Dancing Through It: My Journey in the Ballet

by Ringer, Jenifer

  Some did try to intervene: a few of the ballet masters took me aside to talk to me, trying to gently help me or inspire me to lose the weight and get back on the right track. Others seemed angry and disappointed when they talked to me about how heavy I had become. I was never commended, however, when I lost weight. Despite the revelations in my inner spiritual life, I was still in the binge-and-purge cycle, eating practically nothing for a while, losing weight significantly, until something broke and I started binging again. I was so self-absorbed that even an imagined critical look would send me to the deli for ice cream. But management only spoke to me when the news they wanted to give me was bad. The assumption at the company was that no news was always good news.

  I had conversations with Peter during which he was very frustrated and couldn’t understand why I couldn’t get my act together. He was seeing my weight fluctuate wildly from week to week.

  “I gained weight once. I just had to stop eating cheesecake,” he told me.

  If only I could just stop, I thought. If only it were that easy.

  Other meetings with him revealed his anger at me. He felt I had severely let him down. I don’t remember what exactly was said, frankly. I do remember him throwing a magazine at the wall. And I remember sitting on his office’s red leather couch and just crying.

  I saw Jerome Robbins backstage during this time, and he said, “Come on. You just need to get the weight off. Just do it. We need you.”

  The conversations varied, but their effect didn’t: after each one, I went home and bought a pint of ice cream and consumed it in front of the television.

  It wasn’t that I’d given up trying to lose weight. I tried weird diets where I was supposed to only eat green vegetables or have just fruit before noon or have minuscule little meals mailed to me. The diets would last for a day or two until I felt weak and headachy and sick and would finally buy a whole bunch of food and eat to the point of discomfort. I did give up on OA—I couldn’t make a connection in the big loud meetings in New York. And though I went to a wonderful nutritionist, I lied to her about what I ate, telling her I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t losing weight because I was following her program almost perfectly.

  I worked out frantically at the gym for hours. But when I came home, there was only me and my obsession with food and failure. To prevent myself from thinking about the disaster of my life, I turned repeatedly to books and television—and always food. Though I had God back in my life and in my head, my heart was still broken. Something in me still needed to be fixed, and God was the only one to do it. But though I was praying, God was not answering my prayer in the way that I wanted. To me, it seemed He was not working at all. Unfortunately, I was still trying to be my own fixer, which meant ultimately that nothing was getting better. And the company wasn’t seeing any improvement.

  In December of 1996 another ballet master, Russell Kaiser, asked me to come in for a talk. Russell and I had danced together before he retired, and he now worked very closely with Peter. He gently told me that he was worried that if I didn’t lose the weight, I was going to be let go. Here it was: my worst fear and the ultimate failure. If I were fired, then the whole world would know that I was worthless. I was so wrapped up in my inner world that I thought I was still fooling everyone. I told outsiders that I was fixing things and that eventually I would be back onstage. I put on a smile at work and pretended I was on the road to recovery, even at church. But if they actually fired me, I would be caught in my lie. Everyone would know that I had no self-control and couldn’t overcome my addiction to food. Russell was kind and understanding during our meeting, but it was too late and not enough.

  In February 1997 I had a meeting with Peter before the regular contractual deadline, when the company must inform dancers whether or not they were going to be reengaged. There wasn’t much to say.

  “Well, we have said it all before,” he told me, no longer angry, just resigned. “It has been too long now. We’re going to have to let you go. But we need you here, onstage. Your contract lasts until the end of our Saratoga season. You have your job through July, and if you can lose the weight by then, I can rehire you and no one has to ever know that you were fired. I really hope you can do it.”

  And that was it. As in all of our meetings, I didn’t say much. I accepted. I cannot remember if I cried during the meeting or not. I cried so often in that office that it is hard to keep track.

  After leaving Peter’s office, I headed to a restaurant where I was meeting my parents, who were in town visiting—the last thing I wanted to do at that point. I broke down sobbing right there, unable to wait to cry until I wasn’t in a public place. I couldn’t keep the news from them. But I told no one else. Still a coward and still trying to keep up some kind of strong public image, I hoped to fix things by the end of Saratoga so that no one else would know that I’d been fired.

  My mother came to stay with me and lived in my apartment for almost a month. She was so worried about me and didn’t know what to do to help. Unfortunately, as I went through the daily paces of ballet class and gym workouts, I felt like I was encased in rock around my mother. For some reason I couldn’t open up to her, nor could I accept or welcome her advice. Perhaps I felt that her presence was too threatening in the sense that she would cause me to show my vulnerability; if I opened up a crack, I knew I would crumble. I shut her firmly out of my inner world and almost ignored her the entire time she was with me. I regret terribly how much I must have hurt her, and I’m sure she was distraught over my behavior. But I couldn’t let her in; she knew me too well, and it felt too dangerous to allow her access to my thoughts and feelings. I wanted to shield myself and be alone.

  Finally she went home, and I felt relieved. But things didn’t get better. I tried to go to some OA meetings again but still couldn’t make a connection. I became inconsistent at House Church. The theater felt like a trap—I was unwanted and unuseful and seemed to make everyone uncomfortable. I went there as little as possible. When I did have to go, it felt as if I were going into a dark place that required all of my energy just to protect myself and survive.

  I tried frantically to lose weight, to fix myself quickly so I could keep my job. I tried not eating at all but couldn’t maintain it. I worked out at the gym and ran in Central Park until I couldn’t walk the next day. I thought about taking up smoking so that I would have something else to do with my mouth besides eat, but I hated cigarette smoke. I considered drugs: didn’t people on cocaine get really skinny? Maybe I should try that, I thought. But I didn’t know how to buy drugs or know anyone I felt comfortable asking about it.

  I began seeing a Christian counselor. I was very resistant to going at first. It was my parents’ suggestion, first of all, which made me particularly unreceptive. Additionally, I mistakenly thought only weak, crazy people went to counseling—not strong, perfect Christian southern girls. I had the wherewithal, though, to take a look at myself and realize that I really needed help and I would take it from just about anyone—even someone my parents had suggested. So I went to counseling.

  It was helpful. The therapist was a stranger who had no previous knowledge of who I was or even what the ballet world was like. When I first sat across from her in her office, I had no idea how to even begin to talk to her. But she asked a couple of questions and then just sat back and listened, looking small and kindly in a Mrs. Claus kind of way. I started to dispassionately tell her my history and why I was there. I heard myself being completely honest with her, as I’d never been with anyone before. I had nothing to lose at this point. After each horrible revelation, she just nodded and waited. I laid myself bare, and it was a relief. There was no need to pretend with her. Finally I was really talking to someone.

  Two other women I was completely honest with were Fay Fondiller and Kathy Mihok, friends of my mother’s from All Angels’ Church. They knew I was having trouble because my mom had asked them to pray for me. So t
hey came and offered to meet with me for prayer. They were lovely Christian women, gentle in spirit and loving in demeanor, who felt called to pray for people who were in need. I know now that God obviously put them in my life as instruments for His healing. They would meet me once a week in a small room at the church. The two of them would ask me how my week was and what I needed prayer for, and then they would spend forty-five minutes praying for me, holding my hands. They would assure me of God’s love for me and encourage me to accept His love, despite the repeated failures and ugliness that I felt I carried around on my back everywhere I went.

  Their prayers slid like water over the shell I’d created around myself, wearing away at the hardness. No great, sudden changes were occurring in me to the outward eye, and I often felt that nothing good at all was coming as a result of the counseling and the prayers, but I know now that God was working and a light was being nurtured back to life within me. At the time, however, I could not see it. I was still so lost in the darkness.

  —

  The spring season went by with no real change in my weight. I was allowed to dance in some corps roles with big dresses, but really, I was unusable. The company went to its summer home in Saratoga Springs, and I went too, knowing secretly that this was going to be my last season with City Ballet. I started hinting to my friends that I might want to stop and go to college full time, still maintaining the image that I was in control. None of them talked too much to me about it. I’d effectively shut them out long before.

  I hoped I would not have to talk to Peter again; I would rather have just slunk away. No such luck. The air was heavy with resignation and disappointment during our final meeting. I’d been given chance after chance and hadn’t been able to conquer my weight. I was done.

  Directly from Saratoga I had a gig, or freelance performance, with James Fayette and other dancers from City Ballet in Vermont and Nantucket. Often during our layoffs dancers would take performing opportunities outside the company for the experience and the extra money. James had asked me to be his partner on this gig months before, and I’d accepted. Much to my surprise, I relished the dancing for the first time in a long time; it was my first solid, challenging dancing in months, and I knew it might be my last. When I got home, my life would completely drop off a cliff.

  There were two performances, and I danced a pas de trois by an up-and-coming choreographer at the time, Christopher Wheeldon, as well as the pas de deux from Balanchine’s Stars and Stripes. Though the other dancers on the gig were some of my oldest friends, dancers I had gone to the School of American Ballet with, I told none of them I was fired or even leaving the company. I kept things superficial.

  Finally I returned home and had to face the facts: it was all over. What had been my life, in essence my god, had been ripped away. The weeks after that gig were probably the darkest of my life. I was twenty-four years old, and I felt utterly worthless. I had failed at everything that had been important to me my entire life. I was supposed to be perfect and successful: I had been fired. I was supposed to be beautiful: I was overweight and gross. I was supposed to be smart and in control: I couldn’t eat a meal without overeating until I felt sick. I was supposed to be funny and friendly and loving and generous: I’d shut out all of my friends and family. I was supposed to be a Christian: I still hadn’t made God the priority of my life.

  I don’t remember much about how I passed the time during those weeks. I holed myself up in my apartment with my favorite compulsive foods and movies and books. If I went out to shop, I wore baggy clothes and a baseball cap to cover my face. I played every sad song I owned over and over, crying on my living room floor, grieving over a song because I couldn’t grieve over my own losses and sadness. It came to me also that I never danced in my apartment anymore—a heavy stillness in my body permeated my days. Even great music couldn’t inspire me to sway just a little when I was home. Whatever had been in me, inspiring me to dance even just for the enjoyment of it, was gone.

  Looking back, I realize how completely self-absorbed I was. I’d blown my situation way out of proportion; people around the world were suffering terribly and had much worse things to deal with than weight problems and job loss. But I had allowed my psyche to be twisted by the ballet world until I believed that a successful career in ballet was the only road to happiness and self-worth. Wrapped up in my failure, I couldn’t see out of it. Despite everything that had happened to me, I still believed that I could only find meaning and joy in ballet, almost as if I suffered from Stockholm syndrome and City Ballet was my captor.

  One night during those six or so weeks, I sat in my bed sobbing and talking to God. I cried out in anguish to Him, asking Him why this was happening to me. I told Him I was worthless and repulsive. It didn’t occur to me to ask for help or forgiveness—I was too repellent even for God. I told Him I didn’t know what to do or where to go. I didn’t think I could ever crawl out of the deep abyss in which I was trapped.

  Then I grew calm, and I realized that there was really no point to a life like this one. It benefited no one and was a torture to me. Why was I staying in it? There was no reason. Perhaps I should just . . . kill myself. It would be the ultimate escape—an escape that no book or food could ever provide. I could even escape from my bondage to food.

  If I were to end my life, how would I do it? I contemplated methods of suicide. In a clinical, dispassionate way, I thought about which techniques would be plausible. I settled on one, and in my mind’s eye I played the scenario out, watching myself do it, trying to imagine what I would feel during the act and then its aftermath, when I would leave my unbearable existence.

  And then I thought about what would happen next. I saw my parents and my sister at the moment during which they learned what I’d done. I saw their terrible grief and the way my action would ravage their lives. I realized that I could never do anything so horrible to these three people whom I loved so very much. I couldn’t be so selfish as to wound their hearts so irreparably. I started crying again, knowing I needed to keep moving forward if not for myself, then for them. I would have to figure out a way to make a new life for myself, one dark night at a time.

  I didn’t reach a resolution with God that night. But God was all I had left. I was spent and empty, and I knew that God was faithful. I’d been told of His faithfulness, had seen it in my life and in the lives of those close to me, and had read about it in books and in the Bible. Somehow, He is always faithful. I had to trust that even in these circumstances, God was working for me. He had a plan. Eventually maybe I would see where exactly He was leading me. Finally that night, I just laid my head down and fell asleep.

  I devised a strategy of sorts over the next few days. There was no City Ballet schedule for me to call anymore to tell me what to do; I had to figure out a plan for myself while I waited for God’s plan to take shape. I had very few credits left to earn at school and knew that if I went full time for one semester, I could finally graduate with a BA in English. Indeed, in true perfectionist fashion, I did end up graduating summa cum laude. My parents wanted me to move in with them, but I stubbornly insisted on staying in New York; it was where I’d become an adult, and it was my home. They told me they would pay for my college but not for my rent. They were trying to be responsible parents and didn’t want to fund an easy existence for me in New York City. I would have to find a way to pay rent on my own.

  I had some sources of income: there was some severance pay from City Ballet, and I could collect unemployment insurance for a time. Also, a former City Ballet dancer, Rebecca Metzger, whom I’d danced with before she retired, ran the company’s New York City Ballet Workout program, which was taught all over the city in New York Sports Clubs. She certified me in the program, and through her efforts, I soon taught several regular workout classes at gyms around the city. I not only earned a bit of money but also regained a little self-esteem.

  Rebecca also talked to me about weight and emoti
onal eating and gave me some tools to battle my eating disorders. She took me to live with her in her apartment for a week to model healthy eating and exercise habits, and otherwise tried to help me out of my depression. She offered me lively, intelligent conversation and an understanding ear and could speak to me as one who had gone through the rigors of the professional ballet world and was now living successfully and happily outside it. Just spending time with her and being accepted and taught by her meant more to me than I could express at the time.

  I also tried to find work at a temp agency, but when I interviewed, I was told that I had no business skills and was pretty much useless. The woman I met with told me to take some courses and come back later when I had something worthwhile to offer.

  In the late summer of 1997 I learned that All Angels’ needed a receptionist. I asked if they would hire me part time. I could work in the afternoons, which would give me time to go to school and teach the workout classes I’d scheduled. I was hired. I would need to answer the phone, do some simple data entry, and man the front door when visitors came.

  I loved the job. In many ways it was, of course, tedious. I would finish my assigned tasks rapidly and end up with a lot of free time on my hands. I remember creating a huge rubber-band ball out of the large quantity flopping around in every drawer of the receptionist’s desk. But I was in a great environment, surrounded by Christians doing meaningful work, and felt that I was contributing to something good. And there were no mirrors anywhere.

  There was one day when the Xerox machine in my little desk area broke down. We needed to print the programs for the weekend’s church services right away. I stared at the monster with its blinking lights and decided that I would fix it. I took the entire thing apart, opening every compartment one by one until I found a wad of papers clogging one of the moving parts. After I removed every last one of the papers, I closed it all back up, pressed print, and suddenly the machine was a whirling box of productivity again.