I find this discussion interesting because I am close to a number of tall dancers who face a lot of the same problems of trying to find a career as a shorter dancer would, so I think some of the responses are pretty illuminating. It seems to me, though, that a lot of people are trying to attribute height with certain qualities, so I suppose the best way to get to a rawly useful "perfect height" would be to try to strip height from things that [may or may not] be cursorily related to it but not necessarily perfected correlated.
For example, people seem to suggest that shorter dancers tend to have a 'lighter' quality about them and more fluid movement. While this may be true, suppose this isn't the case. Let's say we compose a perfect "Frankenballerina" here. She can have all the grace, weightlessness, and effortlessness of any ballerina that's ever lived. Then, given such, how tall do we make her? Assuming she retains the weightlessness quality of movement, do we simply extend her height indefinitely until we run into the problem of not being able to find suitable partners? Or is there another 'catchpoint' in preventing ballerinas from going taller?
I suppose what I'm trying to say is, how tall would the ideal ballerina be assuming that her height has no bearing upon her style of dance? Because, should we find an 'ideal height', then I suppose it is theoretically possible for someone at that height to dance with the qualities of both a much shorter and a much taller ballerina, no?
