Painful learning hurts ballet’s reputation – Anxiety disorders, anorexia, psychological violence…

Clara appears through the snow in The Nutcracker or Swan Lake. Ballerinas with wings flood the stage full of glitter. But in Switzerland this year new revelations shed light on the sometimes scandalous methods of education. Anxiety disorders, anorexia, psychological violence. What the female students of the two professional Swiss training centers in Zurich and Basel reported is breathtaking. One girl said she was insulted, called a ‘dancing hamburger’, when she weighed barely 40kg. Another, who was just 15, was told her movements weren’t sexy enough. Some others danced while in pain.

Related research is underway at the Zurich Dance Academy. The duo of the management group, who trained during the German Democratic Republic at the State Ballet School in Berlin, were however suspended. The ballet school of the Basel Theater also fired the director. But now it is also closing vocational training places because, due to its bad reputation, it is not subsidized by public funds.

It’s not just Switzerland…

These are not isolated cases. A similar scandal was uncovered at the Vienna Ballet Academy in 2019. In 2020, the State Ballet School in Berlin made headlines due to bad behaviour.

There are probably two main problems. A contested pedagogic method as well as the body image as the ideal of beauty for a ballerina as it is conveyed to the young girls as well as the public.

But why are scandalous training methods being examined now, asks David Rousseau, dancer, choreographer and lecturer at the Munich Ballet Academy. “It’s a generational phenomenon”, he says, but at the same time he notes that “our students today are the so-called millennials, this is the generation of Fridays for Future. People who have an opinion and express it.”

A change of mindset is needed

“Sports excellence is possible and without exaggeration,” he emphasizes. The Ballet Academy in Munich now has a pedagogical concept that focuses on the health of the dancers. More generally, however, progressive dance academies provide nutritional advice, physical therapy and offer students the opportunity to communicate with trusted people in cases where they are experiencing problems.

“A healthy body is now more important to us than education,” says Martina Retter, director of the Berlin State Ballet. The school has a proposal for child protection and plans to adopt a code of conduct before the end of this school year.

If the ideal image remains the very thin ballerina, this is a role model that puts too much pressure on students, who practice for hours every day in a room full of mirrors and competitors. “Even with a few extra pounds, with hips and breasts, a ballerina can look light, it’s just a matter of dance technique,” says Kathleen McNarney, president of the Swiss dancers’ union Danse Suisse.

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