Time Out

Time Out have a nice interview with Natalie over here, due to Black Swan opening in the UK in a few days.

But dancers do eat, don’t they?
‘I think in public they want everyone to believe that. And I think a lot of them do, a lot of them are healthy. I’m not making a blanket statement at all. But there are a lot of eating disorders. I don’t know if it’s more prevalent in certain companies, but when I talked to the women [dancers] they said pretty much every dancer in the company has had some bout of eating disorder. There are certainly cases of people who are healthy through and through, but, look, I did ballet for a year and just by the ballet you don’t get skinny. You get fit, but there’s effort required to look emaciated.’

New York Times dance critic Alastair Macaulay recently sparked controversy by saying a dancer looked like she’d ‘eaten one sugar plum too many’. Have you been following Sugar Plum gate?
‘Yes! That guy’s defence was that this is one of the standards of ballet and if you don’t want that you shouldn’t enter into it. But there are certain standards of ballet that are antiquated and need to be reversed. If someone’s line is off, if there’s something they can’t do or if they’re out of shape it’s different to if you’re making a comment on their appearance – which is just sick thinking.’