Making a dramatic entrance this week, the new head of the Royal Ballet School jet\u00e9d onto centre stage, twirled into a pirouette, arabesque, pas de bourr\u00e9 for good measure, and tah-dah! Former student Iain Mackay is back and looks set to ruffle some tutus with his plans to modernise the nearly century-old institution. And he takes the helm amid no small amount of controversy. In January, the school reached a financial settlement with alumna Ellen Elphick, who said the body-shaming she endured during her time there left her psychologically damaged.<\/p>\n
She claims at 16-years-old, she was humiliated by a teacher who stood her in front of a mirror, traced a line around her body and said: \u201cIf I had a knife, this is what I would cut off.\u201d Having attended ballet school as a child, I can tell you this kind of sadistic bullying was par for the course. It was common knowledge that the full-time students ate tissue paper to stave off hunger-pangs, terrified of putting on weight.<\/p>\n
Our ballet mistress (nicknamed The Dragon for good reason) used to whip the inside of our thighs with a wooden cane if they weren\u2019t \u201cturned out\u201d.<\/p>\n
Frequently I was exiled to the \u201cnaughty barre\u201d because my feet refused to rotate into the unnatural 180 degrees required for the various positions. Thankfully, I wasn\u2019t scarred for life and, if anything, it taught me to set myself realistic goals. A valuable life lesson.<\/p>\n
Clearly, a culture shift is due as young, impressionable students should not be mauled by a deranged Roald Dahl-esque baddie when they attend class. And Mackay is determined to uphold high standards, as well as care for students\u2019 wellbeing.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s also predicted a future with more body diversity on stage, including plus-sized ballerinas. \u201cAudiences want dancers they can relate to,\u201d he said in his first public interview this week. Erm, you sure about that?<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not convinced that\u2019s what the paying public go to the Royal Ballet for. If I go (rarely, admittedly) I have absolutely no desire to see myself reflected on stage.<\/p>\n
I really do not want to see a pudgy middle-age woman wearing a tatty fleece covered in cat hair, jeans with an elasticated waist, and a pair of cheap plastic garden clogs leaping around.<\/p>\n
People go to the ballet to see extraordinary performers, with extraordinary bodies, doing extraordinary things. Representation has its place, but if I want to watch \u2018dancers I can relate to\u2019 I\u2019ll join the Thursday night Zumba class at my local church hall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Making a dramatic entrance this week, the new head of the Royal Ballet School jet\u00e9d onto centre stage,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[7803,748,15342,393,4884,257,2764,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-24986","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-ballet","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-childrens-mental-health","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-london","14":"tag-theatre","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114348160857528566","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}