I am astonished to read about the diets of 1 in 5 Ballerinas in Italy suffering with bulimia and anorexia today. I say this because I remember when I was training over 30 years ago our diet at lunch time was an apple and piece of cheese. Our teachers would say we needed to loose weight but this was not followed up by training on nutrition. While I was training, I lived at home with my parents who are Italian and I always had a good healthy meal ready. I weighed about 7 stone. I too had problems conceiving and required fertility treatment. I recall a beautiful dancer friend being told she couldn’t have children after she was married. She was a lighter weight than me. I remember researching about the problems I experienced and read an article in the Medical Journal all those years ago about loss of Menstrual Cycles, brittle bone disorder and neurological and thyroid problems. I went onto experiencing many of those disorders. It wasn’t until about ten yeas later in 1990 I read articles that British Ballerina’s received nutritional information from dieticians as part of their training. It would be interesting to hear from the dancers on our course, if they received nutritional information. I do hope that today dancers are more informed on the subject, we are aware of the gruelling training they receive.
Thank you Paula for posting this and Corinda for your comment. I thought the article was very interesting although it revealed nothing new to me. I would love to read her book, though I am having trouble finding it over the internet....I´ve known of a lot of ballerina´s loosing children, when pregnant, I myself starved myself to 38kgs, when I was in a school, where we were weighted on a regular basis and I know of some of my colleagues that are well over 21 years of age, who starve have a "troubled relationship" to food. It´s sad and the pressure that is upon each and every professional dancer out there is not making it any easier...
Hi Paula, I actually wrote a apost about this article few days ago as a piece of literature for my inquiry. It double interested me as it's about the Italian ballet environment at the moment (and how it probably has been in the past but with no one speaking about it)....a delicate topic that needs to get his voice out to make the 'non dancers' audiences aware.
I am astonished to read about the diets of 1 in 5 Ballerinas in Italy suffering with bulimia and anorexia today. I say this because I remember when I was training over 30 years ago our diet at lunch time was an apple and piece of cheese. Our teachers would say we needed to loose weight but this was not followed up by training on nutrition. While I was training, I lived at home with my parents who are Italian and I always had a good healthy meal ready. I weighed about 7 stone. I too had problems conceiving and required fertility treatment. I recall a beautiful dancer friend being told she couldn’t have children after she was married. She was a lighter weight than me. I remember researching about the problems I experienced and read an article in the Medical Journal all those years ago about loss of Menstrual Cycles, brittle bone disorder and neurological and thyroid problems. I went onto experiencing many of those disorders. It wasn’t until about ten yeas later in 1990 I read articles that British Ballerina’s received nutritional information from dieticians as part of their training. It would be interesting to hear from the dancers on our course, if they received nutritional information. I do hope that today dancers are more informed on the subject, we are aware of the gruelling training they receive.
ReplyDeleteThank you Paula for posting this and Corinda for your comment.
ReplyDeleteI thought the article was very interesting although it revealed nothing new to me. I would love to read her book, though I am having trouble finding it over the internet....I´ve known of a lot of ballerina´s loosing children, when pregnant, I myself starved myself to 38kgs, when I was in a school, where we were weighted on a regular basis and I know of some of my colleagues that are well over 21 years of age, who starve have a "troubled relationship" to food. It´s sad and the pressure that is upon each and every professional dancer out there is not making it any easier...
Hi Paula,
ReplyDeleteI actually wrote a apost about this article few days ago as a piece of literature for my inquiry. It double interested me as it's about the Italian ballet environment at the moment (and how it probably has been in the past but with no one speaking about it)....a delicate topic that needs to get his voice out to make the 'non dancers' audiences aware.