Reblogged from abrokenfishbowl February 29th, 2012 4,438 notesGet it, girl! <3
There are not enough portrayals of thick ballet dancers. This makes me very very happy.
this is awesome.
There are no thick ballet dancers because it’s not true to the art form, which sounds terrible and harsh, but…
> ” it’s not true to the art form”
bitch, u crazy.
actually i can see this being legit. Can you imagine them going into a pirouette or doing a graceful swan hop and not crushing the shit out of their ankles? If it did have a true art form the dancers would have a taste for pain and a short career in mind.
that happens already doesn’t it? like for the ideal tiny thin dancers. it’s super harsh on anyone i would assume. and i can understand people who are lifted are at an advantage if they’re both short and light, but can’t they…write new ballet pieces that aren’t “classics” that don’t require women to be tiny and ethereal etc?
reblogging for that main picture because if we’re gonna talk about dancing and fat people I am taking you all to the next Bihu festival and you all can shut the fuck up on the fat shaming when you see those gloriously fat aunties dance.
Also that’s “true to the artform” shit is actually terrible and harsh and needs to go.
Also you can look at images of ballet dancers before, say, the 60’s, and see a wide range of body types, even at performance-level. The emphasis on extraordinary thinness is super recent in ballet. So okay blah blah the art form whatever, lady.
Thinness being “true to the art form” is a ridiculous concept. The athleticism of all dance stems from having strong muscles which has little to nothing to do with aesthetic “fatness”, if the skill and ability weren’t there, the dancer in the photo wouldn’t even be able to do what she’s doing (which is obvious because there are plenty of thin women who are not ballet dancers).
This picture is gorgeous and this idea that all ballet dancers need to be a certain size is bullshit and it pisses me off. My best friend growing up was a dancer, started with ballet then eventually got into modern dance, jazz, and hip hop. Amazing dancer and excelled in anything she did. But she was constantly told she wouldn’t make it because of her size. Her size being that she was very muscular. Because somehow dancers are supposed to be muscular and in shape, but not show any of those muscles. Which is fucking ridiculous. We shouldn’t be making anybody feel bad about their bodies, but the level that it gets to for dancers is just beyond ridiculous. I’m sure there was a lot of racism involved, too, because she was black and had a booty, and the ideal in dance is this thin, waspy, white girl. Ugh. But anyway, she is still dancing away and I think teaching, too. /end random story time
Wow, fat hate bingo. I swear these asshats are the reason that almost every fat dancer I have known, has gone into belly dance. Which was a lovely experience for this fat girl, we were of all ages, all weights, my instructor was a fellow fat woman, who casually told us “look, don’t try to stop it, your belly will jiggle, it’s okay” while doing a hip shimmy with her shirt tied up, to show us her jiggling belly.
