Dancing Through It: My Journey in the Ballet

by Ringer, Jenifer

  Pregnancy was also another time of healing for me—a healing I didn’t even know I needed. I watched myself gain forty-five or fifty pounds, about the same amount I’d gained during my “dark period,” and I was happy about it. My body changed and grew large and ungainly and the farthest thing from a ballerina I could imagine. Some ballerinas still look like ballerinas when pregnant. I was not one of those women. But I was fine with it. It was so beautiful to see how God had constructed my body to nurture the life inside of me.

  Grace was born in January 2008. I did the birth naturally because, being a dancer, I wanted to be able to feel what my body was doing and to experience it all, even the discomfort. Happily I was blessed with a short labor and a husband who was very involved with helping me through each contraction and every moment, and Grace was born with no complications.

  I remember coming home from the hospital in a car service called KidCar that was created especially for New Yorkers who have children and who don’t own cars themselves. Grace was in the car seat sleeping, and the bright winter sun shone Magic Marker bright on pedestrians going about their normal Manhattan lives. I looked at Grace and thought, The whole world has changed completely now that she is here. But nobody out there even realizes the amazing thing that has happened.

  I didn’t take ballet class for three months after Grace was born. I spent my days with her, figuring out how to be a mother and worrying over every gurgle and snort that she made. There was no pressure from City Ballet, but I’d intended to start class after six weeks, though a physical therapist had recommended I wait twelve. However, Grace had colic and didn’t sleep well at first, and I was a stressed-out, exhausted, and overprotective mother. I was afraid to leave her with someone else, even for an hour. And after spending entire days caring for my precious daughter, returning to ballet almost felt like a selfish, self-centered thing to do. At my most emotional moments I considered quitting dance and just becoming a mother full time.

  However, I knew I needed to get back into class because I had committed to the company. I also still needed to work for the paycheck for now, and I knew that deep down I still loved to dance. So I returned to Nancy Bielski’s ballet class at Steps and began the painful process of getting back into shape. I was surprised, after the first couple of days, by how good it actually felt to move to music again, and I realized that I wasn’t completely done with dancing professionally after all. I busied myself figuring out a way I could balance being a good mother with being a good ballerina.

  My first performance back was once again in Saratoga, almost exactly a year after I’d stopped at the three-month mark of my pregnancy. I danced the role of the Coquette in Balanchine’s La Sonnombula with a young up-and-coming dancer named Robert Fairchild. I didn’t know him very well and felt a little insecure in the rehearsals. I had once again been away for a year and was coming back still a little out of shape. I’d chosen the role of Coquette to return with because the costume was a long dress, and the dancing was not too difficult. It seemed like the perfect thing to come back with.

  Robbie was extremely sweet, and we had a great time in the rehearsals. The performances went well too, and I was happy that I had made the effort to get back out onstage in Saratoga, even though it was physically a bit of a push. After Saratoga, I had a couple more months before our fall rehearsal period, during which I could fine-tune my strength and weight.

  We found a part-time babysitter who would be willing to get her schedule at the last minute, when I got my City Ballet rehearsal schedule. She also had to work only four days a week because James had the weekends off and I always had Mondays off. We worked out a system where I would text the babysitter as soon as I knew my hours, and she would come for just those particular hours. I would run home every chance I got, in between class and rehearsals and before performances, so that I could maximize the time I got to spend with Grace. Since I lived only eight blocks from the theater, I could usually be home fifteen minutes after a rehearsal ended.

  It was a lot of running around for me, but I was happy to be doing it. I often still got to spend the majority of my daughter’s awake time with her, even while I was dancing and performing, and I didn’t feel that either Grace or my work was suffering. I was sometimes run a little ragged, but it was worth it to still be so active in Grace’s daily life.

  My performance seasons with the company fluctuated. At the age of thirty-five I was now considered one of the company’s more senior ballerinas, and I often had very light seasons because I’d matured out of a lot of the roles I’d danced when I was younger. At other times, the performance seasons were ridiculously busy for me because it seemed all of my rep was going, or I was in a new choreography that required long hours of rehearsal. But our family worked out a rhythm to deal with the ebbs and flows of the City Ballet calendar, and it felt like we were doing an okay job of juggling it all. Life was good.

  Chapter Nine

  Sugar Plumgate

  In December 2010 I was cast to be the opening-night Sugar Plum Fairy for the company’s annual run of The Nutcracker. I was very surprised; I’d never in all my years been cast to do the first night, which is traditionally the only night that gets reviewed during our six-week run of the ballet, unless there are new and noteworthy debuts. In the last few years I’d done only three or four performances of Nutcracker each season, since so many of us danced the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy. And in general, Peter didn’t tend to cast me in the more classical roles requiring tutus anymore; my rep had drifted more heavily into the romantic and dramatic categories, which were my strengths. Perhaps I was the most senior ballerina available that weekend. Or perhaps I had danced so much the season before, a particularly rigorous season for me, that I came to mind when he was casting for opening night. Whatever the reason, I was first cast. And maybe I should have known that God had a reason for letting that happen.

  I had mixed feelings going into the performance. I was honored to be chosen for opening night and happy to be dancing with Jared Angle, a principal dancer and one of my favorite partners in the company. And I did love the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy. At the same time, it usually took me one or two performances of the Nutcracker to feel totally relaxed within the role, even though I’d done it for so many years. There was something about dancing Sugar Plum, whether because it always came after a period of not performing or because it had been one of my first principal roles, that made me feel nervous for the first few shows. With the added pressure of opening the season, I was worried that I would be “tight” and not give my best performance.

  The performance went very well, despite my apprehension, and Jared and I were both pleased with our dancing. Relieved that the first show was behind me, I set my mind toward the rest of the month, during which I would be guesting with different ballet schools in addition to the other City Ballet Nutcracker performances, and starting my Christmas shopping. The only worry that lingered from that first show was the impending reviews. The relatively new dance critic for the New York Times was Alastair Macaulay, and his very strong opinions had wounded many dancers whom I admired. There were stories of dancers begging not to be first cast so that he wouldn’t review them. I knew the chances were that I would get a bad review, so I prepared myself for the worst.

  The morning of November 28, I’d been awakened as usual by the sounds of some wild pretend game that James and Grace were playing involving spaceships and tinfoil gravity boots. I got my coffee from the kitchen and sat down on the sofa, reading the New York Times on my cell phone. And there I saw it, on the first page of the Arts section.

  My stomach gave a little lurch when I saw that Macaulay had written the review, but I took a deep breath and plunged ahead to read it. I skimmed through until I found my name. My stomach sank even further, and I looked off into the distance for a moment, actually stunned by what he had written: “This didn’t feel, however, like an opening night. Jenifer Ringer, as the Sugar Plum Fairy, l
ooked as if she’d eaten one Sugar Plum too many.” In all my years of weight problems, not one critic had called me heavy, and now, ten long years after my recovery, this review appears.

  James came into the living room, and I said, “Well, it’s happened.”

  He stopped and said, “What?”

  “Did you see the review? It’s not good.” James’s face fell with sympathy.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, honey.”

  “He said I had ‘one sugar plum too many.’”

  “What?!”

  I handed James my phone and he read through the review, uttering some choice words when he was finished. Then Grace called him to continue their game, and he handed me back the phone, saying, “I’m so sorry, Jen. Don’t believe him. We will talk about this later when we have a calm moment.”

  I sat on the couch, trying to process it. The first thought that flashed through my brain was: Am I overweight? All of my insecurities reared up, and I felt ashamed for the first time in a long while. But then I calmed down and thought, No, I’m not overweight. I had worn the same tutu I’d been wearing for a couple of years; it had been made for me, and it fit just the same as it always did. Was I at my thinnest? No: I got to my lowest dancing size only toward the end of a hard performance season. But I was definitely not heavy and was at a good performance weight, which Macaulay had seen me at many times before. So obviously this was his problem and his opinion, not my problem, and certainly not an opinion I had to agree with and take into myself.

  So then I thought, Well, IT has happened: what used to be one of my biggest fears. Someone has called me heavy in the most public way possible. But that morning, sitting on my couch, I decided that Macaulay could call me fat if he wanted to—anyone could. And I was fine with it for two reasons: I didn’t feel I was heavy, and someone else’s opinion of me had no power over me unless I allowed it. My worth came from being a Child of God, a wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister, a friend, and the best ballerina I could possibly be, and that was enough. I didn’t need affirmation or approval from anyone except the Lord, and if someone chose to write badly of me, it couldn’t affect me, because, really, who cared?

  And that moment, for me, was a huge personal triumph. I faced what at one point would have devastated me and driven me into hiding and a pattern of self-destruction. Yet here I was, feeling a surge of strength as I realized once again the depths to which God had healed me. People will remark about that review to this day and talk about it as if it were a horrible thing that happened to me, but I have to tell them that I look at it as one of the high points of my life. It was the day I faced a personal Goliath and knocked him down with a flick of the wrist.

  Now, despite the fact that I didn’t let the review affect my self-esteem or how I felt the performance had gone, I still felt bad that the review had been written, out there for anyone to see. It was certainly embarrassing. Even though Macaulay’s was just one opinion out of the 2,500 who had been in the theater that night, he got to write his opinion in the New York Times. All of the other reviews of the performance in other papers were favorable, and of course not one of them mentioned my weight, but I knew that the Times would get the most attention. However, I also knew I could get past that; I’d gotten bad reviews before and survived.

  Part of being a performer is having to submit yourself to being reviewed by critics. Arts criticism is a very complicated thing and I think it is very hard to be a good and well-respected critic. There are certainly critics out there whose reviews are thoughtful and who don’t seem to come to performances with an agenda or preconceived notions of the dancers or choreographers. They don’t play favorites or consistently demonize anyone in particular. These critics have given me good reviews and bad reviews, which I respected because I felt that they were coming to each show fresh and ready to comment on exactly what they saw in that particular performance.

  The sad thing about most dancers, and perhaps many performers, is that we retain a very good memory of every bad review we have ever read about ourselves, yet the positive comments are quickly forgotten. It probably stems from the fact that our life is spent seeking perfection and correcting infinitesimal errors of line or technique. If something about our dancing is good, we ignore it because it will take care of itself. We fixate on the parts that are wrong. Ask a dancer what her weaknesses are, and she will be able to give you an immediate and very detailed list. Ask a dancer about her strengths, and she has to pause and think about it.

  I’ve gotten more good reviews than bad during my career, at least that I know of, but I could quote the bad reviews to anyone verbatim. I, like many dancers, have actually tried to stop reading reviews about myself; whether they are good or bad, they corrupt how I might feel about a particular performance and may color how I perform the ballet in the future. It is much healthier for me to go onstage, armed with the help of my coaches, and give it my all for the audience that is there that night, and then let that experience become a part of the past that I share with that audience so that I can move forward and dance again the next night, in a new way for a new audience.

  When I read particularly nasty reviews of dancers or any other artists, I always feel disheartened; I know how much work and care and thought and effort has gone into any one performance. I’ve seen how important each performance is to my colleagues, and I know that every time we step onstage, we’re hoping that our performance will move the audience and transport them or lift them up in some way. How deflating to put all that physical and emotional effort into something and then see a critic negate all of your work with a clever barb or two! Of course every artist knows that he is putting himself out there to be commented on, whether with approval or disapproval, but surely there is a way to review artists in a constructive and responsible way. Some critics are quite capable of this, but not all of them.

  That morning on my couch, as my daughter ran up to me, planted a kiss on my cheek, and demanded breakfast, I thought that in the grand scheme of things, this review was such a little matter. Who really cared? It would have been awesome to get a great review so that my mom could put it in the memory book of clippings she had kept since I was a child, but since I hadn’t, I would just try to get over it as I had my other bad reviews: move forward and forget it.

  Well, I wasn’t able to move forward and forget it for very long. To my surprise, the Internet exploded with outrage. I was shocked, but it did make me feel good to have so many people rushing to my defense. It was almost unbelievable to see the number of bloggers who picked up the story. Even Perez Hilton, the celebrity blogger, wrote about it, saying to Macaulay, “We thought the reviewers were supposed to review the dancing, not someone’s stomach. . . . Not cool, man!”

  Before I knew it, what I had thought of as my own very private little moment of internal struggle and triumph became a public story about which everyone had an opinion. The review also happened to coincide with the release of the movie Black Swan, which I hadn’t seen but was basically a psychological thriller set in the ballet world. There was already a lot of attention on the crazy side of ballet, and Macaulay’s review was just crazy enough to focus it on me.

  Macaulay fanned the flames a bit by writing a second article in response to all of his critics on December 3, 2010. He stood firmly by his review. Even though some of the things he said about me in this article were meaner than the first, I just had to laugh at the sheer preposterousness of it all. I actually almost felt sorry for Alastair because so many people were angry with him on my behalf. My family was very upset, of course—my protective father told me he wanted to call down the powers of the U.S. government on Macaulay. He later assured me he was just being facetious. And the dancers of City Ballet told me they thought the review was ridiculous. I’ve never had so many knights rushing to my rescue, and I felt incredibly supported.

  A day or two after the second article was printed, I got a call from Rob Daniels, the head of City Ball
et’s press department. Apparently, many news programs wanted me to appear on their shows and comment on the review, but he had narrowed it down to the Today show. Rob thought it would be best if I went on one show, talked about it once, and put the matter to rest. I agreed, even as I was stunned to realize how much attention this review had garnered.

  It came to me that I’d been wrong in thinking, once again, that this issue was just about me. The review had touched a very sensitive spot for many people. It involved weight and body image and the right of society to have power over determining what was acceptable or valuable about an individual woman’s appearance, issues that are heightened in the ballet world but are very real in the nondancing world as well. People’s reactions to Macaulay’s review were so strong that it became clear they were responding to these issues of female beauty and worth not just in the dance world but in the world in general.

  About two weeks after the review came out, I woke at the crack of dawn and carefully got ready for my appearance on Today. I’d gone shopping to buy a new outfit for the occasion—I wanted to wear clothes that showed my body and made me feel pretty. I’d also bought some new high heels to add a little bit of glamour. I left the house even before my early-bird daughter woke up and went out to the car NBC had sent to pick me up. I felt nervous and odd. James and I prayed before I left, and I knew that I had many friends and family praying for me. I felt that God was going to use this situation to help not just me but other young women who might be struggling with issues like mine. I knew that this would not be happening to me unless He had planned it, so I went along for the ride, determined to do my best.

  I arrived at the studios at Rockefeller Center, and Rob met me at the entrance. His face had a “Well, here we go” smile on it as we were led back to the greenroom area by an assistant. I tried not to have a “Gee, golly” smile on my own face as I looked around at everyone bustling about the business of doing a morning news show. As the assistant turned to leave us, I nervously asked if someone would be doing my makeup. I’d only applied light street makeup, and I knew that I would appear very different on television.