Book review: Jenifer Ringer's 'Dancing Through It' chronicles a ballerina and her body
. In 2010, New York City Ballet principal dancer Jenifer Ringer was thrown into the center of a media firestorm after New York Times dance critic Alastair Macaulay took a cheap shot at her physique in a review of The Nutcracker.
My Journey
in the Ballet
By Jenifer Ringer.
Viking. 288 pages. $27.95 nolead ends .
nolead begins
Reviewed by
Tara Murtha
In 2010, New York City Ballet principal dancer Jenifer Ringer was thrown into the center of a media firestorm after New York Times dance critic Alastair Macaulay took a cheap shot at her physique in a review of
The Nutcracker
.
Ringer portrayed the Sugar Plum Fairy. In the notorious article, Macaulay sniffed that Ringer "looked as if she'd eaten one sugarplum too many." Macaulay's cruelty struck a nerve in the larger culture, in this case the potentially fatal pressure on women to shrink their bodies down to the bone.
Ringer, however, doesn't address what she calls Sugar Plumgate until the ninth chapter of her new memoir. That placement underscores a point made throughout the book.
"People still remark about that review to this day and talk about it as if it were a horrible thing that happened to me," writes Ringer. But by the time of Macaulay's insult, she was already 10 years into recovery from an active eating disorder. "I faced what at one point would have devastated me and driven me into hiding," writes Ringer. What could have once broken her was, instead, a "huge personal triumph."
Ringer was 16 when she earned a place at the prestigious City Ballet. "For some reason, I began to enjoy trying to eat as little as possible," she writes. Initially, her goal was to gain control, not lose weight. Soon, the disorder took over. "Six years after all of my dreams came true," she wrote, "I found myself trapped inside them."
The intersection of dance and eating disorders is fertile territory: Some experts estimate that as many as one in five ballerinas suffers from an eating disorder. And no wonder. "Overweight dancers," writes Ringer, "are considered failures who have no self-control." Ringer explores this overlap, but stops short of diving deep into the hopeless darkness. She tells us about devouring packages of cookies and tubs of ice cream, but skims over the physical gruesomeness of her terrible secret.
As the curtains close on her long, prestigious career, it's clear she is defined by neither Macaulay's insults nor her own, but by perseverance. Every successful ballerina must dance through festering blisters and aching muscles. But not everyone can be sent into such a vicious tailspin, face her worst fear, and then meet her own steady gaze in the mirror, finding joy.