Luna Montana and the issue of ‘perfect’ bodies in ballet

Woke up this morning to this YouTube recommendation

Fitting Luna Montana in Pointe Shoes

Being a huge fan of pointe shoes (I know, it’s weird), I went in to watch what turned out to be a 100% Freed fitting — and that’s a fascinating subject in itself — and stayed for Montana herself.  You’ll see in the video that she appears (at least on camera) quite curvy.  Cameras can be deceiving, but certainly she looks far more normal in terms of weight than does your average serious young ballet dancer.

And I found myself doing something I never realized I’d do: judging her for it.

Just prior to that I’d watched a video of Kathryn Morgan rehearsing, and found myself being distracted because (like me) her torso is somewhat blocky rather than waifish.  This doesn’t mean she’s fat; it’s just the way she’s shaped.  Yet she dances gorgeously, and here I was ignoring her dancing because she doesn’t have a wasp-waist.

I guess I have to struggle with this issue and correct it.  I do have books full of pictures of ballerinas of yore, many of whom were shaped the way Luna and Kathryn are, and they were none the worse for it.  I’m wondering if the eye has changed too much, as it has with female fashion models, to the point where they barely resemble average women anymore.

One wonders how far this goes in terms of what’s considered “overweight,” because I’m also hearing an increasing number of warnings from ballet schools and online about young dancers who are overweight and want to dance en pointe.  Frankly I never heard this before, not even decades ago when I was dancing en pointe (of course, back then I was naturally stick-thin to the extent where I was told to gain weight, so no one would have said that to me).  The concern is for the long-term health of the kids’ feet.  I have known heavy-set older women who were always at the podiatrist’s office for various issues, only to have those issues disappear when they lost weight.  But those were older women.  Never heard about this happening in kids.

It’s also true that being overweight or obese used to be rare in kids, but is now pretty common.  I have my own theories about this, but that’s not for this blog.  However, ballet teachers may be seeing more and more very heavy kids in their classes, and thus these warnings about being overweight and going en pointe.  I certainly hope they aren’t giving “overweight” warnings to girls who are of average weight.

Whatever, I’m rambling.  Anyway, this is a fascinating video, even if it doesn’t address the issue of weight — it’s strictly about Freed pointe shoes.  It’s fascinating for that reason, too.