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COPYRIGHT 2004 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
People talk about what they call the perfect ballet body--long legs, long neck, high arches, pretty face--but most of history's great classical dancers haven't shown up with such an endowment. Vaslav Nijinsky, in the words of one of his colleagues, looked like a "factory worker." Margot Fonteyn had feet that her primary choreographer, Frederick Ashton, compared to pats of butter. Part of the pleasure of watching these people was seeing them overcome such handicaps. Nevertheless, for men, at least, there is one physical characteristic that does pose serious difficulties, and that is short stature. The first problem here is finding the man a partner. A female dancer, if she is, say, five feet seven, will typically rise to six feet on point. If her partner is also five feet seven, that will make her a lot taller than he is and thus violate ballet's he-supports-her convention. But there is a subtler drama going on as well. All other things being equal, people seem to regard shorter men as less authoritative. (In most twentieth-century American Presidential elections, the taller man won the race.) Furthermore, short dancers, perhaps because their center of gravity is lower, tend to be darting and quick--cute, in a word. Hence they are often relegated to the so-called demi-caractere parts (jester, faun, Mercutio), as opposed to the role of the danseur noble, the big lunk who moves more slowly, runs the kingdom, and gets the girl.
This situation has not sat well with certain dancers. As a ballet student in Leningrad, Mikhail Baryshnikov was tormented by his failure...
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