Review of ‘Advice For Dancers’

‘Advice For Dancers’ is a Q&A section of ‘Dance Magazine’. I am reviewing one question and answer segment from the December 2008 edition of ‘Dance Magazine’. The advice is given by Linda Hamilton. Ph.D., a lecture and psychologist in private practice and also a former New York City Ballet dancer.

The question I am reviewing comes from a 20 year old, female student dancer named Lauren who has aspirations to be in a ballet company. Lauren states that takes 2 classes a day and eats 3 meals per day with whole grain carbohydrates and lean sources of protein and dairy. She says she also snacks on fruit and nuts. According to Lauren she eats 1200 calories per day. And her question is whether or not she is eating the right amount.

The advice Hamilton give to her is that she is doing well to eat nutritious food yet the quantity is too low. She recommends Lauren eats between 2000 and 2700 calories due to her age and level of exercise. However, if Lauren wants to lose weight she should never dip below her BMR (Basic Metabolic Rate) because all that will do is slow her metabolism down. She gives web address which will calculate her BMR for her. Finally, she refers Lauren to perhaps seek advice from a dietician who specialises in dancers.

This piece is relevant to my inquiry because Lauren is writing in to seek advice about her diet and perhaps this shows that she is unable to obtain nutritional advice from other sources. Whether or not dancers feel they get enough advice on this topic and whether they know how to best eat for their health and performance is one aspect I am looking into specifically for my inquiry. As the research in another piece I reviewed, ‘Body composition, weight control and nutrition in dancers’, showed dancers wanted to be healthy but lacked the guidance on how. That research was done in 1996 but the piece I am currently reviewing is from 2008. Does this mean that this guidance is still lacking?

There is no way to tell the answer to that question from this piece because it is far too limited and basic. There is only one girl in question not hundreds like in the research piece. Also, it could be argued that what she does know about the kinds of food she is eating has insight. She is not, for example, cutting out carbohydrates.

I think the advice given by Hamilton is helpful to dancers but she knows her limits in the field and refers Lauren to other sources, which in itself, is helpful. However, despite Hamilton’s experience in the field of dance and psychology she is not a dietician and therefore her advice can only go so far. If Lauren had asked a dietician perhaps the answer she got would have been different.

Also, in this piece Hamilton says,

“Because ballet dancers generally need to weigh less compared to the general population”,

Showing that it is a given that ballet dancers need to be light. It is interesting that Hamilton danced at the NYC Ballet because in another piece I reviewed, ‘Frozen Landscapes: A Foucauldian genealogy of the ideal dancer’s body’, the author Ritenburg uses Balanchine’s ideas of ‘perfect’ dancers in the NYC Ballet to explain why ballet dancers look the way they do. If Hamilton practiced what she preaches i.e. if she used the advice she gives to Lauren and was healthy enough to perform at her best yet slim enough to fit the NYC Ballet’s ideals, then she is probably a great source of information.

Review of ‘Tiny dancer: Body image and dancer identity in female modern dancers’

‘Tiny dancer: Body image and dancer identity in female modern dancers’ by Susan W. Langdon is a research piece which looks into if and how the identities of dancers’ can affect their body image. Their identities come from the type of dancer they are, for example ballet, street etc and their level of experience, for example professional or amatueur. Langdon mentions in the introdution that there has been previous research into body image with regard to level of experience. Which directly relates to the another piece I reviewed ‘Body image in female professional and amateur dancers’ Pollatou et al. As the title suggests, Landon’s research is based specifically on modern dancers.

Langdon gathered her participants at a national dance festival in the USA. She asked the dancers to fill out a survey which 103 of the 180 dancers there did, from this:

·         75% of the dancers were female, modern dancers

·         Ages 18 – 55 years

·         84% were White

·         10% were non-white (African-American, Asian American and Hispanic)

·         6% did not specify their race

·         Number of years dancing ranged from 5 – 42 years

·         All participants had taken ballet at some point. 8% no longer did, 17% did on occasion and 75% still did.

The survey used various methods to determine the participants’ body images. The ‘Body Appreciation Scale’ (BAS) developed by Avalos, Tylka, & Wood-Barcalow, (2005) was the method Langdon chose for the surveying body image. The participants could answer 1 - 5 (i.e. never – always). The drive for Thinness Subscale of the Eating Disorder Inventory-2 (EDI-2) developed by Garner (1990) was used to correlate body image. In this scale infrequent behaviours are given a score of 1 and more frequent ones 1-3. The Self- Objectification questionnaire (SOQ) developed by Noll and Fredrickson (1998) was used to determine what 10 attributes the participants thought are most important. 5 were physical (i.e. attractiveness) and 5 were from within (i.e. strength). The participants had to rank the 10 items.  Langdon assessed the participants’ dance specific body image by using a questionnaire developed by Price and Pettijohn (2006). This questionnaire uses a 5-point Likert-type scale an example of the questions asked is, ‘My body right for dancing’. Finally, in order to assess the participants’ Langdon used the Athletic Identity Measurement Scale developed by Brewer, VanRaalte, & Linder (1993). However, the word athlete was replaced by the word dancer.

The results of this research are as follows:

1)    The participants had lower levels of self-objectification and drive for thinness compared to non-clinical college women.

2)    The participants had higher levels of dancer identity relative to the neutral midpoint.

3)    White women had positive levels of body acceptance and higher levels of body appreciation than the normative body appreciation.

4)    Non-White women had negative levels of body acceptance and similar levels of body appreciation to the norm.

Langdon believes that these findings indicate that the White participants focus more on competition than their appearance because they have lower drive for thinness and higher body appreciation than dancers of other ethnic backgrounds. She thinks this may indicate the athletic character of Modern dance. Langdon states that the findings she came to about Non-White dancers contradict previous research by deCasanove (2004) and Molloy & Herzberger (1998). Langdon’s findings suggest that Non-White dancers have a poorer body image than their White counterparts and lower body appreciation.

This piece is relevant to my inquiry because it considers body image and identity in modern dancers. Similar to the last piece I reviewed the participants in this research are not ballet dancers. In this piece they are Modern dancers, again they are not quite the same as most dancers in my community of practice but they are another type of dancer that are not required to be a thin as a ballerina and therefore potentially have feel less pressure to look a particular way.

The results show that White dancers, of which the participants of my inquiry predominantly are, seem to have high levels of body acceptance and a lower drive for thinness than the norm. This I find very interesting indeed and it may prove that dancers are happier with their bodies than I may have thought.

At this point I must address ethnicity. It is strange to say this but the vast majority of dancers I have worked and trained with have been White. I trained in the U.K and have worked in the U.K, Egypt, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the U.S (basically all over) with dancers from countries other than the U.K also. Yet, dancers who perform the kinds of shows I do are mostly white which is very interesting. However, to start looking into this now would be a step too far, even though this piece brings up some interesting ideas about how ethnicity can affect a dancers’ body image I think that this would be an inquiry on its own.

The research carried out by Langdon seems thorough and the questionnaire seems as though it covers all types of body image and identity questions. The research was completed in 2009 and published in 2010. The recentness of this piece makes the findings relevant today. However, the fact that the research was carried out in the U.S makes it less relevant to my inquiry because the majority of my participants will be European and perhaps the findings would be different if this research were to be carried out here.

Susan W. Langdon is a psychology lecturer at Bates College, Lewiston, Maine. Her background in psychology gives this piece credibility. The piece is designed to be read by other psychologists investigating similar topics. This is her first piece of research into dancers and she does not have a dance background. I think this is a positive thing because she has no preconceptions about the dance world and what dancers may or may not think or feel about their body image.

Review of ‘Body composition, weight control and nutrition in dancers’

‘Body composition, weight control and nutrition in dancers’ is a research piece by Paul Pacy, Magita Khalouha and Yiannis Koutedakis which was written for and published in ‘Dance Research; The Journal of the Society for Dance Research Winter 1996, Vol. XIV Issue 2’. The research in this piece was carried out in order to see what dancers’ know about nutrition, how they know what they know about nutrition and what their body composition is compared to non-athletes. This research mainly uses contemporary dancers as participants.

In 1996 when this article was published there had not been much attention paid to the nutrition of contemporary dancers either in research or within the art itself. The team state that it was because of this lack of guidance DanceUK commissioned their Healthier Dancer Programme, of which this research is a part. I have reviewed piece from DanceUK already about the types of foods dancers should be eating and why.

The team sent out a questionnaire to dance professionals and dance students, the questions asked were about training, injury, health characteristics and nutrition. The team received 658 responses. 76% of respondents were female, 24% were male. 50.2% were students, 49.8% were professionals. 78% engaged in Contemporary dancing, 55% engaged in Ballet dancing and 27% engaged in Jazz dancing. The age ranged from 16-44 years old with 60% falling into the 16-24 category.

35% admitted to smoking and 68% said they drank 1-14 units of alcohol per week. 56% had sustained an injury.

19% said that they had tracked down specific nutritional information on nutrition. Of these 54% went to their G.P, 71% saw a dietician, 79% got their information from magazines and 37% got their information from the television. The team wondered if this low number shows that dancers do not think that their nutrition is important. However, the next part of the questionnaire was about nutritional supplementation. The results showed that 69% of all participants took some form of supplement. The team believe this shows that dancers are making a conscious effort with nutrition however; they do not know where to gain advice about it from.

The team comment on the fact that extensive research has been done into ballet dancers’ body fat percentage. This research proves that dancers have low amounts which can lead to thinning bones due to low levels of oestrogen which helps build up bone density. However, the research piece I reviewed on this topic indicated that the dancers used in their study had healthy bones even though their BMIs and body fat percentages were low. Yet in that research piece the authors did state that there has been research that contradicts their findings. Going back to the current piece, the team allude to research that proves low levels of oestrogen in ballet dancers is to do with a reduced calorie intake. The problem is that at this time research into other kinds of dancers had not been carried out so how can somebody advise them they do not know what need to be suggested. DanceUK’s Healthier Dancer Programme began to collect relevant information on non-ballet dancers.

The team carried out further research into the body composition of contemporary dancers. They used matched female, professional contemporary dancers, matched female, student contemporary dancers, matched non-athletic controls and matched male contemporary dancers. The researchers used a number of techniques to gage the participants’ body fat percentage.

The results showed that women had considerably more body fat than their male equivalents no matter what technique was used to obtain the result. The researchers were not surprised by this outcome. However, each technique did not give the same percentage. Despite this, the research showed that contemporary dancers had considerably higher body fat percentage than ballet dancers whose is around 16-17%. The team used available literature which examines ballet dancers to build their conclusion. Male contemporary dancers also have higher body fat percentage than male ballet dancers. Male ballet dancers’ body fat percentage is around 5-9%. On average the female contemporary dancers had lower fat percentage than their non-athletic counterparts.

This research is relevant to my inquiry because it looks into body composition and nutrition in contemporary dancers, instead of ballet dancers which has been the majority of the focus of the pieces I have reviewed so far. I am not a contemporary dancer and neither are the most of the dancers I work with. However, there is less pressure on contemporary dancers to be as extremely thin as ballet dancers. I think this applies also to the jazz dancers and show girl cabaret dancers I tend to work with. I believe, from personal experience, there is still intense pressure to look a certain way. I chose this topic for my inquiry in the first place in order to find out whether others feel the same. Therefore, the fact that other dancers besides ballet dancers were used in this research make the findings more relevant to what I am researching.

The results show that dancers do not get enough help and information on the topic of nutrition. This is relevant to my inquiry because I am keen to find out whether dancers know how to eat properly for their health and performance. I have questions in both my questionnaire and interview on this subject. It interests me to know whether dancers have lessons on nutrition and, if so, are they helpful? This research was published in 1996 so it would be expected that education on this topic would have improved in 15 years particularly with help from organisations like DanceUK.

The age of this research means that the state of affairs may have changed since it was published and methods used might be out of date. Therefore, it leaves the research less relevant to dance today and thus, less relevant to my inquiry.

This research was commissioned by DanceUK as part of the start of their Healthier Dancer Programme and it was included in ‘Dance Research; The Journal of the Society for Dance Research’ which gives the research a lot of credibility. It was designed to be read by other academics in the same field was used to help educate dancers on how to improve their nutrition.

This piece has also given credibility to the DanceUK piece I have previously reviewed. Before I was questioning how helpful it would be to dancers because nutrition is such a personal thing. However, if the information provided by DanceUK is based on findings like this I can see that there is a lot of factual evidence behind the advice they are giving.

Interview Outline

Here is the link to my interview outline on googledocs https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dzbzbhh7nz0H4WCOtC6v2AIKBdHzwmGcb4nrpBuwMSk/edit?hl=en_US
It may change before I start carrying out my interviews

Thoughts on my inquiry so far

I am about half way through my literature reviews and I have my survey up on line. I have found that so much of the literature out there is about nutrition and body image in female dancers and so far over 86% of participants who have answered my survey are female. This has got me thinking about the direction my inquiry is taking and it seems the natural route is to focus my inquiry specifically on female dancers but without excluding male dancers altogether. Their input will act as a comparison to the data gathered from females. I do not know whether their feelings on the topics I am looking into will differ from the females but this is something I wish to find out.

Review of ‘Body image in female professional and amateur dancers’

‘Body image in female professional and amateur dancers’ is a research project included in the publication ‘Research into Dance Education Vol. 11, No. 2, June 2010’ and was carried out by Elisana Pollatou, Marios Goudas and Yannis Theodorakis of the University of Thessaly, Trikala, Greece and Nikoleta Bakali of Democritus University of Thrace, Komotini, Greece. This research looks to find out whether there is a difference between body images of female amateur dancers and female professional dancers.

They use the work of Slade (1994) to define body image,

“[Body image is] the picture we have in our minds of the size, shape and form of our bodies, and our feelings concerning characteristics and our constituent body parts” Slade (1994)

200 dancers participated in this research; 115 females between 15 and 30 who attend a professional dance schools in Athens and dance approximately 30 hours per week and 85 females within the same age range who attend amateur dance schools and dance approximately 5 hours a week.

The team used questionnaires to determine the dancers’ body image. The questionnaires they used were the ‘Multidimentional Body Self Relation Questionnaire’ or MBSRQ which was developed by Thomas F. Cash (2000). Cash’s website http://www.body-images.com/ explains that he has been a clinical and research psychologist for over 35 years and his work mainly focuses on physical appearance. The researchers used the MBSRQ to find out the participants attitudes towards a number of areas to do with body image. According to the MBSRQ User’s manual the MBSRQ includes these factor subscales: Appearance Evaluation; Appearance Orientation; Fitness Evaluation; Fitness Orientation; Health Evaluation; Health Orientation; Illness Orientation. Also, according to Cash the questionnaire provides additional subscales,

Additional MBSRQ subscales include: Body Areas Satisfaction; Overweight Preoccupation; and SelfClassified Weight” Cash (2000)

The results for this research were as follows:

1)    Professional dancers had higher mean scores than the amateurs on fitness orientation

2)    Professional dancers had higher mean scores than the amateurs on body area dissatisfaction

3)    Amateur dancers had higher mean scores than the professionals on overweight preoccupation

4)    There was no significant association with the remaining MBSRQ subscales.

The findings indicate that the professional dancers were more physically fit and are more satisfied with areas of their bodies because higher scores on fitness orientation indicates a higher level of fitness and higher scores on body area dissatisfaction indicates they are more satisfied with areas of their bodies. However, the professionals are more preoccupied with being overweight.

This research piece is relevant to my inquiry as it looking into dancers’ body image and was published in 2010 and therefore the results were found recently making them relevant to the topic now. I thought this research was interesting as it looked at both professional dancers and amateur dancers. At the end of the piece the team write how it might be an idea to use professional dancers and non-dancers in future research so that they can view both ends of the scales. I agree this would be a good idea because it would be one step further from the research they carried out this time. Yet, I think that looking at these two different types of dancer could have produced some interesting results.

However, the results found were quite basic. Most of the subscales in the questionnaire did not supply any significant association and the results the team did find were very basic. I think it is rather obvious that professional dancers training 30 hours per week will, on average, have a higher level of physical fitness than dancers who only dance for 5 hours per week.

I think that the MBSRQ was a good starting point and Thomas F. Cash who created the questionnaire has many years of experience in this field so I believe that the questionnaire must have been thorough. However, perhaps the team could have carried their research further to perhaps find out more on the topic.

Having said that, this piece was published in ‘Research into Dance Education’ and so the editors must have thought the findings to be interesting enough to include it in their publication especially because this publication is aimed at teachers, lectures and other researchers.

This research only looks at dancers in Greek schools too. So it could be argued that the results found are site specific perhaps the results would differ if it had been carried out in Britain for example and this makes it less relevant to my inquiry.

Review of 'Nutrition for Dancers’ by Jasmine Challis

‘Nutrition for Dancers’ by Jasmine Challis is an article aimed at dancers about nutrition, what they should and should not be eating and why. It was included in danceUK.org’s Healthy Dancer Programme which looks to improve dancers’ knowledge of what they should be doing to maintain a healthy body. In this article Challis looks at all the main food groups and explains how each one is important for keeping a dancer’s body fit healthy and ready to work.

Under the title ‘energy’ Challis explains the importance of carbohydrates in the diet of a dancer to allow them to keep up their energy during heavy training and performances. She explains that dancers should take in a higher percentage of carbohydrates than the average person because they are the most effective form source of energy for the high intensity activity of dance. She also explains that dancers need less percentage fat and protein in their diet because those food groups are needed more for low intensity activity as they take longer for the body to digest than carbohydrates.

Challis also gives examples of the types of carbohydrates and fats dancers should be eating. Carbohydrates should be whole grain and fats should be oily fish, and nuts, seeds and oils high in Omega 3 and Omega 6.

Challis also stresses the importance of fruit and vegetables for vitamins and the downsides to drinking too much alcohol. She also warns the reader that taking vitamin or mineral supplements can sometimes do harm rather than good if one takes them when they are eating right to begin with. She advises that dancers should try to take in all the essential vitamins and minerals from their food and only take supplements if it is extremely necessary to their diet.

Nutritional meal ideas are included by Challis in the piece and she gives tips on how to choose healthier options. She emphasizes that there is nothing a dancer should rule out completely but there are healthy options for each meal. For example,

“lf you have a cooked breakfast available the best choices are poached or boiled eggs, grilled lean bacon, grilled tomatoes and mushrooms, baked beans and toast. Steer away from the sausages, fried eggs, fried bread, fried mushrooms/tomatoes and black pudding as the  high fat content not only means you may not eat enough carbohydrate, but the meal will take much longer than normal to leave your stomach not the best way to start class perhaps.” Challis (2009)

Challis then goes on to explain the draw backs to wanting to lose or gain weight when you are a dancer. She makes clear that if one eats an extra/cuts back on 500 calories per day they will only gain/lose approximately 1lb per week. Challis expresses concern for a dancer’s health if they are attempting to lose weight because cutting calories may result in eating way too little for the amount of exercise they are doing and in women this can be a problem for bones and fertility.

This article is relevant to my inquiry as it explains the importance of a nutritious diet for dancers. Challis explains that we should not deny our bodies any food but we should try and find balance and look for more nutritious options where possible.  I think this is a valuable lesson for most female dancers because in college and in the professional world there is such an emphasis on being slim and toned which leads to dieting. I believe many dancers think that their ideal weight is much thinner than what is actually healthy for them. However, if they are cutting out calories to achieve this, they are probably cutting out required minerals and nutrients and this will not be helping to energize their bodies and can lead to more serious problems such as periods stopping.

Also, I think the meal ideas in this piece could be beneficial to many dancers and if dancers follow these they will most likely be able to maintain a healthy weight but stay slim because Challis includes the right amounts of each food group to best assist them when they are in heavy training or performing. In essence, they will be burning off what they eat.

After doing some background research on the author of this piece at http://www.dancersdiets.co.uk/about/ it appears she has a degree in Nutrition and a post graduate diploma in Dietetics which allowed her to become a dietician. She has worked with dancers for over 20 years now and she is dedicated to giving dancers information and advice on how to eat healthily so they can perform at their best. With all her experience and background in the field, Challis knows what she is talking about and that makes this piece a reliable source of information.

However, for all the good advice given in this piece it needs to be pointed out how general it is. Every individual is different and needs differing amounts of each food group depending on many factors including their metabolism and exactly how intense their show or training sessions are. For example, I have done performances which have only been an hour long but I have danced non-stop in that hour. Yet, I have also done shows which last over two hours but for much of that I was not even on stage. Also, different dance styles must require different diet requirements. In my own experience I have done shows which are mainly jazz based and high intensity and then show girl shows where it is more about walking and kicking.

Therefore, even though I believe this piece to be extremely helpful and full of insight which could help many dancers make the right nutritional choices, I do also believe that each dancer should really consider how much demand they are putting on their bodies at each given time and adjust their diet accordingly.

Review of ‘Physical activity, body composition and bone density in ballet dancers’

‘Physical activity, body composition and bone density in ballet dancers’ is a scientific research piece carried out by Wouter D. Van Marken Lichenbelt, Ramon Ottenheijm, Klass R Westerterp (of the department of Human Biology, University of Limburg, PO Box 616, 6200 MD Maastrict, The Netherlands) and Mikael Fogelholm (of the UKK-Institute, PO box 30, FIN – 33500, Tampere, Finland).  The findings were received 15.10.1994, revised 14.12.1994 and accepted 30.1.1995.

This piece looks to analyse factors which affect bone density in female ballet dancers. The factors they examine are training history of the dancers, calcium intake, body composition (% of fat, bone and muscle in the body), total body bone mineral density, site specific bone mineral density (whether where they live can affect it) and bone mineral content.

The study used 24 female ballet dancers enlisted from Dutch ballet companies. The dancers had a mean age of 22.6 years. None of the participants were using contraceptive pills. 29 female, non-dancer, students served as a control group.

The team used questionnaires to determine the dancer’s training history, age of menarche (their first period) and how many periods they had over the past 12 months. The tests were carried out on the dancers 2 weeks after menstruation (however, this only the case for the dancers who have a normal number of periods in one year i.e. 9-14 cycles) Their calcium intake by 7d dietary records (7 days), their bone mineral content by duel-energy X-ray absorptiometry, their total body water by H2 dilution, their extra cellular water by bromide dilution and their body fat by underwater weighing.  An oral interview was carried out to determine whether the dancers had anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa. The dancers had a significantly lower Body Mass Index (BMI) than average.

1)    The dancers had significantly lower % body fat.

2)    The dancers had comparable fat free mass to the non-dancers.

3)    The dancer’s mean total bone mineral density was considerably higher than that of a reference population.

4)    No relationship was found between age, the age they began dancing, the total years they have been dancing, their calcium intake and their bone mineral density (total and site specific)

5)    None of the dancers had anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa according to criteria laid out by the American Psychiatric Association, 1987.

6)    7/24 dancers had menstrual disorders (four or less cycles a year)

Therefore, the research shows that ballet dancers have in fact a high level of bone mineral density despite the fact that they have/do many things which have a negative effect on bone mineral density. Such as: they do chronic, energetic exercise, they have low dietary intake and body mass and they often suffer with hormonal imbalance.

The team who carried out the research believe the reason for this outcome is due to the fact that dancing is a weight baring exercise which has a positive effect on bone mineral density.

I believe this research to be relevant to my inquiry because it is looking into possible health risks dancers could face by eating little and exercising lots. Again, this research was carried out with ballet dancers as the participants and the participants of my inquiry will not currently be ballet dancers. Therefore, it should be said that this research is less relevant to my inquiry that if the same tests had been carried out on jazz dancers or showgirls. However, I think that the results shown can give us an insight to how healthy other dancers’ bodies are. We too partake in weight baring exercise which keeps our bone mineral density high and in most cases we are not as thin as the majority of ballet dancers, therefore, we have on average a higher body mass and higher calorie intake. This means that our bone mineral density should be rather high.

Some issues raised by the research need to be addressed in connection to my inquiry. The first is the fact that the dancers had very low body masses and % body fat compared to the non-dancers. This of course means they are a lot thinner than the average person which is un-surprising. However, the entire reason I chose this piece was because it looks at the effects of what being so thin does to a dancer on the inside not the outside. It was positive to see that none of the dancers were suffering from an eating disorder. However, the fact that seven dancers out of the 24 had menstruation disorders is worrying. When a person’s body is very light they stop having periods because their bodies would not be able to support a baby. This could leave the dancers infertile.

“Women that have suffered from an eating disorder, or who exercise a great deal may experience a cessation of menstruation, otherwise known as amenorrhea, but there can be some long term consequences that will affect fertility.” http://weightgain.lifetips.com/cat/61224/health-risks-of-being-underweight/index.html

I trust this research because it was carried out thoroughly and all the tests were carried out fairly with a good explanation as to how they did each test and why. The downside to this research is that it was carried out 17 years ago. This means that perhaps the methods used are out of a date and so if the exact same research was carried out now the results may be different.

Review of ‘Frozen Landscapes: A Foucauldian genealogy of the ideal dancer’s body’

‘Frozen Landscapes: A Foucauldian genealogy of the ideal dancer’s body’ is a research piece which was included in the publication ‘Research into Dance Education, Volume 11, Issue 1, 2010’. The author Heather Margaret Ritenburg has a long history in dance education. She has been a registered teacher with the Royal Academy of Dance since 1983 and has had a teaching diploma, also from RAD, since 1991. For 15 years she owned, ran and taught at a private dance studio and she has obtained a BA in Dance Education. She has also obtained a MA in Curriculum and Instruction and at the time she was writing this piece she was studying for a Doctorate in the same field. Finally, for the last 10 years she has been a lecturer to under-graduate teachers.

This research was carried out by Ritenburg in order to understand why the ideal ballet dancer’s body looks the way it does and also whether this ideal can ever be changed.

Ritenburg uses Faucauldian genealogy in her research. Faucault (b.1926 – d.1984) was a French philosopher whose ideas about genealogy are interesting as he does not seek origins and the process is not linear. Instead, Faucault looked at a wide range of factors which unite to form an idea or a concept. In Ritenburg’s research she looks into magazines, children’s books, photographs of ballerinas and an prominent artistic director’s views in order to prove that all of these factors combined have led to ballet dancers looking the way they do.

Firstly, Ritenburg looks at how Balanchine potentially helped change the idea of what an ideal dancer’s body should look like. Balanchine (b.1904 – d.1983) was one of the most influential ballet choreographers of the 20^th Century. Not only was he the leading choreographer and artistic director for the New York City Ballet, he actually co-founded the institution. Ritenburg believes that Balanchine’s notion of what is an ideal body shape for female ballet dancers is not only a contributing factor to why there is no room for differing body shapes in ballet but also that his ideas could be the most influential factor.

Another concept Faucault used when looking into genealogy is dominant discourse. Discourse being an idea or concept i.e female ballet dancers are very thin. The dominant discourse is when the idea or concept is placed in the hands of someone with power and that is how the discourse becomes commonly known. Ritenburg believes that it is this power that Balanchine had as artistic director of the New York City Ballet which made his ideas the ones that influenced everybody else’s.

To support her theory Ritenburg used images of six of Balanchine’s principle female soloists published in the book ‘Balanchine: celebrating a life in dance’ Costas (2003). After comparing the images Ritenburg concluded that they all looked very similar.

“the dancers are white and they are young, they are very thin with small breasts and narrow hips; their legs are long and leans; their arms are long and slender; their torsos are short with flat stomachs and abdomen; their heads are small atop a long, slender neck” Ritenburg (2010)

The interesting thing about this description is that Ritenburg just described the ballerina most people will see in their minds eye which proves how strong the discourse is. It goes deeper than the idea that ballet dancers are all thin. Every feature is expected to be just so.

Ritenburg goes on to look at broader gendered societal discourses raised in the images and concludes that

“The narrowed hips and minimal body fat deny these to be child baring bodies” Ritenburg (2010)

It is common in severely underweight weight women to suffer infertility and this conclusion suggests concern for the health of the dancers. It is suggesting that in order to obtain the ideal dancer’s body you must be unhealthy.

Another factor Ritenburg believes adds to the discourse is women’s magazine articles. As part of her research she looks at five articles in five different contemporary North American women’s magazines. All of the articles are about exercises or workout plans to improve part/s of the body, the goal being to have them look more like a ballerina’s. In all the articles Ritenburg states that the ballet dancer’s body is seen as something to desire and aspire to, rather than something to avoid because it could be unhealthy to look that way. According to Ritenburg the words long and lean crop up time and again in these articles normalizing the discourse of the ideal dancer’s body shape.

In her final piece of research Ritenburg looks at how dancer’s bodies are portrayed in non-fiction, children’s books about ballet. She chose four books altogether but specifically focuses on one in particular, ‘Ballet School’ (Bray- Moffat 2003), which is aimed at the youngest audience. It follows Jamie through her first day at ballet school. According to Ritenburg, even though she is a child she already fits the discourse of the ideal dancer. Her body is long and slender and she is white with blonde hair. When comparing this book to the others Ritenburg believes the discourse to be supported further.

“the words and the images make impossible differing body shapes for the child in ballet.” Ritenburg (2010)

This conclusion will convince some young dancers that they should not do ballet simply because of their body type.

Ritenburg goes on to look into resistances and counter-discourses against the ideal dancer’s body. She gives examples of companies which have been set up in order to include dancers of different sizes, different ethnicities and with disabilities. However, Faucault’s belief was that the more resistance there is to a discourse the established the discourse becomes. In this instance, the fact that there has to be specialist companies set up to include dancers who do not fit the ideal supports the discourse because these companies are proving that there is no space for their dancers in main-stream companies.

This piece is relevant to my inquiry as it is looking at how and why it is expected that dancers are so thin. It comments on how narrow the allowance is for differing bodies which is something I want to look into as part of my inquiry. However, as the research Ritenburg carried out is limited to ballet dancers it strays off the subject of my inquiry because my community of practice are not normally ballet dancers they are jazz dancers and showgirls. I believe there is more leeway for differing body types in the kinds of jobs I do but not much. Normally, the jobs I apply for have a height and weight margin, we may not be expected to be so thin that we are infertile but there is still not room for dancers bigger than a size ten or dancers with disabilities. Therefore, I think Ritenburg’s research transcends the boundaries of classical ballet and shows the limitations in all main stream dance styles. Whether other dancers agree or disagree with my thoughts will be part of what I hope to find out in my inquiry.

This research was carried out in North America using North American sources exclusively (children’s books and the magazines). Therefore, it could be argued that the findings are also exclusive to North America which would make the research less relevant to my inquiry. Perhaps if she had researched more sources from other places she may have gotten slightly different results. My main issue with this piece is that it almost seems as though Ritenburg knew what she wanted to prove from the research she carried out and so she made her criteria extremely specific. She only looks at Balanchine’s influence on the New York City Ballet but what about different artistic directors in different companies?

However, Ritenburg does have a lot of experience in the field of dance education and thus I feel I can trust her judgement on this topic she also uses quotations, opinions and finding from other researchers and practitioners to back up her theories. Also, the fact that the piece was published in ‘Research into Dance Education, Volume 11, Issue 1, 2010’ gives the piece credibility and the date of the publication being recent makes it relevant now.

Review of my Inquiry Plan feedback

After reviewing my feedback for the Inquiry plan I have pinpointed the areas I need to improve in this module. The first problem was the title I had chosen for my Inquiry. It was not specific enough and while I review it now I can see just how vague it is. I am going to work with a working title while I decide exactly what my new title will be ‘Nutrition and Body Image in Dance Professionals’. I think it is still a little vague but I hope I will be able to come up with a better title that captures my inquiry perfectly as time goes on. 


It is important that I keep engaging in Web 2.0. I tried to use my blog and the BAPP facebook page as much as possible and I need to continue to do so because interaction with other BAPP members has really helped me so far and I decided I would use Skype for some of my interviews in this module thus using making use of the networking skills I learned in the first module.


Paula suggested I should review academic journals about health issues and professional sources and I have tried to choose pieces accordingly to review accordingly.


When it comes to my research techniques I need to ensure that the people I choose to fill out the questionnaires are appropriate and state why they are. My follow-up interviews need to be structured so that I can examine the topic fairly.

I also need to be prepared for changes to my inquiry plan. I already need to change the observation part of my research due to location.