The Nutritional Status of Female Ballet Dancers 15-18 Years of Age

The demand for ultra-leanness imposed on today's ballerina has evolved over primarily the last thirty years, and did not characterize the traditional classical ballet that dominated the field during its preceding four hundred years. Evolving public taste has tended to prefer increasingly slender figures, and the more Olympian levels of performance dancers must now exhibit further reinforce the demand for extreme leanness. The author's forty years of dance education experience and performance of classical ballet have made her aware that excellent training has become ever more widely available to the younger members of our society. Their rigorous training— continued well into the high school years—supports the achievement of a high level of technical and aesthetic perfection. Today's elite classical dancers are trained to make ever more revolutions in ever more complex and faster paced turns, and to do quicker and more intricate allegro work. They are trained to execute more complex jumps with greater elevation, and to sustain their balances with less preparation time. Furthermore, as the quality and quantity of professionally-oriented ballet schools have increased dramatically, today's dancer is facing an exponentially increased level of competition. Increasingly demanding techniques and more intense levels of competition require today's dancers to meet what are, in the author's view, extreme standards of leanness. Each year among the hundreds of beautifully trained dancers who audition for the few vacancies available in professional ballet companies, many are rejected on sight because they do not project the proper, or ideal, body image: long legs, long arms, long neck, oval shaped head; a body of excellent proportions; and, perhaps of greatest importance, a “bone-thin” frame. Ballet masters recognize that extreme leanness enables the dancer to become more energy-efficient, physically articulate, and agile; it facilitates partnering and pointe dancing; and projects an aesthetically pleasing athletic, or sylph-like, image to the public that subsidizes the art.