IN A ROOM OF 35 DANCERS, JUN KURIBAYASHI IS ONE OF five males. Today he is watching the class as it moves in front of the wall of mirrors. A small bag of ice rests on his sprained knee, slowly easing the pain from a dance injury. He cringes as he tries to get up in hopes of dancing part of the class.
Dancing is a challenging and often misunderstood art. Dancers often are labeled as queer, anorexic or temperamental. Regardless of the physical strain, long hours or stereotypes, their passion pushes them to continue to dance.
Kuribayashi, Lawrence senior, is a dancer at the University of Kansas who has had to deal with the pressures of the art form, including injuries. He says injuries make him angry and like many dancers, he is likely to ignore the pain and dance sooner than he should rather than let Sa an injury heal.
Injuries are common in dance, says Marijeanne Liederbach, director of research and education at the Harkness Center for Dance Injuries
in New York City. She says that injuries of the lower extremities are the most common and that 65 percent of all dance injuries result from overuse and the other 35 percent from trauma These range from foot and ankle injuries to lower back pain.
Most ballerinas who dance in pointe shoes face torturous blisters and lost toenails because of the long hours spent literally on their toes. "Anything rewarding in life is painful and difficult," Karli Keller, pointe dancer, says. She says the pain from losing toenails and having bloody feet is probably the worst and most painful part of dancing. But she keeps dancing because she likes the challenge of working through the pain.
Along with injuries, dancers face the pressure of maintaining a sleek body image. The archetype for classical body shape is a lean form with high-arched feet and a predisposition for flexibility, according to the Journal of Dance Medicine & Science. The article also says that female classical ballet and modern dancers tend to be on average only 75 percent and 88 percent of expected body weight.
Ballet dancers who don't have the slender figure and long lines may go to extremes to create them, or they just simply won't make it in the ballet world, Keller, Topeka senior, says. She says looking in the mirror every day is difficult because it reminds her of the need to stay thin. It's frustrating.
trating,
but she keeps dancing. "You do what you gotta do," she says.
The goal to reach the idealized shape may not be a realistic or fair goal for many dancers, Liederbach says."Young dancers often have an extreme fear of fat," she says. She also says dancers who exclude fat or restrict calorie consumption are likely to suffer from injuries and other health problems.
Melia Johnson, tap instructor at Dance City Performing Arts Academy in Lawrence, says she sees her students deal with weight issues quite regularly. She says her female students will put on their costumes, outfits or tutus, look in the mirror and call themselves fat because they do not look like the dancers they see in magazine articles or even in dance calendars. Johnson dealt with one student who had an
eating disorder because she was trying to make herself fit the image of the prima ballerina. Johnson also sees students who think they weigh too much when in reality, she says, they just are muscular girls because they are involved in other sports or lift weights. Johnson says her students do not realize that the muscles they have are beneficial to dancing. "To be a really great dancer, you have to have the muscles," she says. "You nave to be strong."
You don't have to be stick-thin to succeed in dance and Johnson, Lawrence graduate student, has proven this to herself. She is 5-foot-2, stockier than the typical dancer and does not have the typical dancer's long lines or slender figure. She had to show her dance instructors through her technique that her size didn't matter.
With changing times, Jerel Hilding, University associate professor of music and dance, says female dancers now have a better understanding of working the whole body through weight lifting and other exercises to stay thin because dancers are more educated than they were 20 years ago.
"For the first time this semester, I have actually made an attempt to watch what I'm eating," says Jeff Potter. University Dance
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what's the pointe?
Dancers face a variety of stereotypes. BY JULIE JANTZER
thursday, october 8, 2003
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