Dancers' Body Book

145 Pages·1984·0.54 MB·English

by  Allegra Kent

The Dancers’
Body Book
ALLEGRA KENT
with
James and Constance Camner

Contents
Foreword v
Acknowledgments vii
Chapter One: Why Dancers Need to Diet—You Can’t Fool
Anyone When You’re Wearing Tights 17
Chapter Two: The Dancers’ Secret 29
Chapter Three: The Dancers’ Diet 39
Chapter Four: A Diet to Live By 53
Chapter Five: Food for Dance: Dancers’ Recipes—Low-Calorie
and Otherwise 77
Chapter Six: The Chain Around the Refrigerator 89
Chapter Seven: Ballet, the Oldest Beauty Exercise 95
Chapter Eight: Dancers’ Serious Exercise 105
Chapter Nine: Fun and Games 113
Chapter Ten: A Healthy Outlook 123
Chapter Eleven: Seven Diet Sins 135
Appendix: The Reading List 147
About the Author
Other Books by Allegra Kent
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher

FOREWORD
Just about everyone is dieting these days, but dancers are more
successful at it than most other people.
Of course, the daily classes and rehearsals of a ballet company
help dancers burn off calories and keep their figures trim. Yet, as
the dancers themselves will explain, they need to be thinner than
the rest of the general public and still eat enough to maintain
energy and stamina levels. How do they do it?
This book will answer that question, and many others as well,
about how dancers build and maintain some of the most beautiful
bodies in the world—and about how you, the reader, can take
advantage of their experiences with diet, health and exercise.
Dancers have a special attitude toward their bodies. It comes
from their constant critical attention to their technique, form and
appearance.
As the public has become more conscious of losing weight and
improving health, dancers too have become thinner and stronger
through the influence of choreographers and stars. More than
just a popular trend or a fashion fad, however, the slenderness
of ballet dancers is a way of life. As Marika Molnar, physical
therapist for the New York City Ballet, observes, “Ballet keeps
up with society. It is moving fast and the choreography is
fast—fast and hard. In order to keep up with that, dancers have
to make adjustments to help their bodies as well.”
In the following chapters you’ll discover how dancers make
those adjustments—their diets, their special tips, their favorite
exercises, even their own recipes. The dancers’ secrets to being
thinner, healthier and having more energy will be revealed, not
only for aspiring dancers to enjoy and take advantage of, but for
the general public to learn from and emulate.
Through a great many revealing personal interviews with
dancers, from the youngest soloists to the most famous superstars
of ballet, you’ll be finding out a lot about them that you might
never have expected.
And you’ll be learning about the ways that you too can apply
what works for dancers to your own, non-dancing lifestyle.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank my colleagues in the ballet world who, by
sharing their thoughts on diet and fitness, made this book pos-
sible. Along with the dancers were the many friends who also
contributed their time and kind efforts to The Dancers’ Body Book.
Merrill Ashley; Mikhail Baryshnikov; Toni Bentley; Jean-Pierre
Bonnefous; Isabel Brown; Fernando Bujones; Dierdre Carberry;
Christopher D’Amboise; Jacques D’Amboise; Alexandra Danilova;
Parmenia Migel Ekstrom; Suzanne Farrell; Peter Fonseca; Alexan-
der Goudenov; Cynthia Harvey; Susan Jaffe; Mary Kasakove;
Darci Kistler; Tobias Leibovitz; Natalia Makarova; Patricia
McBride; Marika Molnar; Doris Pearlman; Muriel Stuart; Mel
Tomlinson; Martine van Hamel; Edward Villella; Heather Watts;
Nancy Zeckendorf.

CHAPTER ONE
Why Dancers Need to
Diet—You Can’t Fool
Anyone When You’re
Wearing Tights
The number-one reason dancers have to diet is the merciless
exposure of their bodies in class and onstage. Even certain cos-
tumes can work against them, making them appear heavier or
revealing an unattractive feature, and that’s especially true of
tights.
You can’t fool anyone when you’re wearing tights. Ounces
become pounds under a leotard. Any extra weight is as easily
noticed by the people in the back row as it is by the people in the
front.
No question about it, a leotard is probably more revealing than
nudity. A dancer can look pretty terrible in tights unless she’s
pared her weight down to the absolute minimum. There’s no in-
between.
That’s why I worry less about my weight when I’m dancing
the roles that call for nightgowns as costumes instead of tights.
There is nothing like an upcoming performance in a leotard to
put the fear of fat into you!
If a dancer really needs a reason to diet, tights will do it every
time. Peter Fonseca, a dancer with American Ballet Theatre, says,
“Suddenly I’m feeling ten pounds overweight and there’s a per-
formance coming up and they say, ‘You have to wear white
tights.’ You have to be skinny and you have to appear even
skinnier, or you’re going to look fat onstage.
“The management tells you this, you know. They’ll say, ‘You
have to lose weight.’ Even though I’ve already been trying to lose
and maybe have lost about five pounds, getting down to the low
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