‘Swan Lake with Big Bodies’

Over the last few months here at Dancewear Central we have celebrated the huge strides the dance world has made towards making the art more and more accessible. The ballet however, has remained the domain of the petite, young and able. Now even this prejudice is beginning to topple as tonight the first episode of Big Ballet will hit our TV screens on Channel 4 (9 pm).

This three part documentary follows former Royal Ballet principal dancer Wayne Sleep and the Irish ballerina Monica Loughman as they train eighteen amateur dancers (sixteen women and two men) all size 12 and above. Sleep and Loughman have five months to transform their troupe into professional ballerinas before putting on a performance of Swan Lake at St George’s Hall in Bradford. In doing so they hope to break down the belief that you have to be stick thin to be able to dance.

From traffic wardens to station managers Sleep’s dancers have all had dance careers snatch away from them because of prejudices regarding their size. Emma R., a twenty-two year old dance graduate was told at the age of seven that she was ‘too fat and too ugly’ for ballet. Even Sleep has had to struggle against prejudices as at 5 foot and 2 inches he is still the smallest dancer every to be accepted to the Royal Ballet. Big Ballet has given the troupe a chance to finally achieve their aspirations and regain their confidence as well as to challenge the exclusive nature of ballet. Five hundred people however, signed up to the show in order to ‘prove that ballet isn’t just for the petite’. Big Ballet isn’t the first attempt to diversify ballet; Sleep and Loughman follow in the footsteps of the late Russian choreographer Yevgeny Panfilov who set the entry requirement for his troupe at seventeen stone. The debut of Big Ballet tonight on Channel 4 (9pm) however, will bring this issue into the mainstream. The sheer number of applicants to the programme indicates the extent of this problem, but also shows people’s willingness to get involved in dancing no matter what their size, background or ability is. Increasing the number of opportunities for these people can only benefit the dance world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rapMkyjEaaM