Review of 'Dance Healthy, Dance Smart: A Healthy Outlook: How teachers can play an active role in helping students to develop a positive body image' by Jennifer Brewer

The second piece of literature I chose to review is Dance Healthy, Dance Smart: A Healthy Outlook: How teachers can play an active role in helping students to develop a positive body image. It is an article for Dance Teacher Magazine by Jennifer Brewer who is a freelance writer, teacher, musician and dancer. Having experience as an artist as well as a writer means Brewer can write about dance with good understanding. It was published by Raleigh, N. C.: Macfadden Performing Arts Media, LLC in the USA. Like the article Confessions of a Hypocrite by Pat Catterson, which I reviewed, this article is also published by a company which specializes in literature for the arts and references dance schools in America exclusively.

This piece is relevant to my inquiry as it is about encouraging teachers to promote healthy body image in their schools and classes. Brewer looks into what forward-thinking universities are doing in the USA but perhaps things differ in Britain, which is where I am going to carry out my inquiry, which could make the article slightly less relevant to my work. However, as in many fields, where America goes the rest of the world tend to follow. It was published in 2002 and looks at how things have changed from the 1970s to that year. To say that this article is almost ten years old I feel that its content about teachers helping their students to feel good about their bodies is something which I personally have seen very little of to this day.

Brewer’s message is that there has been a lot of change in the dancer’s bodies from the “emaciated 1970’s and 80’s” to a more healthy look. She puts this down to teachers building body confidence in their students. I can relate this to Catterson’s article because she writes how the first production she choreographed was in 1977 where her father who, I found out from Catterson’s website http://www.patcatdance.org, was a ballroom dancer made a comment about a “fat girl” in Catterson’s piece. Perhaps, it was seen a standard in the 70’s that dancers were very thin. However, Catterson does not make any indication that things have changed over the years, whereas Brewer’s entire article is to do with this and unlike Catterson, Brewer used a lot of quotes from other professionals literature in order to back up her argument.

She uses quotes and actions of some very prominent people in the industry to show this change in attitude by teachers. She references research done by Jane M. Bonbright, EdD executive director of the National Dance Education Organization in Bethesda, Maryland. Bonbright’s reseach showed that non-dancing students show more signs of having eating disorders than professional ballet dancers. Brewer also uses this quote of Bonbright’s,

 ''There's it lot that schools can do to promote health. Teachers can make connections in their communities. Perhaps there is a nutritionist with knowledge of adolescents and dance. Build a relationship with this person and see if he or she would be interested in visiting classes, maybe one day per quarter, or even hold a Saturday seminar to which all students are invited.''

This quote gives advice to dance teachers on how they can make a difference within their school. The fact that Brewer has used evidence from other professionals work makes her article a more reliable source of information. To see that other people share her ideas means that her argument has weight behind it. Bonbright goes on to say,

''Students don't need to hear that their tummies are sticking out. That kind of comment can do it lot of damage to children, who really value their teachers' approval.''

Here, Brombright is pointing out that even an innocent correction about a dancer’s alignment can lead to poor body image. Perhaps even the most caring of teacher’s would not consider that this could be a problem.

Another professional she quotes is Francia Russell, artistic director of Pacific Northwest Ballet and its affiliated school. In the school she runs she has hired a nutritionist and a psychologist in order to help dancers with body image if it is necessary. With reference to changes in the school and making staff more aware of how they treat students, she makes the comment,

''I knew when I started as director that we had to do a lot more than teach ballet class,'' 

This shows that Russell feels that it is her duty to ensure students are happy and healthy. By Brewer using Russell’s hard work as an example shows her opinions on the subject are shared by other people.

The next professional Brewer uses to reinforce her point is Linda H. Hamilton, PhD, author of Advice For Dancers: Emotional Counsel And Practical Strategies. I found this part of the article very interesting because it stresses how much importance a healthy diet is to professional dancers, which is something I am specifically looking into as part of my inquiry. Hamilton expresses the need for nutritional classes in dance schools,

''The student needs to be educated about how weight loss works and how to lose weight safely. The wrong way will backfire,''

Here, Brewer chose to use this quote of Hamilton’s to express that one part of the changes that have happened in this field from the 1970’s to when this article was written is knowledge about nutrition.

Brewer also draws upon the ideas of artistic director of the National Ballet School in Toronto, Mavis Staines. Staines claims that,

''More people are moving away from the narrow idea that dancers can never be too thin,''

This is entirely contradictory of what Catterson wrote in her article which was published some eight years after this one. She claims that,

“If someone looks entirely different -too tall, too heavy, too short-from the rest in look it does disturb the effect, like a dot of blue in the middle. (Notice I didn't say "too thin". You can never be too thin for dance it seems.)”

I too have my doubts that the dance world is leaving behind the idea that dancers can be too thin. I occasionally seen really ill girls be told to gain a couple of pounds but that is nothing compared to the amount of girls of a healthy size I see getting told the lose weight.

What I do like though is the advice Staines gives to dance teachers,

“it is absolutely essential that teachers never speak about weight in front of other students. Ideally, consultation with parents should be part of the process.”

I think this quote is an example of how Brewer has done a good job of using quotes from other sources that will really help dance teachers to do this side of their job better.

I think this article shows that dance teachers are starting to see the importance their role has when influencing their students. However, I think that there is still a long way to go. I loved how positive in this article is and with more pieces like this looking at what can be and is being done about body image at dance schools the industry will have to change their mind about what is acceptable.