Yeah, I had a similar experience, in the figure skating world (peripherally involved in ballet, as it was part of my training). I think it’s a very similar environment, where thinness is viewed as necessary to jump well (it’s not) and look pretty on the ice and a lot of the training methods are...interesting. My main…

Yes. Especially when you see her dance and realize just how much talent she had...

Not just thin, either: anorexic. He famously said, “I want to see their ribs” about ballerinas. Through their costumes. Being able to see a woman’s ribs *through clothing* is a dead giveaway of malnutrition and/or anorexia. He made it the goddamn standard. Sick bastard.

Oh my God, I think Gelsey Kirkland’s autobiography was the saddest thing I’ve ever read.

The exploitation on some levels is worse than it was before. The promises of a ballet career pushing parents to pull their kids out of school as young as eleven so they can train 20-30 hours a week. Companies for the most part aren’t hiring eighteen year olds anymore so the dancers fight for “trainee” positions where…

Haven’t read the Karz memoir, but I read the Gelsey Kirkland autobiography when I was just a kid but I thought there was something wrong with that dude. And then when he beat Kistler I was SO done.

I think because the initial claim, the one that caused him to step down, was for sexual harassment. (It’s linked to in the article.) That’s what got the ball rolling and now people are accusing him of other stuff too. But I get the confusion! This could have been clearer.

Obviously none of these snowflakes took Miss Grant’s class at the New York City High School For The Performing Arts.

There is a scene in Wendy Whelan’s documentary “Restless Creature” (on Netflix)...she’s been their principal dancer for over 15 years and she meets with him after injuries that make it very clear she can’t continue to work. Super heartbreaking stuff. And he’s ignored her for something like a year! and acts all very…

Yup. My mom danced professionally for a bit, she had internalized the abusive culture so much that I don’t think she ever realized she had what we would now call an eating disorder. She loved dance though, and started me in classes when I was 4.

If dance is the next industry that starts to purge the debauched, then it’s done for.

And his insistence that “only thin white girls are worthy to be ballerinas” set a restrictive body standard the field barely has started getting rid of.

Balanchine was a pig. He made abusing his ballerinas into a sport.

He also ousted Suzanne Farrell. She doesn’t even teach there anymore.

The men of the NYCB have a long history of treating ballerinas like shit. Suzanne Farrell’s accounts of her relationship with Balanchine absolutely turned my stomach. Ugh.

I’m not surprised. I read a memoir by Zippora Karz, former ballet dancer who was in his company and her description of him was less than flattering.

As someone who has been in the dance community since childhood - this is not uncommon. And ranges from the extreme like Martins to the more casual constant body shaming and verbal abuse.

Black Eye Swan: The Peter Martins Story

It was only a matter of time before this came for the dance world. SO MUCH shit happens in ballet - it’s the perfect storm (ridiculously competitive, very aggressive instructor culture/culture of belittling students, drive for perfection, kids leaving home sans parents at a young age).

I would like to see abusive teachers become a thing of the past. Whiplash trailers triggered CPTSD flashbacks for me.