rococoa Punch. This is the
(06:42):
turning Room of Mirrors America Lance, Part seven. The line
as toxic encoded as invoking the line can be. When
I watch a Balanchine ballet, I'm overcome by beauty, and
(07:05):
I find it hard to divorce the line from what
makes it beautiful. Like in Balanchine's Tchaikowsky Patada, a lonely
violin's bittersweet melody is embodied by a dancer and her partner.
The ballerina flits across the stage. She takes her partner's
hand gently, and he lifts her over his head while
(07:27):
she extends one leg in the air like a thin arrow.
Then she reverses direction mid air. She stretches her legs
apart so they're almost parallel to the floor. Her arms
lift to a delicate v, like the outline of a
swan's outstretched wings. She's floating. It draws me in, and
(07:54):
it did the same thing for Sophie Fleck the first
time she saw it.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
It seems like it was almost ridiculous, how big she
was moving. It was like almost funny.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Sophie Flax saw Balanchine's choreography for the first time in
the mid nineteen nineties. She was around ten years old.
Balancine had been long gone from New York City ballet.
He died a decade earlier, but Sophie found herself in
a ballet class, huddled in front of a TV screen
next to her peers, watching a woman who'd been molded
by Balanchine himself. The woman was Patricia McBride, and she
(08:36):
was dancing the Tchaikovsky Potida.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
And I literally I was floored. I remember at some
point I saw something with a cord to ballet.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
The Corps de Ballet as a group of dancers that
typically serves as a backdrop to the soloists, but in
Balanchine ballets, the core is often more active and focal.
In a piece, he might have dozens of dancers move
in unison, dashing across the stage and speedy twirls or
dramatic jumps.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
And I was like, oh my god, that looks so fun.
Like it all just looks so fun.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
I think for me it was the music, though, you
become the music, as George Balanchine once said, see the music,
hear the dance.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Catherine Morgan also discovered Balanchine when she was about ten.
It was when she saw the New York City Ballet
perform The Nutcracker. Like Sophie, Catherine fell in love with
the excitement and the dynamic movement she was seeing from
all the dancers on the stage.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
I remember walking out of there and going, I'm going
to be up there one day. That's where I want
to dance.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
I came home and I was like, I want to
dance in New York City Ballet. I want to dance Balanchine.
And then my mom did the research.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Catherine and Sophie both started to dream about entering Balanchine's
world one day. These two young girls a few years apart,
each started to work on that goal, one in Massachusetts,
the other in Alabama. As they rose through ballet school levels,
they each got a with the language and the ways
of ballet, how to tie a bun in their hair,
how to point their toes, and along with that, they
(10:06):
began to learn about expectations for their bodies.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Because I was never the smallest one. You know, teachers
who are trying to be helpful would pull me aside
and be like, you know, you're talented enough for this,
but you're always gonna have to watch your weight. You're
gonna have to be careful. You're not the thinnest one,
so you're gonna have to work twice as hard because
you're not skinny.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
You just need to be careful.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
At like twelve, thirteen, fourteen, it was always a thing
in the back of my head that was put there.
I remember thinking, well, I'm not worth anything until i'm skinny.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
I mean, also, you're just I feel like groomed is
a very charged word, but I don't know what else
to use, but like groomed to accept like a very
specific ideal from a very young age, So it's not
even really something you have to talk about a lot
it's like your front should be completely flat with your
(10:57):
hips and your stomach and your chest. If there's something
jutting out, it ruins the line. I remember people talking
about my body like there was a physical therapist I
saw regularly, just sort of like to check that I
was developing well as a dancer. And my mother asked
(11:20):
like if she thought that I had like a appropriate
body for ballet, like in front of me, and she
was like, yes, it's like ideal or something. And my
mom was like, do you think like it will change
over time, like with puberty, And the woman was like, no,
I think like if you know her thighs aren't overdeveloped now,
(11:40):
like it would probably just stay that way. Like they
were talking about me as if I wasn't there, So
I mean that messaging is like, okay, my thighs like
can't get bigger.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Basically, how old do you think you were?
Speaker 5 (11:53):
Then?
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (11:54):
I you know under ten? For sure?
Speaker 1 (11:56):
You were under ten And they're like talking about the
size of your thighs.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
Yeah, yea.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Catherine and Sophie both still aimed to dance Balanchine's choreography,
so on their own timelines. They each audition for the
School of American Ballet, the feeder school to the ballet
company founded by balancing.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
I also remember at the SAB audition School of American
Ballet this particular one before we did anything, the teacher
went around and checked our feet, so we each had
to point our foot so she could see what.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Our arches were like.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
So it just shows like, if you have a really
pretty foot, it's.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Good for ballet. Catherine had been to so many auditions
for ballet schools that they all seemed to blend together,
but she says, very close examination of the body was
part of it.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
When you show up for an audition, they'll look at
the parents because they'll go, what is this kid going
to turn into? What are the genetics? Oh well, her
mom's a little bit kirvy, so we'll have to see
what happens with that. Oh well, her mom has hips.
My mom remembers at many auditions being given the full
body scan to see what I was going to turn into.
(13:10):
And funnily enough, I'm adopted, so it's irrelevant.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
So in their auditions, both Catherine and Sophie were evaluated
and they both got into the School of American Ballet
SAB for short. About two thousand had auditioned. Just a
couple hundred made it.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
So my mom and I made plans with my father,
and that's when we decided that she would move up
with me because she didn't want her fifteen year old
Southern girl because I was from Alabama staying in the
dorms by herself in New York City. That would not
have gone well. I would have been just lost in
a hole somewhere, honestly.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Unlike Catherine, Sophie left her family and moved into the
three floors in a New York high rise just below
the Juilliard Dorm. An elevator ride down from the kids
dorm rooms was the studio, and then the cafeteria was
on the bottom floor.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
So your whole world is in this one building. You
had to check in and out by writing your name
and the time, and you had like a certain amount
of time I think that you had you could be
out before coming back. In the lounge, we would watch
Sex and the City. The person at the desk would
like throw a movie night or something once a week
(14:32):
where you'd have like all this junk food laid out,
and we would use the stairs for exercise for burning calories.
You'd run up and down them. We got really competitive
about burning calories.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
In between ballet classes, Sophie went to Professional Children's School
in New York. It's a school for kids pursuing careers
like actors, dancers, musicians. A lot of movie stars go there.
Each day, Sophie would have to hurry back for ballet class.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Literally running along Columbus Avenue, racing the other girls in
my class to get a good spot near the teacher
or at the skinny mirror. And then we'd go back
again for another class. And like our meals were eaten
while walking. And I remember noting to myself, I am
doing this like I'm going to give it my all
(15:22):
or I'm going to go home, like that kind of thing.
I really worked hard.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Every day. When Sophie went down to the SAB studios,
she passed a giant bust of balancing. It reminded her
who this was all for.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
What you're doing is larger than yourself, almost like a religion,
Like this is bigger than you. I was serving something
larger than myself. If it's not God, then's the art
form or balancing? For me? It felt like it's like
balancing's ghosts or something.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Valancine's ghosts loomed large at SAB, but to progress, Sophie
and Catherine had to grab the attention of a mortal man,
the head of the New York City Ballet who had
final say in their futures, the artistic director of the
company at the time, Peter Martin's. When Sophie Flack was
(16:44):
a teenager at SAB, it was still years before an
internal investigation would take place and Peter Martins would resign.
To Sophie, all that mattered was if Peter liked her.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
He held a lot of power, but it also was
very apparent in his body, just the way that he
moved through space and the way he regarded people.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
He spoke with this light, sophisticated Danish accent.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
He was quite tall, sort of like Ramrod Pasture. So
when you enter a room, it's not just like a
pedestrian walking into her room. You're making an entrance. He
seemed very aware of his presence. He was like a figure,
not a person.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Later, when Sophie was in the company, she says dancers
would point out the cameras that monitored the stage and
joke there were cameras everywhere with a live feed to
Peter's office. It felt like he was always watching, like
you were always on display.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
He never spoke to us. He had like a very
small circle of people who he seemed to know or
gab with a little bit. That seems sort of like
on the inside, or like knew a secret that no
one else knew. I didn't quite understand how one gained
entry to that. It's very small social circle. They definitely
(18:07):
existed on a higher plane. I'll just say that. And like,
you know, we're in charge of our everything, our lives,
our roles, validation, uh, you know everything.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Sophie knews she had to please Peter's inner circle, but
ultimately Peter made all the decisions about who would join
the company.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
He would observe class at the school and occasionally teach,
which was terrifying. The balancing technique is like the whole
idea was to push yourself off balance, to reach beyond
what you thought you could, so there was never quite
an end to it.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Sophie worked harder than she ever had, but it wasn't
enough to execute a certain number of fattes or drill
hundreds of perfectly formed tondues to gain entry into that
inner world. She felt she'd have to do something more.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
I think I started developing like an eating disorder actually
when I was about twelve, because I started developing breasts
and I didn't want to because I was concerned they
were too big for the company.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Sophie wanted to look like a balancing dancer. She had
four tapes of balancing repertoire. She watched them on repeat.
She studied the movement and the dancers, and she noticed
a pattern.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Everybody was completely flat chested in the videos that I
was watching. I'm not talking about like small boobs. I'm
talking about like like almost like a man. And then
I started getting like little boobs, and they just kept
getting a little bigger like I and I that was
not okay, And like the only way I knew how
(20:03):
to control it was through diet. So yeah, you definitely
aren't allowed to grow up.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
You know, with women in ballet, when they naturally become
what they're supposed to become, which is a woman, it's like,
you know, oh she's getting hips. Oh she started to
look like a woman. Oh she's you know, and you're like,
that's what's supposed to happen, Whereas with men it's the opposite.
Oh he's so scrawny. Oh he's becoming a man. Finally
(20:31):
he looks like a man. And for us it's the
flip side. They want us to stay looking creepybasant.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Yeah, it's weird that the look they're going for is
a grown man partnering, dancing with a child, a child,
a young girl. So when Sophie was about fifteen, she
even saw a surgeon about her body. She hoped her
breasts could be reduced.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
They didn't have enough fat in my boobs to like
reduce them. And he's so he was like, well, you
can just lose weight, sort of nonchalantly, and I put
myself on a diet. After that, it took over me.
It got out of control.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
After all of the years of pressure to be thin,
something started to happen to Sophie where her eating behaviors
took on a life of their own. It was like
a force beyond her control. Afore she couldn't stop. While
recovering from an injury, Sophie says she lost a lot
of weight in a short amount of time.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
I got a lot of praise from the boys in
the school in partnering class to.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
The school's credit. Sophie says her teachers pulled her aside
because they were concerned about her weight loss. They referred
her to a.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Nutritionist which I saw, which I basically laughed off. I
remember she said I had to eat twenty five hundred
calories a day, and I literally laughed when she said that,
because I was sustaining myself on so little that amount
seemed ridiculous. Instead of talking myself out of eating, in
my technique which I won't share, I made myself eat
(22:08):
like one bad food a day, and after the intervention,
I bottom muffin from the bake sale at my school.
It was a mini muffin and I was really proud
of myself. I ate half of it. I couldn't eat
the other half. I was scared for myself.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
I don't want to underplay the severity of this. Eating
disorders can lead to heart failure, neurological problems, structural brain
changes like the brain shrinking in size, intense emotional turmoil,
and death. Anorexia is the most lethal mental health condition
there is. It has suicide rates sixty times that of
(22:55):
the general population. That's also higher than for depression or
by pole disorder or schizophrenia, but from Sophie's perspective, being
thin would help her achieve her goal.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
I got a ton of attention from Peter Martin's that year.
I remember him holding my hand as I demonstrated in
the front of room. I felt like I had a
real shot at being in the company. It seemed to
be a good thing. But the problem was I didn't
know how to maintain it. I only knew how to
(23:35):
keep going. I never learned how to eat properly at all.
It was like binging or extra dieting.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
One day, a ballet mistress, the person who led company rehearsals,
pulled Sophie and a couple other students into an office.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
She closed the door and there was like three of
us in the room or something, and she said, so
you probably know you've accepted.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
She said, Peter would like you to join as an apprentice.
That's the first step towards gaining a permanent position in
the company.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
It was almost like I should have known it the
way she said it, The way she spoke was in
the the speak of the theater. Basically, like nothing was direct,
ever or explicit. Every kind of communication was like sort
(24:31):
of an afterthought and it was sort of a power
that they held over us.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Maybe Sophie didn't get the praise or warmth she'd craved,
but at least she was going to be an apprentice.
At age seventeen, she'd given everything, her family, her home,
her body to this cause and she'd been accepted. Like Sophie,
(25:01):
Catherine Morgan was also seventeen years old when she got
her apprenticeship with the New York City Ballet. An apprenticeship
is a huge deal, but it's still nerve wracking because
there's no guarantee you'll become a full time hire. At
the end of the year. It could be the end
of the road after years of work.
Speaker 4 (25:18):
So two weeks in, we're in company class. I'm doing
Swan Lake rehearsals. I'm Swan number seventeen on the left.
You know nobody and one of the principal dancers tears
her calf muscle in class and literally falls has to
be carried out of the room.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
It was very scary.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
A few days later, Peter Martin shows up to teach class.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
And whenever the director teaches, it's sort of a mini
audition because the director doesn't always teach, especially Peter. He
wouldn't teach weekly. He would just show up on the schedule.
And so when Peter Martin shows up on the schedule,
the entire company is there. So you're in this room
of like ninety something people, and I remember just not
(25:59):
being able to do anything that day, Like I fell
out of every turn. I couldn't stay balanced to save
my life because I was still a baby. I had
been in the company maybe a week at this point,
and I thought any moment I could be fired, any moment.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
After rehearsal, the ballet mistresspeconed Catherine over with a curled finger.
Catherine froze.
Speaker 4 (26:21):
She was like, Sean wants to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Sean was like number two in command to Peter.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
And he comes over and he says, so, as you know,
a couple days ago, the principal got hurt and I
was like, uh huh, And he said, you know, well
she's supposed to dance Juliet in Saratoga. Uh huh, Well,
we very much like for you to replace her. And
it was one of those like are you talking to me?
Did you see the rehearsal I just had? Did you
(26:46):
see me fall in my face?
Speaker 1 (26:49):
She'd just been given the part of Juliet and Romeo
and Juliet.
Speaker 4 (26:53):
And then Peters comes running over like did you tell her?
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Did you tell her? Catherine was the only apprentice who
was being asked to perform this type of solo role.
She was being singled out. It could be that moment
when she would turn into a star. Opening day finally came.
It was held in an outdoor Amphitheater in Saratoga, New York,
(27:16):
where the New York City Ballet performs every year. It's
a company's summer residency where Peter Martins tries dancers in
different roles and make some of the critical decisions on
which dancers will make it.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
I remember being really nervous because this was sort of
do or die for me.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
The stage wings were full of company dancers waiting to
see how she would do.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
And I just remember doing my turn and all of
a sudden seeing blood on my costume and thinking, oh dear,
what happened. And then all of a sudden, Tyler glaring
at me, wiping blood off his nose. He's halfway staying
as we're dancing. He whacked me in the face, But
just keep going.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
But the people she needed to impress didn't seem to mind.
Speaker 4 (27:58):
Peter was pleased, and I remember one of the other
ballet masters who was very difficult to please, coming up
to me going that was that was beautiful. That was beautiful.
That's when I knew I had it.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
After that, Catherine quickly moved through the ranks from a
core member to soloist, landing role after role.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
It's funny because Peter Martins told me exactly what it was.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
He.
Speaker 4 (28:24):
I know a lot of dancers had issues with him.
He was nothing but lovely to me. I can't speak
for anybody else, but he was always very encouraging and
mentoring to me. He said, you know, you're not the technician,
but you tell the story. You're the artist. Your artistry
is going to give you a career.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
When Sophie, the other young dancer, joined the company, she
was just focused on how grateful she was to be there.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
I felt like I just won the jackpot, you know,
being accepted. I was very proud because I was very
aware of the prestige of being a part of it.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
One day, after rehearsal, the ballet mistress kept her late.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
You know, my heart stopped. I was, you know, really worried.
I was gonna lose my job first, because I was still.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
A new core member, she told Sophie.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Peter says, he notices you've gained weight.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
It's what Sophie calls her first fat talk. A lot
of professional dancers use the term fat talk because they're
so common. As a soloist in the company, Catherine wasn't
immune either.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
It's never we need you to lose weight, because they
can get in a lot of trouble saying that kind
of stuff. So there's different phrases. You need to get
in shape. Get in shape is the phrase that's code
for lose weight. I don't think you're in your best shape.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
I think I said I just got my period or something,
and she took that to mean that I had gotten
it for the first time recently, and I let her
believe that. But I thought that was really interesting that
nineteen she thought it was normal for a dancer to
have her period for the first time. I mean, she's
a woman, like she knows that around the time of
(30:15):
your period, your body, you know, gots floated, whatever, So
she seemed to have some understanding. I didn't feel like it.
I really didn't feel like it was coming from her
actually she was the messager. I don't blame her. It's like,
(30:36):
I bet she didn't want to have those conversations. She
might not have agreed, but that was her job.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
The same institution that had an intervention to address her
severe eating disorder only a few years prior was now
telling her she needed to lose weight.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Everyone at the theater was very cold emotionally, so I
didn't expect any warmth. I think I probably started crying
and just sort of really worried, and that was the
first thought. I think, like, I'm screwing this up.
Speaker 5 (31:13):
This is this is not good.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Catherine Morgan, the dancer cast as Juliet, was twenty one
when she landed another major role, this time Aurora and
Sleeping Beauty and Princess.
Speaker 4 (31:32):
Aurora is not only the crown jewel role of ballet,
but it is, in my opinion, the hardest one. It
is the most technically demanding, the most physically demanding. You
feel like you've run six marathons by the time you're
done with this ballet. And I remember all the other
Auroras were like, oh, I lose like five pounds of show,
and I'm like so skinny, and da da da and
(31:54):
I remember thinking, I'm kind of starting to gain weight
doing this.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
It is really odd.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
I just thought, okay, well, I don't lose five pounds
a show. I have like gain a pound a show.
I hadn't changed my diet, but I started ballooning up.
And then I started to get really, really tired. And
Peter Martins was doing a new ballet at the time,
and we were in the studio eight hours a day
choreographing this thing, and so I just thought, I don't
have time to eat. I can't get through this ballet,
(32:24):
like what is happening to me? And ballet masters had
started pulling me aside, going are you aware that you
are putting on weight? And I wanted to go No.
I had no idea. You know, it's my job to
stare at myself in the mirror twenty four to seven.
But no, not a clue. Of course I was aware.
And then I would go up to point or go
up to balance and my muscles would give out. So
(32:46):
it was like my body was just starting to collapse.
And I gained forty five pounds in six weeks, barely
eating anything, and people were going, what is happening?
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Catherine says, doctors were confused about her weight complaints. Even
after the weight gain, she was in a normal weight range,
but her standards as a ballerina were totally different. She
couldn't fit into the costumes and she struggled to get
through rehearsals and she didn't know why.
Speaker 4 (33:16):
So eight doctors later and two years of battling this,
I was so miserable. So finally I was cast as
Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is one of
the two lovers, as they say in Midsummer and Peter
came to watch my rehearsal and he said nothing, and
(33:36):
he said, let's go talk. So we went to his
office and he was just like, how are you feeling?
Speaker 1 (33:41):
And I lost it.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
I just burst into tears and I was like, I can't.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
Do this anymore.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
I'm so ill and sick and huge and d D.
I said, Peter, I think I need to like not
come back next year. I think I need to let
my contract run out, go home and get well. Because
the pressure of trying to be in the New York
City Ballet, I was now a soloist. By this point,
I was like, I can't do this anymore. I'm on
this hamster wheel of misery, and he just gave me
(34:07):
a huge hug, and he was like, I knew you
were smart. Put your health first. There'll always be a
place for you here.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
But in the ballet world, is health ever first? Catherine
would have to make a choice. She went home to
her parents' house, but things would never be the same again.
(34:38):
Year after a year, Sophie worked diligently as a quarter
to ballet ballerina, but as time we're on, she wanted
more opportunities to stretch herself creatively. She kept being put
in more traditional ballets when she created something else. She
wanted to dance Balacine's angular abstract works, the Stravinsky ballets,
where movement and music ruled what they referred to as
(35:01):
the black and white ballets. Less story, more abstraction. She
scheduled a meeting with Peter Martin's to ask if she
could study some of those roles. She might never perform them,
but at least she could learn.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Even like walking down the hallway to his office, you know,
made you like stressed out. You know, it's like going
to see the wizard.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
I know, Peter's office was like a relic.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
It's like a tiny built in sofa that looked like
it had been built in like the seventies, and it
probably had been an old carpet. The whole theater was
that way, like it hadn't been touched since Balanchin's era.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Peter walked out from behind his desk.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
He was fairly warm, and he came like physically closer
to me, and I felt heard, and you know, it
was terrified and really nervous and stuff. But I said
the things and he responded to it like okay, like
why don't you come back with like some specific roles
and ideas? And I felt encouraged.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
But when the casting and rehearsal schedule for the next
Black and White ballet was posted, Sophie didn't make the list.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
I wasn't even called to understudy, as if we hadn't
ever spoken.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Then, in the economic downturn of two thousand and nine,
there was buzz about a possible mass layoff.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
And there was a lot of anxiety. I didn't want
to believe that it was true.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
One afternoon, Sophie was hanging out with her boyfriend on
the Lower East Side, Sophie's stomping grounds on her days off.
She was walking down the sidewalk when she got a
call from Peter's personal assistant.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
She didn't say what it was, she just said, Peter
would like to meet with you. And I never had
a meeting where Peter called the meeting before, so I
knew exactly what it was about. I knew that I
was gonna be laid off, and I literally fell to
the pavement. I was just completely distraught. I felt like
(37:00):
I'd just been diagnosed with some terminal illness. It felt like,
you know, there was an end to the sidewalk. Basically,
I just remember cars going by, people going on with
their lives, and this abyss that opened up before me.
It felt like facing death. I don't mean to be dramatic,
(37:23):
but that's really what it felt like. I didn't know
another way to live. I didn't know what was next
at all. I didn't ever consider a life after dance.
That's what we were sort of taught to do, because
how could you possibly give yourself completely if you're always
looking ahead.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
They had the meeting, Peter stuck to his line. They
didn't have the funds. Sophie danced several more months until
her contract ran out.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Which was really really difficult. I would just sort of
like went through the motions as little as possible. I
was extremely upset and mad. It was hard to like
look people in the eyes. It was hard to like
just navigate the day in the theater. I just want
to stop. You know, people are surprised why I didn't
(38:16):
want to continue dancing after all that. Why would I
want to continue dancing in the company or at all
at all?
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Sophie would never dance professionally again. She left the company
with lots of questions, but there was one she couldn't ask,
too afraid to make it explicit.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Was it my body?
Speaker 4 (38:45):
You know? I blamed myself. I felt like a failure
because I thought it was my fault.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
After Catherine Morgan left the company to focus on her
health and these mysterious symptoms and weight gain she'd been experiencing,
she went home to her parents' house in Alabia. She
still felt tired all of the time, the symptoms hadn't subsided,
hair loss, weight gain, and still no answers.
Speaker 4 (39:09):
Part of your identity as a dancer is how you
look in the mirror, and it's also how what makes
you feel good about yourself or not. It's what gets
you rolls or not, and usually your job as a
dancer is to be criticized to fix it. Nope, your
knees not straight, Nope, point your feet. So you get
into this mentality that everything is fixable. I just have
(39:31):
to do my part. If it's not right, it's because
I'm not doing it right.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
And she had no fix for the body she saw
staring back at her in the mirror.
Speaker 4 (39:40):
My only definition of success was being a skinny ballerina
on the stage of New York City Ballet, and so
once that was taken from me, I had nothing. I
had absolutely nothing. I lost completely who I was, I
had no outside life. I felt totally worthless because it
was my identity. I committed to it for teen fifteen
(40:01):
and I knew nothing else in this. I felt like, oh,
I'm letting my younger self down because I sacrificed so
much in my childhood to do this, you know, like
I didn't go to prom, I didn't go to high
school graduation, I didn't go to sleepovers, I didn't get
you know, because I was so committed to this and
then to have it fall apart, I felt like I
was letting myself down.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
One day, she stood at the top of her parents'
stairs on the second floor, and the thought flew through
her mind.
Speaker 4 (40:29):
I had that flash moment of what would happen if
I just threw myself down the stairs and ended this
because it was I was so unhappy.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
There wasn't one thing that helped her get beyond the
pain and depression or filled the void that ballet left
in her life. She got a counselor a dog, and
finally a diagnosis how she motos thyroiditis, an autoimmune disease
that affects the thyroid, which helped her manager symptoms, but
what really helped the most was distant. For nine years,
(41:02):
she stayed away from the stage.
Speaker 4 (41:04):
So with ballet, I was literally in it twenty four
to seven until my illness hit, and then I got
out of the system for a long time, and then
suddenly you're like, oh hm. I was able to see
the kind of weird quirks of the ballet world that
I had never seen before because I was just in
it and didn't know of any other way. You hear
(41:25):
from the people who were not in the professional ballet world,
and I remember a couple of people being like, well,
why why is it like that, and then you start
to go, well, I don't know why, And it was
being out of the professional company world for a while
started me.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
To question things.
Speaker 4 (41:43):
You start to realize that, oh, these people are brainwashed.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
What are the points of brainwashing that ballet dancers experience?
Speaker 4 (41:51):
That you have to starve and that you have to
have a certain look to you. Another one is that
you must push through an injury. I see so many
dancwers push through injuries because they are so terrified to
say something, because they don't want to get in trouble,
or they don't want to be deemed as lazy, or
they don't want to lose a spot. So many teachers
again operate on scare tactic and well, if you can't
(42:15):
do it, someone else will. We have four more people
in line. I'll put your understudy on. I think it's
also this thing of the person in the front of
the room is the do or die dictator. The teacher
of the director is literally God, and you must do
what they say at all times without question, even if
the step is being taught wrong or the choreography is wrong.
(42:38):
You're scared to speak up out of fear of your job.
It's sometimes like well, you know, you should be grateful
to be here, be seen and not heard. So dancers
have no say, no control. And really it's a career
based on other people's opinions, literally other people opinions, and
(43:01):
that's why it's so hard. It's not the Olympics that's
decided by who ran the fastest, you know, it is
one hundred percent someone else's.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
Opinion, which means then that you have to constantly please Yep. Gradually,
Catherine got back into the studio, this time on her
own terms.
Speaker 4 (43:22):
Suddenly, when I wasn't trying to impress anybody, things heard work.
That's when I could finally like dance again.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
And when she learned Miami City Ballet was looking for dancers,
she auditioned. It was in her wheelhouse because the company
was founded by a balancing dancer. They frequently perform as choreography.
After four days of auditions, Catherine was offered a soloist
position with the company. She was frank with the director.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
I'm never going to be the thinnest one in the room,
and I was told, oh, well, don't worry about it.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
You look absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 4 (43:56):
We liked it. You're different.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
She thought, maybe this time she wouldn't have to choose
between health and ballet. Her first performance back was in
a balancing ballet called Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, which.
Speaker 4 (44:12):
Was so much fun. I've never had more fun on stage.
You play a nineteen twenties strip tease girl and you're
you know, it's just so much fun.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
Catherine was dancing every day. She'd reclaimed her identity. She
had left the pain and disappointment behind. It felt amazing.
Speaker 4 (44:30):
But at half hour call to one of my shows,
I was called in and I was the whole spiel again.
You're not looking as you should, you're not in shape.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Have a good show.
Speaker 4 (44:42):
It was became very apparent to me that the ballet
world had not changed. So at that point I was like,
all right, I'm going to show them stupid. Went back
to seventeen year old brain. After having worked through, you
know a decade of what I worked through, I stopped eating.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
And as you can imagine, that didn't go well.
Speaker 4 (45:05):
Three days later I strained my calf muscle in a
nutcracker rehearsal.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
Which can happen when you're underfed.
Speaker 4 (45:11):
Then I was very quickly taken out of every ballet
I was learning for the rest of the season, and
it just sort of spiraled and wasn't good.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
Then all of her old autoimmune condition symptoms flared up.
Speaker 4 (45:25):
The line that was said to me that I will
never forget as long as I live. I know you're
supposedly this inspiration to all these people, but I don't
think you can be a true inspiration until you're back
on the stage looking like a ballerina in point shoes.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
And I was just like, humph.
Speaker 4 (45:41):
At that point, I knew I was done, and she
left all the things that had been said to me.
I was back in that place of I literally couldn't
look at myself in the mirror. Hi, everybody. So I
(46:04):
have a bit of a more serious video for you
guys today, as you can probably tell.
Speaker 1 (46:09):
Rather than spiral again, she went public with her story
on her YouTube channel one.
Speaker 4 (46:14):
I kind of don't even know how I'm gonna go
about this, to be honest, it's a bit daunting to me,
as a lot of you have done your readers.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
The author we talked to earlier, Chloe Angel, heard about
it and.
Speaker 3 (46:25):
It was a huge deal. I mean, she'd been out
of professional ballet for years and there was a lot
of fanfare, There was a lot of publicity around it,
and then they wouldn't put her on stage.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
To Chloe, it confirmed what she already knew. The problem
runs deep.
Speaker 3 (46:42):
There is this suite of euphemisms and code words that
is being delivered to dancers, and most of them understand
what it means. But it's being couched in terms of
health and length and getting fit and getting in shape
and getting toned. But what you're asking is for most
(47:02):
dances is not a healthy outcome. And it's a mind fuck.
Speaker 4 (47:08):
Who decided this? Who decided you know that this you
have to have twig like arms or legs? Did the
skies open up and the ballet god said this is
how it has to be. No, it's just what we've
all been programmed. I didn't understand that you're worthy because
(47:30):
you're a human first, not because you're a dancer.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
Instead of having a full time company job, Catherine's found
another way to dance. She freelances as a soloist, teaches ballet,
and coaches dancers. And when our videos came out in
twenty twenty, dancer after dancer told her they had similar experiences.
Other dancers have also gone public, like a new York
City Ballet principle and an Instagram live last year, or
(47:55):
another soloist who wrote that Peter Martin's pointed from her
knee to her butt and said she didn't fit in
from there to there. She'd struggled with bulimia and she
ended up getting liposection on her thighs. And it's not
just scrutiny from within the company, it's everywhere. Critics set
the tone too. For example, a dance critic at The
(48:16):
New York Times mocked the weight of a principal dancer
in a review after she'd been open about her eating disorder.
He said she'd had one sugar plum too many. He
defended himself afterward, he said, quote, ballet demands sacrifice in
its pursuit of widely accepted ideals of beauty. If you
want to make your appearance irrelevant to criticism, do not
(48:39):
choose ballet as a career. I am severe, but ballet,
as dancers know, is more so. End quote.
Speaker 3 (48:48):
The idea that you want really a ballet dancer until
you look like a ballet dancer is really pervasive. You know,
if you are uncomfortable watching a cross in bigger than
standard ballet dancer do ballet If it doesn't look right
to you, that is something that you need to sit
(49:09):
with and think about and think about why, and think
about the cost, the human cost, the physical, psychological, emotional
cost of that kind of gatekeeping of who doesn't get
to dance, of who has to suffer in order to dance.
It's so deep seated, it's so harmful, and it's just
(49:31):
completely unjustifiable.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
So often the idea of the line is talked about
like this geometrical fact, like an artistic truth that can't
be argued with. But the older I get, the more
I question that I start to think, Yeah, I have
been brainwashed. I've been so inundated with images of thin
bodies dancing ballet that I eventually believed that that was
(49:54):
objectively better. On a gut level, I've been programmed to
think a certain bodies these make lines that are more
beautiful than others, that a flowing arm that curves is beautiful,
but a curvy body is not. I don't believe that anymore,
because I've been working to deprogram myself for more than
a decade. Is the idea of the line, I mean,
(50:22):
how real is it?
Speaker 2 (50:23):
Even?
Speaker 1 (50:24):
I mean, is the line better.
Speaker 3 (50:29):
And my answer is who cares? Because people are suffering.
The audience having a good experience of ballet and enjoying
what they see on stage is dependent on that line,
And that line is dependent on people starving and people
collapsing in the wings from exhaustion, and people getting early
(50:52):
on set ostereoporosis and bone fractures and long term musclear
skeletal damage and rexia and body dysmorphia, and a permanently
messed up relationship with food and with exercise and early
retirement and the kind of disillusionment that a lot of
(51:13):
formal dances feel.
Speaker 5 (51:15):
Who gives a shit about the line?
Speaker 1 (51:45):
Next time?
Speaker 6 (51:46):
On the turning, imagine as a black ballet student at
the time, hearing that that was the thought the ballerina
should be the color of appealed apple, and I remember thinking, well,
if you leave appealed apple out on the counter for
a minute, it turns brown anyway, So what does that mean?
Speaker 1 (52:09):
The Turning is the production of Rococo, Punch and iHeart Podcasts.
It's written and produced by Alan Lance Lesser and Me.
Our story editor is Emily Foreman. Mixing and sound designed
by James Trout. Jessica Crisa is our assistant producer, Andrea
assoahe is our digital producer. Fact checking by Andrea Lopez Crusado.
(52:32):
Special thanks to Chloe Angel, who you heard from today.
Her incredible book about the world of ballet is called
Turning Point, How a new generation of dancers is saving
Ballet from itself. Our executive producers are John Paratti and
Jessica Alpert at Rococo Punch at Katrina Norbel and Nikki
(52:54):
Etur at iHeart Podcasts. For photos and more details on
the series, follow us on Install at Rococo Punch and
you can reach out via email the Turning at Rococo
Punch dot com. I'm Rika Lance. Thanks for listening.
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