Balletic Bodies

I very much appreciated Lewis Segal’s Perspective regarding the extreme body type on which ballet has insisted for the last 25 years or so (‘The Shape of Things to Come,” April 1). It has been that long since I have enjoyed a live performance.

For me, a great part of the pleasure I used to get from ballet is seeing the dancer work against gravity-and that means seeing an actual body, inhabited by a dancer who has enough vitality and presence to be able to experience and convey emotions. Those too-thin bodies may be technically adept, but they project only that the dancer has been compelled to treat herself like a machine.

Let’s see some sturdier, or at least not anorexic, people up there.

KAREN GREENBAUM-MAYA

Claremont