Pride and Prejudice at the Barre

In the girls’ dressing room, the gossip, nervous chatter, and makeup bottles fly at a furious pace.

The dancer appears not to notice. Effortlessly, her legs extend into the splits, her back arches, her blister-covered feet roll and stretch. Her calm expression does not change.

It is not until the 16-year-old from Costa Mesa bursts onto the stage that her somber mask cracks into a gorgeous, heaven-sent smile. Through a dizzying array of pirouettes and grande jetes, the smile grows broader and the audience gasps with wonder.

Stage left, one of the ballet moms shakes her head. It’s a good thing she’s bright, the mother says, because though this Sugarplum Fairy is a beautiful dancer, her body is not perfect. She may not make it, the mother says with regret.

On stage, Wendy Harber doesn’t hear this particular exchange, but it would not surprise her. Nor does it deter her.

This is the season when thousands of young girls across the country, dreams of sugarplums and professional careers dancing in their heads, take to community stages for local productions of “The Nutcracker.” Only a precious few, with the drive, the luck and the perfect ballet proportions, will make it.

In recent weeks, ballet companies’ demands for those tiny proportions suddenly has found itself in the public spotlight--and caught in a debate about its appropriateness. In San Francisco, a complaint has been filed against the San Francisco Ballet School charging that Fredrika Keefer, 9, was rejected because of her height and weight. And two weeks ago, public television stations across the country broadcast a documentary about eating disorders in the ballet world, which featured interviews with ballerinas crippled with osteoporosis or ravaged from malnutrition. Both the suit and the television show have provoked a flurry of discussion among ballet aficionados, in dance classes and on the Internet.

And then there is Wendy, somewhere in between. A ballet-struck teenager, but one with a set of broader values: a believer in schooling, in family and religion. Willowy by almost any standards but those of professional ballet, she is not about to let a world bent on extraordinary thinness turn her to eating disorders. Neither is she going to turn her back on the art that she loves. Somehow, she believes, she will make a place for herself on the stage, much as Olympic gold medalist Mary Lou Retton made her mark in women’s gymnastics in 1984.

In her case there is an added irony: Her older brother Ben, her dancing partner for the last six years, already has ballet offers. For men, who are relatively few in ballet, there is far less competition. And the emphasis on thinness is less an issue. On top of that, Ben is not as set on a future in ballet--the uncertainties of such a career unnerve him and and engineering is another interest.

But in Wendy’s eyes, there is no other future and the lack of a childlike bone structure is not going to be allowed to stand in her way.

“I love to dance so much,” Wendy said. “When I’m other places, like at school or the grocery store, I think ‘This isn’t really me.’ The real me is in dance class and rehearsing and on stage, and when you see that person, you know who I am. You know who Wendy is.”

Ballet experts agree that the current standards of thinness make it more difficult for a dancer who is not a beanpole.

“The ballet physique since the beginning of the 20th century has been getting leaner and leaner,” said Robert Greskovic, a ballet critic and author of “Ballet 101.” Anna Pavlova, in her day, was looked at askance because she was so thin, Greskovic said. But today, she would probably be considered too hefty by many ballet companies.

Nevertheless, Greskovic said he knew one of Wendy’s teachers, Marat Daukayev, a former principal dancer with Russia’s famed Kirov Ballet. If Daukayev thinks she has a chance, then she does, he said.

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Wendy was 3 years old when she started ballet in a city-run class in Costa Mesa. Ben, tired of watching his little sister’s ballet class, one day asked if he could join.

Brother and sister have been dancing together ever since, and in the same way they partner each other in a pas de deux, also finish each other’s sentences. This year Ben and Wendy have earned their first paying gigs as guest artists, dancing the Sugarplum Fairy and the Cavalier for a handful of community companies up and down the state. The siblings are also performing in their ballet school’s production of “A Christmas Carol” in Fullerton.

The two children have not attended traditional school since Wendy was 6 and Ben was 8. Their mother, dismayed by the large class sizes in elementary school, has home schooled them instead. So the siblings have been free to devote themselves to ballet.

When they were young, they took classes at a studio in Huntington Beach. Six years ago, they moved to the Costa Mesa studio of Stela Viorica, a former principal dancer in the Romanian National Ballet who defected to the United States in 1985, bringing with her a strong Russian technique and an even stronger belief that to be a dancer is to be an ethereal, magical creature--in the world, but not of it.

Viorica has instilled the technique and the ethos in Ben and Wendy, but it is Wendy who has taken the lessons to heart.

Shy by nature, Wendy said she has nevertheless tried to cultivate an aura of glamour and purpose about herself, because Viorica told her that a dancer must always know how to seize attention, even when she is not on stage.

“Her stage presence is way beyond her years, way beyond her 16 years,” said Daria Bearden, who runs the company that put on “The Nutcracker.” Originally, Bearden said she hired Ben and Wendy because she wanted a local male dancer who could rehearse ahead of time with her students, rather than flying in professionals from out of state who can usually only come for a few days. Wendy was part of the package.

But Bearden said she was amazed by Wendy’s dancing and the way she captivated the audience.

“Wendy is inspiring because she is so incredibly disciplined,” Bearden said. “She’s better than many professional dancers who couldn’t get through those [steps]. And I think one of the reasons she has such strong technique is that she has strength in her legs, and if that takes a little extra weight, so be it.”

For a long time, Wendy and her brother dreamed of a shared future, one in which they both became professional dancers and partnered on brightly lit stages across the world, much as they shared secret dreams growing up.

But this last summer, after the two went with Viorica to Varna, Bulgaria, for an international dance competition, their shared dream diverged.

Brother and sister arrived at the little town on the Black Sea with high hopes that they would be heading home with laurels. After all, they had taken the top prize at a dance competition in Long Beach earlier in the year after only six dizzy days of preparation.

In Varna, they failed to make it past the first round of competition. Wendy left Europe determined to work even harder.

Ben began thinking he should find a profession that was more stable, one he could count on for a paycheck.

Though he still dances more than five hours a day, he has added other things into his life. He recently took a job, following in his father’s footsteps, working as a draftsman at Boeing. He has a girlfriend, a young woman from his church. He has other passions, such as a ’76 Chevy truck he’s fixing up and a dream of attending Cal Poly Pomona to study engineering.

“I don’t want to live off dancing,” he said. “There’s a lot of things I want to do.”

So he is not sure. Maybe he will join a professional company. Maybe he won’t. Last summer, he turned down an offer from the Estonia Ballet.

All this makes Wendy a bit wistful at times. “Sometimes, it’s like, ‘Well, gee, you’re the one who could have it if you wanted it, and you don’t even want it,’ ” she said. “But I tell myself he’s a different person than I am, and he has different things that he wants, and different priorities, and that’s why we’re different people.”

Brother and sister are still best friends, still finish each other’s sentences. As Wendy came off stage after her solo one recent evening, her brother was standing on the sidelines, his arms open for a congratulatory hug.

“They are a very beautiful family. And Wendy is an angel,” said Viorica.

Viorica said she is convinced Wendy will make it. As soon as Wendy, who received her high school equivalency at 15, finishes her associate’s degree from Orange Coast College, she will begin auditioning for a job in a professional company.

“She has the talent. She has the hard work. She has the bone structure,” Viorica said. “She is not going to a company that only values people for how skinny they are. I am totally against dancing bones. You can do art and be normal. She is going to a company that accepts dancers for their talent.”