At the end of a November NY Times review, critic Alastair Macaulay wrote that ballerina Jenifer Ringer, as the Sugar Plum Fairy in George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker, "looked as if she’d eaten one sugar plum too many." The 37-year-old Ringer, a principal dancer at the New York City Ballet, is now speaking out about the criticism.
Yesterday the formerly anorexic Ringer (who hasn't seen Black Swan yet!) declared on national television: "I'm not overweight!" She told Ann Curry on the Today show that the critic's comment made her "feel bad. I really had to tell myself that's one person's opinion out of 2,000 people who were there that night."
According to Jezebel, the critic "tried to explain why he would make such a comment: the body matters to ballet, an overweight body inhibits performance, etc. What he failed to do was explain how the ballerina, one Jenifer Ringer (who absolutely is not overweight), performed in a manner that suggested she was off her game and how that might be because of her weight." Macauley also noted in a follow-up to his original piece, "If you want to make your appearance irrelevant to criticism, do not choose ballet as a career."
During her television appearance yesterday Ringer said, "As a dancer, I do put myself out there to be criticized, and my body is part of my art form. I do have a more womanly body type than the stereotypical ballerina." She added, "If you're too thin, really, you can't do the job."
