Monday, September 11

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Articles on the BBC Panorama special on body-shaming at the Royal Ballet School.

BBC News

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But over the years the industry has developed a reputation for eating disorders, and there has been criticism of the casting of extremely-thin ballerinas in lead roles.

The Times

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More than 50 former students at the Royal Ballet School in London and Elmhurst Ballet School in Birmingham who attended between 2004 and 2022 have spoken to the BBC about their treatment while pupils.

The Daily Telegraph

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Former pupil Grace Owen, 22, said that in one class at Elmhurst, a teacher told the class that some doughnuts made available after the lesson could only be consumed by the thinnest pupil in the class, who could only eat one.

 

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Q&A with Marina Harss on her new biography of Alexei Ratmansky.

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Ratmansky just began a new role as artist in residence at New York City Ballet. This is something of a full circle moment for him, seeing as—before the deal fell through and he joined ABT—he was initially supposed to take this position after his move to the States in 2009. What can we expect from this new era at NYCB?

I don’t know, but I’m very excited to see what he does, especially because he’s at a very crucial turning point, I think, as a human being and as an artist. It’s a new point of maturation—the war in Ukraine has changed his way of seeing the world. I think, for him, art was something fully detached from the day-to-day. That doesn’t mean elements of history didn’t touch his work, but there wasn’t a direct equivalence. Now I think he feels much more questioning of that. I don’t know if his work is going to become more dramatic, or whether finally joining City Ballet will, in a way, allow him to be more experimental, because he has nothing to prove now.

 

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A review of Houston Ballet in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by Molly Glentzer in The Houston Chronicle.

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This is “Midsummer” like you maybe have never seen it, even if you saw the show when Houston Ballet first presented it in 2014. Neumeier created his production 46 years ago for the Hamburg Ballet, where he is still artistic director, but he changes elements each time he stages it, feeding off the energy of the dancers during rehearsals. He likes to say he doesn’t revisit it; he recreates it.

 

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A story on the Royal Ballet School's Healthy Dancer Programme.

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As such, The Royal Ballet School has developed a wellness app for students to record and monitor their daily health. Students can input data on factors like hydration, training load, quality of sleep, and anxiety levels. This data feeds into a database, called Smartabase, that builds a unique profile for every student.

 

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A profile of Emilie Gerrity in The Albany Times Union.

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Growing up in LaGrangeville, where her dad was a corrections officer and her mom worked at the post office, Gerrity wanted to take tap dance. Betty Jean’s only offered a mixed ballet and tap class, so she enrolled.

“I ended up falling in love with ballet,” she said. She spent years on a competition team at Betty Jean’s doing many kinds of dance, which she credits for making her a more well-rounded dancer. Her ballet teacher recommended she check out the New Paltz School of Ballet as the next step in her development.