Secret lust of dancers

WHILE Hyacinth the dancing hippo has been earning belly laughs in Walt Disney’s 1940 animated film “Fantasia” ever since its release -- and today’s counterpart, a rhinoceros assaying haughty flamenco moves, is racking up hits on YouTube -- in the all too real world of dance, and especially ballet, weight is no laughing matter. The scale, if not always a full-blown obsession, has been a critical career determinant for dancers for decades.

There are, in fact, few other professions -- only fashion, entertainment and some sports come readily to mind -- where pounds, or a lack thereof, can be determinants of success. And though there appears to be an emerging plus-size culture elsewhere in the new millennium -- with size-14 Jennifer Hudson snagging an Oscar for “Dreamgirls” and Oprah’s battle of the bulge hardly stopping her in her tracks -- the pressure is still on for dancers, whose bodies, after all, are their instruments. How else to account for the 2003 firing of Bolshoi Ballet prima ballerina Anastasia Volochkova, the dancer who was charged with being too heavy when, at 5-foot-6, she tipped the scales at 110 pounds?

It was the New York City Ballet’s George Balanchine who, when co-founding the company in 1948, created the desired look of ballerinas in the 20th century: long limbs, an absence of breasts and hips, and a skeletal frame accentuating the collarbone and a swan-like neck. In her 1986 memoir, “Dancing on My Grave,” erstwhile City Ballet member Gelsey Kirkland wrote that the choreographer would routinely make comments such as “Eat nothing” and “Must see the bones.”

Allegra Kent, a 30-year City Ballet veteran and one of the choreographer’s muses, doesn’t go that far. “Balanchine wasn’t a fanatic about it the way some people would become,” she says. And as for starving ballerinas, “I think if you choose something and do it, you do it because you want to and you’re not sacrificing anything.”

Nevertheless, although more dance professionals are working to make sure a trim figure doesn’t come at the expense of health, for many dancers, and not just Mr. B’s, visions of inhabiting the Kingdom of the Sweets in “The Nutcracker” are far from their only food-related dreams. They also long for pizza, steak, foie gras, caviar....

Bowing to discipline

CONSIDER Julio Bocca, who retired last June after 20 years with American Ballet Theatre and has said that his final performances with his own troupe, Ballet Argentino, will take place in Buenos Aires at the end of this year. When he announced those plans, he said he was looking forward to leading a less-disciplined life.

Recently, though, Bocca has been more specific. “It will be nice to do nothing -- wake up whenever I want, do whatever I want,” he says, “and have pigout days of pizza, pasta, good barbecue -- anything tasty. Above all, I would eat all the milanesas -- scallops -- of my grandmother Teresa.”

Bocca says that for many years, a restricted diet was simply part of his professional discipline. “I never really forgot about food, I just left it aside.”

Yet weight requirements in dance have never been so strict for men, partly because of their partnering duties. It’s the tutu-clad sylphs, wilis and swans, the Giselles and Sleeping Beauties, who must be in shape to face the music when the curtain goes up and the pointe shoes come down.

ABT principal Irina Dvorovenko has danced many leading roles, garnering reviews peppered with adjectives such as “elegant,” “glittering” and “assured.” Now 33, she vividly recalls her early training at Russia’s Kiev Ballet School.

“In our country, the teachers were direct and kind of mean,” she says. “If the person was overweight, they said, ‘You’re looking fat.’ At 13, I wasn’t fat but a little overweight, and I asked my parents to put a lock on the kitchen. I would then enter the kitchen through the balcony.

“When you’re starving,” Dvorovenko adds, “you want to sneak and get some food. Today, I allow myself everything -- but not regularly. I love bread and butter and cheeses but try not to eat them every day.”

Dvorovenko -- like her husband, ABT principal Maxim Beloserkovsky -- is also a self-described “dark chocoholic.” The couple cite dark chocolate as a source of magnesium, calcium, iron and energy. But she says she’s also inspired by the fact that so many people in the U.S. are obsessed with exercising and eating well.

“In our country, we had no idea about food and quality of food. We never had green salads or spinach, only soups. Even if you are not a ballerina,” she says, “you need discipline. You can’t be a pig and ruin your organs always eating high calories.”

Lorna Feijoo, a Boston Ballet principal, is also an emigre. Born in Cuba -- whose toe shoe tradition is deep but whose ballerinas tend to be more curvaceous, in the 19th century mode -- Feijoo says she loves all food. But she particularly craves the dishes of her homeland: plantains, pork, rice, black beans.

“In Cuba,” explains the 32-year-old, “Latin people are comfortable with their bodies, but when I was in school I was a little fat and needed to diet. The metabolism changed, and now I can eat everything -- just carefully. I feel that the woman needs to be skinny for dance, but you need to see a woman on the stage -- someone feminine, not someone looking sick.”

Of course, some performers are so fiendishly busy it would appear they have little time to eat. For example, there’s choreographer and former ABT star Vladimir Malakhov, 39. In 2004, he became artistic director of the Staatsballett Berlin, where he not only runs the 88-member company but dances as well. Plus he still guests around the world.

“When I work a lot and very hard, all the calories are burned,” says Malakhov. But then he admits, “If I could eat anything, I would only eat delicatessen and fancy food -- all the unhealthy and expensive stuff, like caviar.”

In general, the modern dance world tends to be more forgiving than ballet. The Tony Award-winning Matthew Bourne, whose company performs retellings of classics such as “Cinderella” and “Swan Lake,” is among the choreographers who don’t cast according to size.

Alan Vincent, who performed the role of the lead swan in Bourne’s “Swan Lake” last year at the Ahmanson Theatre, is a case in point. The Times’ Lewis Segal referred to his “exciting swagger and muscularity.”

Says Vincent: “Weight has never been an issue in Matt’s company. It’s always been about the talent, the people and the characters. I couldn’t work in a company that weighed or measured you all the time.”

Vincent says he loves steak, fried chicken, meat pies and red wine. “I find it more interesting to watch individuals onstage rather than clones,” he says, “and I think it’s a shame when people don’t get offered jobs because they’re bigger than the stereotypical image. Being skinny and super-supple doesn’t make you a better dancer. Look at me.”

Dancer-choreographer Mark Morris, whose weight fluctuations are well-documented, also bucks traditional imagery, and his eponymous dance group, founded in 1980, is known for diverse body types. (It will be at the Music Center in October.) To him, food is a treat, not a source of anxiety.

“But you don’t need to treat every minute,” Morris acknowledges. “You do what you need to for the job. People think that some evil force in the dance world is making young dancers eat badly. A few people are that insane, but there aren’t very many.”

Still, Morris says it was a relief a while back to learn that his cholesterol was a bit high, “so I didn’t have to order foie gras every day. I’d love to, but I don’t.” (As to the efforts of animal rights activists to ban the fatty goose liver, he can’t resist quipping, “If the goose was that smart, it would escape.”)

Issue comes out in the open

IN any case, when 22-year-old Boston Ballet dancer Heidi Guenther died in 1997 from complications resulting from an eating disorder, the world -- dance and otherwise -- took notice. These days, Gestapo-like weight policies and bony-physique dictums are being replaced by education and nutrition programs, with dancers into food and health alike.

Says Mikko Nissinen, artistic director since 2001 of the Boston Ballet: “While our dancers are comprised of diverse body types, sizes, shapes and ethnic backgrounds, ballet also remains an aesthetic art. But most importantly, health is our first priority.”

Another company director and former Balanchine dancer, Colleen Neary -- who helms the fledgling Los Angeles Ballet with her husband, Thordal Christensen, and as a member of the Balanchine Trust stages the choreographer’s works around the world -- agrees that though there is still a demand in the ballet world for bodies capable of producing a svelte, elongated line, the main concern today is for dancers’ physical well-being.

“With Balanchine, we did leotard ballets, so he was very aware and he did like dancers thin,” Neary says. “But it’s up to the individual. Somebody once said, ‘Dancers are God’s athletes.’ The better shape you are in, the better you will perform.

“Now companies and directors offer more help either psychologically or nutritionally, and as a director I am able to offer help if I feel a dancer has a problem that way.”

Malakhov, for his part, says he’s trying to create a homogeneous ensemble in Berlin, with tall, thin dancers -- but not at the expense of health. He has even established a partnership with the nutritional sciences department at the Charite Universitatsmedizin Berlin, one of Europe’s largest university clinics.

ABT principal Gillian Murphy, who recently danced the role of the fairy queen Titania in Frederick Ashton’s “The Dream” (and will be performing with the company in July in Orange County and at L.A.’s Music Center), believes that the hallmark of today’s great dancers is their versatility -- the power to perform more modern repertory as well as romantic, sylph-like roles.

“That means you don’t have to be a sticks-and-bones Titania -- that’s not in anymore,” she says. “You can be a slightly voluptuous one.

“I think there’s a consciousness throughout our culture about being healthy and lean,” Murphy adds. “Dancers today don’t need to starve themselves, and they’re not, as far as I know. It’s a visual art form, so it’s pleasing to see real people moving in beautiful, powerful and delicate ways.”

City Ballet veteran Kent maintains that today’s directors are careful in not wanting people to look “inhuman or scarily underweight.” But she is adamant that dancers’ own body images are what ultimately influence how they will care for themselves.

“There must have been some anorexic cavemen,” she says. “They looked in the pool of water and said, ‘I’d have more self-esteem if I were thinner.’ ”