Speaker 1: Before we get started, I want to let you know
Speaker 1: we'll be discussing body image, eating disorders, and suicide. There's
Speaker 1: research showing that exposure to details about eating disorders can
Speaker 1: contribute to symptoms. So if you find those topics triggering,
Speaker 1: please take care or just skip this one. What do
Speaker 1: you think is the biggest issue or the most difficult
Speaker 1: issue to tackle in the world of ballet? Fat phobiod
Speaker 1: I firmly believe that ballet culture in general will compromise
Speaker 1: on basically everything else before it compromises on the body ideal.
Speaker 1: Chloe Agel is a journalist and she's interviewed dozens of
Speaker 1: dancers about what happens in the classroom. She wrote a
Speaker 1: book called Turning Point, How a new generation of dancers
Speaker 1: is saving ballet from itself. In her book, Chloe explores
Speaker 1: an idea dancers of any generation will recognize. It's this
Speaker 1: concept of the line. Dancers talk about lines, or their
Speaker 1: line or the line all the time. It can mean
Speaker 1: slightly different things in different contexts, but basically, from outstretched
Speaker 1: fingertip to pointed toe, dancers strive for a long, slender
Speaker 1: shape with their body uninterrupted by what are seen as
Speaker 1: extraneous angles or curves. I'm curious what you think of
Speaker 1: the idea of the dancers line and what is why
Speaker 1: does that make you laugh? Because so much harm has
Speaker 1: been done in the name of the line, and it
Speaker 1: came up all the time when I was reporting turning Point,
Speaker 1: mostly in young people who had been told they needed
Speaker 1: to work on their lines, which is usually code for
Speaker 1: you need to lose weight. They just can't say it
Speaker 1: out loud anymore. So many people have been encouraged to
Speaker 1: starve themselves and done so. So many people have shoved
Speaker 1: their feet under couches so that they can get the
Speaker 1: foot arch that they know they're supposed to have. So
Speaker 1: many people have developed a really dysfunctional relationship with exercise
Speaker 1: and with food, simply because most people in the ballet world,
Speaker 1: I'm more interested in their experience of watching it than
Speaker 1: in the dances experience of executing it. You're there to
Speaker 1: see the movement be executed in And I'm going to
Speaker 1: start using problematic words that I can unpack in a
Speaker 1: little bit in the cleanest, purest, most undistracting way possible.
Speaker 1: Breast are unclean, butts are impure, and hips are distracting.
Speaker 1: That's the way we talk about lines, clean lines, long lines,
Speaker 1: pure movement, which implies that people who are not incredibly
Speaker 1: slender with a prepubescent body for girls and women, not
Speaker 1: for boys, they're allowed to hit puberty and become men.
Speaker 1: People who don't look like that are somehow unclean, impure
Speaker 1: and distracting. And it's incredibly damaging, and it's incredibly pervasive,
Speaker 1: and a lot of those assumptions never get unpacked, never
Speaker 1: get made explicit. And I mean that stays with you forever.
Speaker 1: If you don't unpack it, if you don't face it,
Speaker 1: if you don't think about what it really means, that
Speaker 1: shit stays with you forever. Ballerina is starving themselves is
Speaker 1: practically a tired troupe at this point. Everyone's heard about it,
Speaker 1: everyone agrees it's not healthy. Dancers have poshed for change,
Speaker 1: and how they're by these are discussed and considered. But
Speaker 1: that's why, in a way it's so surprising. It's still
Speaker 1: a prevalent problem, and it's kind of a mystery exactly
Speaker 1: where and how this standard unfurled itself and crept its
Speaker 1: way into the back of almost every ballet dancer's mind.
Speaker 1: As I spoke with Chloe, I wanted to understand where
Speaker 1: these strict standards came from. It's a complicated question. There's
Speaker 1: definitely not one person or one company who decided it
Speaker 1: had to be this way. Ballet evolved over the course
Speaker 1: of centuries as it moved from France to Russia to America.
Speaker 1: And there are many people who have nourished and spread
Speaker 1: the thin ideal in ballet. Sometimes I almost wonder if
Speaker 1: it's a force that at times has taken on a
Speaker 1: life of its own, powered by culture and implicit social pressures,
Speaker 1: like a weed you can't get rid of. At the
Speaker 1: same time, there are some people who had more influence
Speaker 1: on the culture of ballet than others. Balancing reshaped American ballet.
Speaker 1: He is understood to be the father of American ballet.
Speaker 1: That's what they call him. And he was not the
Speaker 1: first person to bring ballet to America. He was not
Speaker 1: the first person to try and impose his vision of
Speaker 1: ballet on America. But his stuck. Why do you say
Speaker 1: that One of the things that he modeled in his
Speaker 1: company in New York City Ballet was the unquestionable or
Speaker 1: powerful artistic director boss. They loved him, they worshiped him,
Speaker 1: they desired his approval and his affection, and that model
Speaker 1: is so damaging. It is so ripe for abuse and
Speaker 1: mistreatment and a general feeling of powerlessness in the workplace
Speaker 1: and obedience to hierarchical authority that did not begin with him.
Speaker 1: As he became sort of synonymous with American ballet, lots
Speaker 1: of people replicated because it quote worked. And the other
Speaker 1: thing that he left us with is his bodily ideal,
Speaker 1: particularly for women dances, and that is long legs, long neck,
Speaker 1: long thin everything that is part of his legacy from
Speaker 1: iHeart Podcasts and Rococo Punch. This is the turning room
Speaker 1: of Mirrors America Lance, Part seven. The line as toxic
Speaker 1: encoded as invoking the line can be. When I watch
Speaker 1: a balancing ballet, I'm overcome by beauty, and I find
Speaker 1: it hard to divorce the line from what makes it beautiful.
Speaker 1: Like in Balancing's Tchaikovsky Patada, a lonely violin's bittersweet melody
Speaker 1: is embodied by a dancer in her partner. The ballerina
Speaker 1: flits across the stage. She takes her partner's hand gently,
Speaker 1: and he lifts her over his head while she extends
Speaker 1: one leg in the air like a thin arrow. Then
Speaker 1: she reverses direction midair. She stretches her legs apart so
Speaker 1: they're almost parallel to the floor. Her arms lift to
Speaker 1: a delicate v, like the outline of a swan's outstretched wings.
Speaker 1: She's floating. It draws me in, and it did the
Speaker 1: same thing for Sophie Fleck the first time she saw it.
Speaker 1: It seemed like it was almost ridiculous, how big she
Speaker 1: was moving. It was like almost funny. Sophie Flack saw
Speaker 1: Balancie's choreography for the first time in the mid nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: She was around ten years old. Balancine had been long
Speaker 1: gone from New York City ballet. He died a decade earlier,
Speaker 1: but Sophie found herself in a ballet class, huddled in
Speaker 1: front of a TV screen next to her peers, watching
Speaker 1: a woman who had been molded by Balanchine himself. The
Speaker 1: woman was Patricia McBride, and she was dancing the Tchaikovsky Patada,
Speaker 1: and literally I was floored. I remember at some point
Speaker 1: I saw something with a core to ballet. The core
Speaker 1: de ballet as a group of dancers that typically serves
Speaker 1: as a backdrop to the soloists, but in Balanchine ballets,
Speaker 1: the core is often more active and focal. In a piece,
Speaker 1: he might have dozens of dancers move in unison, dashing
Speaker 1: across the stage and speedy twirls or dramatic jumps, and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, that looks so fun.
Speaker 1: Like it all just looks so fun. I think for
Speaker 1: me it was the music, though, you become the music,
Speaker 1: as George Ballancheen once said, see the music here the dance.
Speaker 1: Katherine Morgan also discovered Balancheen when she was about ten.
Speaker 1: It was when she saw the New York City Ballet
Speaker 1: performed The Nutcracker. Like Sophie, Katherine fell in love with
Speaker 1: the excitement and the dynamic movement she was seeing from
Speaker 1: all the dancers on the stage. I remember walking out
Speaker 1: of there and going, I'm going to be up there
Speaker 1: one day. That's where I want to dance. I came
Speaker 1: home and I was like, I want to dance in
Speaker 1: New York City Ballet. I want to dance balancing. And
Speaker 1: then my mom did the research. Katherine and Sophie both
Speaker 1: started to dream about entering Balancian's world. One day, these
Speaker 1: two young girls, a few years apart, each started to
Speaker 1: work on that goal, one in Massachusetts, the other in Alabama.
Speaker 1: As they rose through ballet school levels, they each got
Speaker 1: a with the language and the ways of ballet, how
Speaker 1: to tie a bun in their hair, how to point
Speaker 1: their toes, and along with that they began to learn
Speaker 1: about expectations for their bodies. Because I was never the
Speaker 1: smallest one. You know, teachers who are trying to be
Speaker 1: helpful would pull me aside and be like, you know,
Speaker 1: you're talented enough for this, but you're always going to
Speaker 1: have to watch your weight. You're gonna have to be careful.
Speaker 1: You're not the thinnest one, so you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: work twice as hard because you're not skinny. You just
Speaker 1: need to be careful. At like twelve, thirteen, fourteen, it
Speaker 1: was always a thing in the back of my head
Speaker 1: that was put there. I remember thinking, well, I'm not
Speaker 1: worth anything until i'm skinny. I mean, also, you're just
Speaker 1: I feel like groomed is a very charged word, but
Speaker 1: I don't know what else to use, but like groomed
Speaker 1: to accept like a very specific ideal from a very
Speaker 1: young age. So it's not even really something you have
Speaker 1: to talk about a lot. It's like your front should
Speaker 1: be completely flat with your hips and your stomach and
Speaker 1: your chest. If there's something jutting out, it ruins the line.
Speaker 1: I remember people talking about my body like there was
Speaker 1: a physical therapist I saw regularly, just sort of like
Speaker 1: to check that I was developing well as a dancer.
Speaker 1: And my mother asked, like if she thought that I
Speaker 1: had like a appropriate body for ballet, like in front
Speaker 1: of me, and she was like, yes, it's like ideal
Speaker 1: or something. And my mom was like, do you think
Speaker 1: like it will change over time, like with puberty, And
Speaker 1: the woman was like, no, I think like if you
Speaker 1: know her thighs aren't overdeveloped now, like it would probably
Speaker 1: just stay that way. Like they were talking about me
Speaker 1: as if I wasn't there, So I mean that messaging
Speaker 1: is like, okay, my thighs like can't get bigger. Basically,
Speaker 1: how old do you think you were? Then? Oh, you
Speaker 1: know under ten? For sure you were under ten And
Speaker 1: they're like talking about the size of your thighs. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Katherine and Sophie both still aimed to dance balancing's choreography,
Speaker 1: so on their own timelines. They each audition for the
Speaker 1: School of American Ballet. The feeder school to the ballet
Speaker 1: company founded by balancing. I also remember at the SAB
Speaker 1: audition School of American Ballet this particular one, before we
Speaker 1: did anything, the teacher went around and checked our feet,
Speaker 1: so we each had to point our foot so she
Speaker 1: could see what our arches were like. So it just
Speaker 1: shows like, if you have a really pretty foot, it's
Speaker 1: good for ballet. Katherine had been to so many auditions
Speaker 1: for ballet schools that they all seemed to blend together,
Speaker 1: but she says very close examination of the body was
Speaker 1: part of it. When you show up for an audition,
Speaker 1: they'll look at the parents because they'll go, what is
Speaker 1: this kid going to turn into? What are the genetics? Oh, well,
Speaker 1: her mom's a little bit curvy, so we'll have to
Speaker 1: see what happened with that. Oh, her mom has hips.
Speaker 1: My mom remembers at many auditions being given the full
Speaker 1: body scan to see what I was going to turn into.
Speaker 1: And funnily enough, I'm adopted, so it's irrelevant. So in
Speaker 1: their auditions, both Katherine and Sophie were evaluated and they
Speaker 1: both got into the School of American Ballet SAB for short.
Speaker 1: About two thousand had auditioned just a couple hundred made
Speaker 1: it so my mom and I made plans with my father,
Speaker 1: and that's when we decided that she would move up
Speaker 1: with me because she didn't want her fifteen year old
Speaker 1: southern girl because I was from Alabama staying in the
Speaker 1: dorms by herself in New York City. That would not
Speaker 1: have gone well. I would have been just lost in
Speaker 1: a hole somewhere, honestly. Unlike Katherine, Sophie left her family
Speaker 1: and moved into the arms three floors in a New
Speaker 1: York Hi rise just below the Juilliard Dorm an elevator
Speaker 1: ride down from the kid's dorm rooms was the studio,
Speaker 1: and then the cafeteria was on the bottom floor. So
Speaker 1: your whole world is in this one building. You had
Speaker 1: to check in and out by writing your name and
Speaker 1: the time, and you had like a certain amount of
Speaker 1: time I think that you had you could be out
Speaker 1: before coming back. In the lounge, we would watch sex
Speaker 1: in the city. The person at the desk would like
Speaker 1: throw a movie night or something once a week where
Speaker 1: you'd have like all this junk food laid out, and
Speaker 1: we would use the stairs for exercise for burning calories.
Speaker 1: We'd run up and down them we got really competitive
Speaker 1: about burning calories. In between ballet classes. Sophie went to
Speaker 1: Professional Children's School in New York. It's a school for
Speaker 1: kids pursuing careers like actors, dancers, musicians. A lot of
Speaker 1: movie stars go there. Each day, Sophie would have to
Speaker 1: hurry back for ballet class. We literally run along Columbus Avenue,
Speaker 1: racing the other girls in my class to get a
Speaker 1: good spot near the teacher or at the skinny mirror.
Speaker 1: And then we'd go back again for another class. And
Speaker 1: like our meals were eaten while walking, and I remember
Speaker 1: noting to myself, I am doing this like I'm going
Speaker 1: to give it my all or I'm going to go home,
Speaker 1: like that kind of thing. I really worked hard every day.
Speaker 1: When Sophie went down to the SAB studios, she passed
Speaker 1: a giant bust of balancing. It reminded her who this
Speaker 1: was all for. What you're doing is larger than yourself,
Speaker 1: almost like a religion, Like this is bigger than you.
Speaker 1: I was serving something larger than myself. If it's not God,
Speaker 1: then it's the art form or balancing. For me, it
Speaker 1: felt like it's like balancing's ghosts or something Balancine's ghosts
Speaker 1: loomed large at SAB, but to progress, Sophie and Catherine
Speaker 1: had to grab the attention of a mortal man, the
Speaker 1: head of the New York City Ballet who had final
Speaker 1: say in their futures, the artistic director of the company
Speaker 1: at the time, Peter Martin's. When Sophie Flack was a
Speaker 1: teenager at SAB, it was still years before an internal
Speaker 1: investigation would take place and Peter Martins would resign. To Sophie,
Speaker 1: all that mattered was if Peter liked her. He held
Speaker 1: a lot of power, but it also was very apparent
Speaker 1: in his body, just the way that he moved through
Speaker 1: space and the way he regarded people. He spoke with
Speaker 1: this light, sophisticated Danish accent. He was quite tall, sort
Speaker 1: of like Ramrod posture, so when you enter a room,
Speaker 1: it's not just like a pedestrian walking into a room.
Speaker 1: You're making an entrance. He seemed very aware of his presence.
Speaker 1: He was like a figure, not a person. Later, when
Speaker 1: Sophie was in the company, she says dancers would point
Speaker 1: out the cameras that monitored the stage and joke there
Speaker 1: were cameras everywhere with a live fee to Peter's office.
Speaker 1: It felt like he was always watching, like you were
Speaker 1: always on display. He never spoke to us. He had
Speaker 1: like a very small circle of people who he seemed
Speaker 1: to know or gap with a little bit. That seems
Speaker 1: sort of like on the inside, or like knew a
Speaker 1: secret that no one else knew. I didn't quite understand
Speaker 1: how one gained entry to that. It's very small social circle.
Speaker 1: They definitely existed on a higher plane. I'll just say that.
Speaker 1: And like, you know, we're in charge of our everything,
Speaker 1: our lives, our roles, validation, you know everything. Sophie knew
Speaker 1: she had to please Peter's inner circle, but ultimately Peter
Speaker 1: made all the decisions about who would join the company.
Speaker 1: He would observe class at the school and occasionally teach,
Speaker 1: which was terrifying. The balancing technique is like the whole
Speaker 1: idea was to push yourself off balance, to reach beyond
Speaker 1: what you thought you could, so there's never quite an
Speaker 1: end to it. Sophie worked harder than she ever had,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't enough to execute a certain number of
Speaker 1: flats or drill hundreds of perfectly formed tondus to gain
Speaker 1: entry into that inner world. She felt she'd have to
Speaker 1: do something more. I think I started developing like an
Speaker 1: eating disorder actually when I was about twelve, because I
Speaker 1: started developing breasts and I didn't want to because I
Speaker 1: was concerned they were too big for the company. Sophie
Speaker 1: wanted to look like a balancing dancer. She had four
Speaker 1: tapes of balancing repertoire. She watched them on repeat. She
Speaker 1: studied the movement and the dancers, and she noticed a pattern.
Speaker 1: Everybody was completely flat chested in the videos that I
Speaker 1: was watching. I'm not talking about like small boobs. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about like like almost like a man. And then
Speaker 1: I started getting little boobs and they just kept getting
Speaker 1: a little bigger, like and I that was not okay,
Speaker 1: And like the only way I knew how to control
Speaker 1: it was through diet. So yeah, you definitely aren't allowed
Speaker 1: to grow up. Do you know with women in ballet,
Speaker 1: when they naturally become what they're supposed to become, which
Speaker 1: is a woman, it's like, you know, oh, she's getting hips.
Speaker 1: Oh she's starting to look like a woman. Oh she's
Speaker 1: in and you're like, um, that's what's supposed to happen.
Speaker 1: Whereas with men it's the opposite. Oh, he's so scrawny. Oh,
Speaker 1: he's becoming a man. Finally he looks like a man.
Speaker 1: And for us, it's the flip side. They want us
Speaker 1: to stay looking prepubescent. Yeah, it's weird that the look
Speaker 1: they're going for is a grown man partnering, dancing with
Speaker 1: a child, a child, a young girl. So when Sophie
Speaker 1: was about fifteen, she even saw a surgeon about her body.
Speaker 1: She hoped her breasts could be reduced. They didn't have
Speaker 1: enough fat in my boobs to like reduce them, and
Speaker 1: he's so he was like, well, I could just lose
Speaker 1: weight sort of nonchalantly, and I put myself on a diet.
Speaker 1: After that, it took over me. It got out of control.
Speaker 1: After all of the years of pressure to be than,
Speaker 1: something started to happen to Sophie where her eating behaviors
Speaker 1: took on a life of their own. It was like
Speaker 1: a force beyond her control, a force she couldn't stop.
Speaker 1: While recovering from an injury, Sophie says she lost a
Speaker 1: lot of weight in a short amount of time. I
Speaker 1: got a lot of praise from the boys in the
Speaker 1: school in partnering class to the school's credit, Sophie says,
Speaker 1: her teachers pulled her aside because they were concerned about
Speaker 1: her weight loss. They referred her to a nutritionist which
Speaker 1: I saw, which I basically laughed off. I remember she
Speaker 1: said I had to eat two thousand, five hundred calories
Speaker 1: a day, and I literally laughed when she said that
Speaker 1: because I was sustaining myself on so little that amount
Speaker 1: seemed ridiculous. Instead of talking myself out of eating, in
Speaker 1: my technique which I won't share, I made myself eat
Speaker 1: like one bad food a day, and after the intervention,
Speaker 1: I bottom muffin from the bake sale at my school.
Speaker 1: It was a mini muffin, and I was really proud
Speaker 1: of myself. I eat half of it. I couldn't eat
Speaker 1: the other half. I was scared for myself. I don't
Speaker 1: want to underplay the severity of this. Eating disorders can
Speaker 1: lead to heart failure, neurological problems, structural brain changes like
Speaker 1: the brain shrinking in size, intense emotional turmoil, and death.
Speaker 1: Anorexia is the most lethal mental health condition there is.
Speaker 1: It has suicide rates sixty times that of the general population.
Speaker 1: That's also higher than for depression or bipole her disorder
Speaker 1: or schizophrenia, but from Sophie's perspective, being thin would help
Speaker 1: her achieve her goal. I got a ton of attention
Speaker 1: from Peter Martin's that year. I remember him holding my
Speaker 1: hand as I demonstrated in front of room. I felt
Speaker 1: like I had a real shot at being in the company.
Speaker 1: It seemed to be a good thing. But the problem
Speaker 1: was I didn't know how to maintain it. I only
Speaker 1: knew how to keep going. I never learned how to
Speaker 1: eat properly at all. It was like binging or extraditing.
Speaker 1: One day, a ballet mistress, the person who led company rehearsals,
Speaker 1: pulled Sophie and a couple other students into an office.
Speaker 1: She closed the door and there was like three of
Speaker 1: us in the room or something, and she said, so
Speaker 1: you probably know you've accepted. She said, Peter would like
Speaker 1: you to join as an apprentice. That's the first step
Speaker 1: towards gaining a permanent position in the company. It was
Speaker 1: almost like I should have known it the way she
Speaker 1: said it. The way she spoke was in the speak
Speaker 1: of the theater. Basically, like nothing was direct, ever or explicit.
Speaker 1: Every kind of communication was like sort of an afterthought,
Speaker 1: and it was sort of a power that they held
Speaker 1: over us. Maybe Sophie didn't get the praise or warmth
Speaker 1: she'd craved, but at least she was going to be
Speaker 1: an apprentice. At age seventeen, she'd given everything, her family,
Speaker 1: her home, her body to this cause and she'd been accepted.
Speaker 1: Like Sophie, Katherine Morgan was also seventeen years old when
Speaker 1: she got her apprenticeship with the New York City Ballet.
Speaker 1: An apprenticeship is a huge deal, but it's still nerve
Speaker 1: racking because there's no guarantee you'll become a full time
Speaker 1: higher at the end of the year. It could be
Speaker 1: the end of the road after years of work. So
Speaker 1: two weeks in we're in company class. I'm doing Swan
Speaker 1: Lake rehearsals. I'm Swan number seventeen on the left, you
Speaker 1: know nobody and one of the principal dancers tears her
Speaker 1: calf muscle in class and literally falls has to be
Speaker 1: carried out of the room. Is very scary. A few
Speaker 1: days later, Peter Martin shows up to teach class, and
Speaker 1: whenever the director teaches, it's sort of a mini audition
Speaker 1: because the director doesn't always teach, especially Peter. He wouldn't
Speaker 1: teach weekly. He would just show up on the schedule,
Speaker 1: and so when Peter Martin's shows up on the schedule,
Speaker 1: the entire company is there. So you're in this room
Speaker 1: of like ninety something people, and I remember just not
Speaker 1: being able to do anything that day, Like I fell
Speaker 1: out of every turn. I couldn't stay balanced to save
Speaker 1: my life because I was still a baby. I had
Speaker 1: been in the company maybe a week at this point,
Speaker 1: and I thought any moment I could be fired, any moment.
Speaker 1: After rehearsal, the ballet mistress beckoned Catherine over with a
Speaker 1: curled finger. Catherine froze. She was like, Sean wants to
Speaker 1: talk to you. Sean was like number two in command
Speaker 1: to Peter, and he comes. Everybody says, so, as you know,
Speaker 1: a couple days ago, the principal got hurt and I
Speaker 1: was like, uh huh, and he said, you know, well
Speaker 1: she's supposed to dance Juliette and Saratoga. Uh huh. Well,
Speaker 1: we'd very much like for you to replace her. And
Speaker 1: it was one of those like are you talking to me?
Speaker 1: Did you see the rehearsal I just had? Did you
Speaker 1: see me fall on my face? She'd just been given
Speaker 1: the part of Juliette in Romeo and Juliette, and then
Speaker 1: Peters comes running over like, did you tell her? Did
Speaker 1: you tell her? Catherine was the only apprentice who was
Speaker 1: being asked to this type of solo role. She was
Speaker 1: being singled out. It could be that moment when she
Speaker 1: would turn into a star. Opening day finally came. It
Speaker 1: was held in an outdoor Amphitheater in Saratoga, New York,
Speaker 1: where the New York City Ballet performs every year. It's
Speaker 1: a company's summer residency where Peter Martin's tries dancers in
Speaker 1: different roles and make some of the critical decisions on
Speaker 1: which dancers will make it. I remember being really nervous
Speaker 1: because this was sort of do or die for me.
Speaker 1: The stage wings were full of company dancers waiting to
Speaker 1: see how she would do. And I just remember doing
Speaker 1: my turn and all of a sudden seeing blood on
Speaker 1: my costume and thinking, oh dear, what happened. And then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden Tyler glaring at me, wiping blood
Speaker 1: off his nose. He's halfway staying as we're dancing, you
Speaker 1: actually in the face, but just keep going. But the
Speaker 1: people she needed to impress didn't seem to mind. Peter
Speaker 1: was pleased, and I remember one of the other ballet
Speaker 1: masters who was very difficult to please, coming up to me,
Speaker 1: going that was beautiful. That was beautiful. That's when I
Speaker 1: knew I had it. After that, Catherine quickly moved through
Speaker 1: the ranks from a core member to soloist, landing role
Speaker 1: after role. It's funny because Peter Martins told me exactly
Speaker 1: what it was. He. I know a lot of dancers
Speaker 1: had issues with him. He was nothing but lovely to me.
Speaker 1: I can't speak for anybody else, but he was always
Speaker 1: very encouraging and mentoring to me. He said, you know,
Speaker 1: you're not the technician, but you tell the story. You're
Speaker 1: the artist. Your artistry is going to give you a career.
Speaker 1: When Sophie, the other young dancer, joined the company, she
Speaker 1: was just focused on how grateful she was to be there.
Speaker 1: I felt like I just won the jackpot, you know,
Speaker 1: being accepted. I was very proud because I was very
Speaker 1: aware of the prestige of being a part of it.
Speaker 1: One day, after rehearsal, the ballet mistress kept her late.
Speaker 1: You know, my heart stopped. I was, you know, really
Speaker 1: worried I was gonna lose my job. First because I
Speaker 1: was still a new core member. She told Sophie, Peter says,
Speaker 1: he notices you've gained weight. It's what Sophie calls her
Speaker 1: first fat talk. A lot of professional dancers use the
Speaker 1: term fat talk because they're so common. As a soloist
Speaker 1: in the company, Catherine wasn't a mune either. It's never
Speaker 1: we need you to lose weight, because they can get
Speaker 1: in a lot of trouble saying that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So there's different phrases. You need to get in shape.
Speaker 1: Get in shape is the phrase. It's code for lose weight.
Speaker 1: I don't think you're in your best shape. I think
Speaker 1: I said I just got my period or something, and
Speaker 1: she took that to mean that I had gotten it
Speaker 1: for the first time recently, and I let her believe that.
Speaker 1: But I thought that was really interesting that at nineteen
Speaker 1: she thought it was normal for a dancer to have
Speaker 1: her period for the first time. I mean, she's a woman,
Speaker 1: like she knows that around the time of your period,
Speaker 1: your body, you know, gets bloated, whatever, So she seemed
Speaker 1: to have some understanding. I didn't feel like it. I
Speaker 1: really didn't feel like it was coming from her. Actually,
Speaker 1: she was the messager. I don't blame her. It's like,
Speaker 1: I bet she didn't want to have those conversations. She
Speaker 1: might not have agreed, but that was her job. The
Speaker 1: same institution that had an intervention to address her severe
Speaker 1: eating disorder only a few years prior was now telling
Speaker 1: her she needed to lose weight. Everyone at the theater
Speaker 1: was very cold emotionally, so I didn't expect any warmth.
Speaker 1: I think I probably started crying and just sort of
Speaker 1: really worried, and that was the first thought. I think, like,
Speaker 1: I'm screwing this up, this is this is not good.
Speaker 1: Catherine Morgan, the dancer cast as Juliet, was twenty one
Speaker 1: when she landed another major role, this time Aurora and
Speaker 1: Sleeping Beauty and Princess. Aurora is not only the crown
Speaker 1: jewel role of ballet, but it is, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: the hardest one. It is the most technically demanding, the
Speaker 1: most physically demanding. You feel like you've run six marathons
Speaker 1: by the time you're done with this ballet. And I
Speaker 1: remember all the other Auroras were like, oh, I lose
Speaker 1: like five pounds a show, and I'm like, so skinny
Speaker 1: and Navada, and I remember thinking I'm kind of starting
Speaker 1: to gain weight doing this bat it's really odd. I
Speaker 1: just thought, okay, well, I don't lose five pounds a show.
Speaker 1: I'd like gained a pound a show. I hadn't changed
Speaker 1: my diet. But I started ballooning up and then I
Speaker 1: started to get really, really tired. And Peter Martins was
Speaker 1: doing a new ballet at the time, and we were
Speaker 1: in the studio eight hours a day choreographing this thing,
Speaker 1: and so I just thought, I don't have time to eat.
Speaker 1: I can't get through this ballet, like what is happening
Speaker 1: to me? And balot masters had started pulling me aside,
Speaker 1: going are you aware that you are putting on weight?
Speaker 1: And I wanted to go No. I had no idea.
Speaker 1: You know, it's my job to stare at myself in
Speaker 1: the mirror twenty four seven. But no, not a clue.
Speaker 1: Of course I was aware, and then I would go
Speaker 1: up to point or go up to balance, and my
Speaker 1: muscles would give out. So it was like my body
Speaker 1: was just starting to collapse. And I gained forty five
Speaker 1: pounds in six weeks, barely eating anything, and people were going,
Speaker 1: what is happening? Catherine says doctors were confused about her weight. Complaints.
Speaker 1: Even after the weight gain, she was in a normal
Speaker 1: weight range, but her standards as a ballerina were totally different.
Speaker 1: She couldn't fit into the costumes and she struggled to
Speaker 1: get through rehearsals and she didn't know why. So eight
Speaker 1: doctors later and two years of battling this, I was
Speaker 1: so miserable. So finally I was cast as Hermia in
Speaker 1: A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is one of the two lovers,
Speaker 1: as they say in Midsummer and Peter came to watch
Speaker 1: my rehearsal and he said nothing, and he said, let's go.
Speaker 1: Let's go talk. So we went to his office and
Speaker 1: he was just like, how are you feeling? And I
Speaker 1: had lost it. I just burst into tears and I
Speaker 1: was like, I can't do this anymore. I'm so ill
Speaker 1: and sick and huge. And I said, Peter, I think
Speaker 1: I need to like not come back next year. I
Speaker 1: think I need to let my contract run out, go
Speaker 1: home and get well. Because the pressure of trying to
Speaker 1: be in the New York City Ballet and I was
Speaker 1: now a soloist by this point, I was like, I
Speaker 1: can't do this anymore. I'm on this hamster wheel of misery,
Speaker 1: and he just gave me a huge hugg and he
Speaker 1: was like, I knew you were smart. Put your health first.
Speaker 1: There'll always be a place for you here. But in
Speaker 1: the ballet world, as health ever first, Catherine would have
Speaker 1: to make a choice. She went home to her parents' house,
Speaker 1: but things would never be the same again. Year after year,
Speaker 1: Sophie worked diligently as a core to ballet ballerina, but
Speaker 1: as time We're on, she wanted more opportunities to stretch
Speaker 1: herself creatively. She kept being put in more traditional ballets
Speaker 1: when she created something else. She wanted to dance Balancie's
Speaker 1: angular abstract works as Vinsky ballets, where movement and music
Speaker 1: ruled what they referred to as the black and white ballets,
Speaker 1: less story, more abstraction. She scheduled a meeting with Peter
Speaker 1: Martin's to ask if she could study some of those roles.
Speaker 1: She might never perform them, but at least she could learn.
Speaker 1: Even like walking down the hallway to his office, you
Speaker 1: know made you like stressed out. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: going to see the wizard. I know. Peter's office was
Speaker 1: like a relic. It's like a tiny built in sofa
Speaker 1: that looked like it had been built in like the seventies,
Speaker 1: and it probably had been. And Gold's carpet, the whole
Speaker 1: theater was that way, like it hadn't been touched since
Speaker 1: Balanchine's era. Peter walked out from behind his desk. He
Speaker 1: was fairly warm, and he came like physically closer to me,
Speaker 1: and I felt heard, and you know, I was terrified
Speaker 1: and really nervous and stuff. But I said the things
Speaker 1: and he responded to it like okay, like why don't
Speaker 1: you come back with like some specific roles and ideas?
Speaker 1: And I felt very encouraged. But when the casting and
Speaker 1: rehearsal schedule for the next Black and White ballet was posted,
Speaker 1: Sophie didn't make the list. I wasn't even called to understudy,
Speaker 1: as if we hadn't ever spoken. Then, in the economic
Speaker 1: downturn of two thousand and nine, there was buzz about
Speaker 1: a possible mass layoff, and there was a lot of anxiety.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to believe that it was true. One afternoon,
Speaker 1: Sophie was hanging out with her boyfriend on the Lower
Speaker 1: east Side, Sophie's stomping grounds on her days off. She
Speaker 1: was walking down the sidewalk When she got a call
Speaker 1: from Peter's personal assistant. She didn't say what it was.
Speaker 1: She just said, Peter would like to meet with you,
Speaker 1: and he I never had a meeting where Peter called
Speaker 1: the meeting before, so I knew exactly what it was about.
Speaker 1: I knew that I was going to be laid off,
Speaker 1: and I literally fell to the pavement. I was just
Speaker 1: completely distraught. I felt like I'd just been diagnosed with
Speaker 1: some terminal illness. It felt like, you know, there was
Speaker 1: an end to the sidewalk. Basically, I just remember cars
Speaker 1: going by, people going on with their lives, and this
Speaker 1: abyss that opened up before me. It felt like facing death.
Speaker 1: I don't mean to be dramatic, but that's really what
Speaker 1: it felt like. I didn't know another way to live.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what was next at all. I didn't
Speaker 1: ever consider a life after dance. That's what we were
Speaker 1: sort of taught to do, because how could you possibly
Speaker 1: give yourself completely if you're always looking ahead. They had
Speaker 1: the meeting, Peter stuck to his line. They didn't have
Speaker 1: the funds, so if he danced several more months until
Speaker 1: her contract ran out, which was really really difficult. I
Speaker 1: was just sort of like went through the motions and
Speaker 1: did as little as possible. I was extremely upset and mad.
Speaker 1: It was hard to like look people in the eyes,
Speaker 1: hard to like just navigate the day in the theater.
Speaker 1: I just want to stop. You know, people are surprised
Speaker 1: why I didn't want to continue dancing after all that.
Speaker 1: Why would I want to continue dancing in the company
Speaker 1: or at all at all? Sophie would never dance professionally again.
Speaker 1: She left the company with lots of questions, but there
Speaker 1: was one she couldn't ask, too afraid to make it explicit.
Speaker 1: Was it my body? You know? I blamed myself. I
Speaker 1: felt like a failure because I thought it was my fault.
Speaker 1: After Catherine Morgan left the company to focus on her
Speaker 1: health and these mysterious symptoms and weight gain she'd been experiencing,
Speaker 1: she went home to her parents house and alab Amma.
Speaker 1: She still felt tired all of the time, the symptoms
Speaker 1: hadn't subsided, hair loss, weight gain, and still no answers.
Speaker 1: Part of your identity is a dancers how you look
Speaker 1: in the mirror, and it's also how what makes you
Speaker 1: feel good about yourself or not. It's what gets you
Speaker 1: roles or not. And usually your job as a dancer
Speaker 1: is to be criticized. To fix it. Nope, your knees
Speaker 1: not straight, Nope, put your feet. So you get into
Speaker 1: this mentality that everything is fixable. I just have to
Speaker 1: do my part. If it's not right, it's because I'm
Speaker 1: not doing it right. And she had no fix for
Speaker 1: the body she saw staring back at her in the mirror.
Speaker 1: My only definition of success was being a skinny ballerina
Speaker 1: on the stage of New York City Ballet, and so
Speaker 1: once that was taken from me, I had nothing. I
Speaker 1: had absolutely nothing. I lost completely who I was, I
Speaker 1: had no outside life. I felt totally worthless because it
Speaker 1: was my identity. I committed to it at fifteen and
Speaker 1: I knew nothing else. And this I felt like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm letting my younger self down because I sacrificed so
Speaker 1: much in my childhood to do this, you know, like
Speaker 1: I didn't go to prom, I didn't go to high
Speaker 1: school graduation, I didn't go to sleepovers, I didn't get
Speaker 1: you know, because I was so committed to this and
Speaker 1: then to have it fall apart, I felt like I
Speaker 1: was letting myself down. One day, she stood at the
Speaker 1: top of her parents' stairs on the second floor, and
Speaker 1: a thought flew through her mind. I had that flash
Speaker 1: moment of what would happen if I just threw myself
Speaker 1: down the stairs and ended this? Because it was it was,
Speaker 1: I was so unhappy. There wasn't one thing that helped
Speaker 1: her get beyond the pain and depression or filled the
Speaker 1: void that ballet left in her life. She got a
Speaker 1: counselor a dog, and finally a diagnosis how she motos
Speaker 1: thyroid itis, an autoimmune disease that affects the thyroid, which
Speaker 1: helped her manager symptoms, but what really helped the most
Speaker 1: was distant. For nine years, she stayed away from the stage.
Speaker 1: So with ballet, I was literally in a twenty four
Speaker 1: to seven until my illness hit, and then I got
Speaker 1: out of the system for a long time. And then
Speaker 1: suddenly you're like, oh, I was able to see the
Speaker 1: kind of weird quirks of the ballet world that I
Speaker 1: had never seen before because I was just in it
Speaker 1: and didn't know of any other way. You hear from
Speaker 1: the people who were not in the professional ballet world,
Speaker 1: and I remember a couple of people being like, well,
Speaker 1: why why is it like that? And then you start
Speaker 1: to go well, I don't know why, and it was
Speaker 1: being out of the professional company world for a while
Speaker 1: started me to question things. You start to realize tho, oh,
Speaker 1: these people are brainwashed. What are the points of brainwashing
Speaker 1: that ballet dancer's experience that you have to starve and
Speaker 1: that you have to have a certain look to you.
Speaker 1: Another one is that you must push through an injury.
Speaker 1: I see so many danswers push through injuries because they
Speaker 1: are so terrified to say something, because they don't want
Speaker 1: to get in trouble, or they don't want to be
Speaker 1: deemed as lazy, or they don't want to lose a spot.
Speaker 1: So many teachers again operate on scare tactic and well,
Speaker 1: if you can't do it, someone else will. We have
Speaker 1: four more people in line. I'll put your understudy on.
Speaker 1: I think it's also this thing of the person in
Speaker 1: the front of the room is the do or die dictator.
Speaker 1: The teacher of the director is literally God, and you
Speaker 1: must do what they say at all times without question,
Speaker 1: even if the step is being taught wrong or the
Speaker 1: choreography is wrong. You're scared to speak up out of
Speaker 1: fear of your job. It's sometimes like well, you know,
Speaker 1: you should be grateful to be here, be seen and
Speaker 1: not heard. So dancers have no say, no control. And
Speaker 1: really it's a career based on other people's opinions, literally
Speaker 1: other people opinions, and that's why it's so hard. It's
Speaker 1: not the Olympics that's decided by who ran the fastest,
Speaker 1: you know, it is one hundred percent someone else's opinion,
Speaker 1: which means then that you have to constantly please yep. Gradually,
Speaker 1: Catherine got back into the studio, this time on her
Speaker 1: own terms. Suddenly, when I wasn't trying to impress anybody
Speaker 1: being served to work, that's when I could finally like
Speaker 1: dance again. And when she learned Miami City Ballet was
Speaker 1: looking for dancers, she auditioned. It was in her wheelhouse
Speaker 1: because the company was founded by a balanching dancer. They
Speaker 1: frequently perform his choreography. After four days of auditions, Catherine
Speaker 1: was offered a soloist position with the company. She was
Speaker 1: frank with the director, I'm never going to be the
Speaker 1: thinnest one in the room, and I was told, oh, well,
Speaker 1: don't worry about it. You look absolutely beautiful. We liked
Speaker 1: that you're different. She thought, maybe this time, she wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to choose between health and ballet. Her first performance
Speaker 1: back was in a balanching ballet called Slaughter on Tenth Avenue,
Speaker 1: which was so much fun. I've never had more fun
Speaker 1: on stage. You play a nineteen twenties strip tease girl
Speaker 1: and you're on you know, it's just it's just so
Speaker 1: much fun. Catherine was dancing every day. She'd reclaimed her identity.
Speaker 1: She had left the pain of disappointment behind. It felt amazing.
Speaker 1: But at a half hour call to one of my shows,
Speaker 1: I was called in and I was the whole spiel again.
Speaker 1: You're not looking as you should, you're not in shape,
Speaker 1: have a good show. It was became very apparent to
Speaker 1: me that the ballet world had not changed. So at
Speaker 1: that point I was like, all right, I'm going to
Speaker 1: show them stupid. Went back to seventeen year old brain.
Speaker 1: After having worked through, you know, a decade of what
Speaker 1: I worked through, I stopped eating and as you can imagine,
Speaker 1: that didn't go well. Three days later I strained my
Speaker 1: calf muscle in a knockcracker rehearsal, which can happen when
Speaker 1: you're under fed. Then I was very quickly taken out
Speaker 1: of every ballet I was learning for the rest of
Speaker 1: the season, and it just sort of spiraled and wasn't good.
Speaker 1: Then all of her old autoimmune condition symptoms flared up.
Speaker 1: The line that was said to me that I will
Speaker 1: never forget as long as I live. I know you're
Speaker 1: supposedly this inspiration to all these people, but I don't
Speaker 1: think you can be a true inspiration until you're back
Speaker 1: on the stage looking like a ballerina in point shoes.
Speaker 1: And I was just like hump. At that point, I
Speaker 1: knew I was done, and she left all the things
Speaker 1: that had been said to me. I was back in
Speaker 1: that place of I literally couldn't look at myself in
Speaker 1: the mirror. Hi, everybody, So I have a bit of
Speaker 1: a more serious video for you guys today, as you
Speaker 1: can probably tell. Rather than spiral again, she went public
Speaker 1: with her story on her YouTube channel along when I
Speaker 1: kind of don't even know how I'm gonna go about this,
Speaker 1: to be honest, it's a bit daunting to me, as
Speaker 1: a lot of you have done yours. The author we
Speaker 1: talked to earlier, Chloe Angel, heard about it and it
Speaker 1: was a huge deal. I mean, she'd been out of
Speaker 1: professional ballet for years and there was a lot of fanfare,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of publicity around it, and then
Speaker 1: they wouldn't put her on stage. To Chloe, it confirmed
Speaker 1: what she already knew. The problem runs deep. There is
Speaker 1: this suite of euphemisms and code words that is being
Speaker 1: delivered to dances, and most of them understand what it means.
Speaker 1: But it's being couched in terms of health and length
Speaker 1: and getting fit and getting in shape and getting toned.
Speaker 1: But what you're asking is for most dances is not
Speaker 1: a healthy outcome. And it's a mind fuck. Who decided this?
Speaker 1: Who decided you know that you have to have twig
Speaker 1: like arms or legs? Did the skies open up and
Speaker 1: the ballet god said this is how it host to be. No,
Speaker 1: it's just what we've all been programmed. I didn't understand
Speaker 1: that you're worthy because you're a human first, not because
Speaker 1: you're a dancer. Instead of having a full time company job,
Speaker 1: Catherine found another way to dance. She freelances as a soloist,
Speaker 1: teaches ballet and coaches dancers, and when our videos came
Speaker 1: out in twenty twenty, dancer after dancer told her they
Speaker 1: had similar experiences. Other dancers have also gone public, like
Speaker 1: a New York City Ballet principle and an Instagram live
Speaker 1: last year, or another soloist who wrote that Peter Martin's
Speaker 1: pointed from her knee to her butt and said she
Speaker 1: didn't fit in from there to there. She'd struggled with bulimia,
Speaker 1: and she ended up getting liposuction on her thighs. And
Speaker 1: it's not just scrutiny from within the company, it's everywhere.
Speaker 1: Critics set the tone too. For example, a dance critic
Speaker 1: at The New York Times mocked the weight of a
Speaker 1: principal dancer in a review after she'd been open about
Speaker 1: her eating disorder. He said she'd had one sugar plum
Speaker 1: too many. He defended himself afterward, he said, quote, ballet
Speaker 1: demands sacrifice in its pursuit of widely accepted ideals of beauty.
Speaker 1: If you want to make your appearance irrelevant to criticism,
Speaker 1: do not choose ballet as a career. I am severe,
Speaker 1: but ballet, as dancers know, is more so. End quote.
Speaker 1: The idea that you want really a ballet dancer until
Speaker 1: you look like a ballet dancer is really pervasive. You know,
Speaker 1: if you are uncomfortable watching at us bigger than standard ballet. Dancer,
Speaker 1: do ballet. If it doesn't look right to you, that
Speaker 1: is something that you need to sit with and think
Speaker 1: about and think about why, and think about the cost,
Speaker 1: the human cost, the physical, psychological, emotional cost of that
Speaker 1: kind of gate keeping of who doesn't get to dance,
Speaker 1: of who has to suffer in order to dance. It's
Speaker 1: so deep seated, it's so harmful, and it's just completely unjustifiable.
Speaker 1: So often the idea of the line is talked about
Speaker 1: like this geometrical fact, like an artistic truth that can't
Speaker 1: be argued with. But the older I get, the more
Speaker 1: I question that, I start to think, Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: been brainwashed. I've been so inundated with images of thin
Speaker 1: bodies dancing ballet that I eventually believed that that was
Speaker 1: objectively better. On a gut level, I've been programmed to
Speaker 1: think certain body, these make lines that are more beautiful
Speaker 1: than others, that a flowing arm that curves is beautiful,
Speaker 1: but a curvy body is not. I don't believe that anymore,
Speaker 1: because I've been working to deprogram myself for more than
Speaker 1: a decade. Is the idea of the line, I mean,
Speaker 1: how real is it? Even? I mean is the line better?
Speaker 1: And my answer is who cares? Because people are suffering.
Speaker 1: The audience having a good experience of ballet and enjoying
Speaker 1: what they see on stage is dependent on that line,
Speaker 1: and that line is dependent on people starving and people
Speaker 1: collapsing in the wings from exhaustion, and people getting early
Speaker 1: on set austerea porosis and bone fractures and long term
Speaker 1: muscles skills will damage, rexia and body dysmorphia, and a
Speaker 1: permanently messed up relationship with food and with exercise and
Speaker 1: early retirement and the kind of disillusionment that a lot
Speaker 1: of former dances feel. Who gives a shit about the line?
Speaker 1: Next time? On the Turning? Imagine as a black ballet
Speaker 1: student at the time, hearing that that was the thought
Speaker 1: a ballerina should be the color of appealed apple, and
Speaker 1: I remember thinking, well, if you leave a peeled apple
Speaker 1: out on the counter four minute, it turns brown anyway,
Speaker 1: So what does that mean? The Turning is a production
Speaker 1: of Rococo Punch and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and produced
Speaker 1: by Alan Lance Lesser and Me. Our story editor is
Speaker 1: Emily Foreman. Mixing and sound designed by James Trout. Jessica
Speaker 1: Carissa is our assistant producer. Andrea Swahe is our digital producer.
Speaker 1: Fact checking by Andrea Lopez Crusado. Special thanks to Chloe Angel,
Speaker 1: who you heard from today. Her incredible book about the
Speaker 1: world of ballet is called Turning Point, How a new
Speaker 1: generation of dancers is saving Ballet from itself. Our executive
Speaker 1: producers are John Paratti and Jessica Alpert at Rococo Punch
Speaker 1: and I Get Trina Norbelle and Nikki Etour at iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: For photos and more details on the series, follow us
Speaker 1: Ongram at Rococo Punch and you can reach out via
Speaker 1: email the Turning at Rococo Punch dot com. I'm Erica Lance.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.