A fine line: when (and why) to talk with students about "the dancer" body.

Your legs are too short. Your feet don't arch. You're way too tall. Your head is too big for your body. You'll never get a job with those thighs. Why don't your knees straighten? Guys can't partner fat ballerinas. Your torso is too short--no, wait--too long for your proportions. And by the way, dear, have you considered a breast reduction?

Everyone reading this article has heard criticism leveled at a dancer's specific body parts. For teachers who address body issues on a daily basis, the topic is ticklish, at best. How should teachers advise students with bodies that are less than ideal? What is the fine line between honest physical assessment and encouraging someone who loves to dance?

At the Boston Ballet School, there are two tracks of study: the standard program (with open enrollment) and the intensive program. In the latter, says school principal Dierdre Miles Burger, "We want to see that their bodies are going to be able to work intensely, safely, six days a week. We address issues like line, arch of the feet, turnout, and flexibility."

Likewise, The Ailey School's BFA and Fellowship Programs have prerequisites. "When I'm talking about the 'look' of the body, I'm talking about two things," says Denise Jefferson, who has directed the school since 1984. "How toned a body is or isn't, and facility--what that body can do. They need the muscular strength to be able to do our program."

So at what tender age should the subject of physical limitations be broached? Patricia Berrend heads the Berrend Dance Centre in Olney, Maryland, after having clocked years of experience at The Washington School of Ballet. "At age 10 or 11, very often you see if their feet are not properly structured for pointe work. I feel I have to be honest with them and tell them they'll be miserable trying to go on pointe, but that they should continue ballet training, because it's good for anything you want to do in other kinds of dance," says Berrend.

At Boston, Burger says that problem areas are discussed around age 12 or 13, but only by referencing what needs improvement. "We don't get really specific until they are 15 or 16--usually after they've gone through puberty," says Burger. "We don't want to squash their ambitions, because kids develop differently." (Case in point: Sometimes knees that won't straighten result from the unequal development of bones and tendons.) At the top intermediate levels, the Boston students receive written evaluations and one-on-one meetings to discuss practical career paths.

Many schools now offer Pilates, yoga, core training, and floor barres to help strengthen and shape bodies. Fabrice Herrault, a popular ballet teacher at Steps on Broadway who studied at the Paris Opera Ballet School ("Studio Talk," Oct. 2005), says that the training itself should help students correct some major problems, like overdeveloped outer thighs. "The French technique elongates the body," says Herrault. "Some of the parents are amazed at how my students' bodies have changed." Lawrence Rhodes, the director of Juilliard's Dance Division says, "In the last 30 years, teachers have become a lot more analytical and anatomically knowledgeable, which helps to solve things that might have previously been considered problematic."

And never underestimate how bodies can improve. Jefferson remembers one student who started training late with an unusually tight body and inflexible feet. "He was so hungry and wanted it so much--he stretched every day," says Jefferson. "In his second year, I could hardly believe it was the same person. I was so glad I never said anything, because he was so determined to make it happen." (Jefferson also regularly asks Renee Robinson, an Ailey principal who overcame numerous physical obstacles in her excellent career, to mentor students with physical limitations.)

Summer Lee Rhatigan, the director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, studied as a child at the Royal Ballet School, where anything outside of a prescribed anatomical aesthetic was considered unacceptable. At the age of 8, her wrist bones were examined at the London Children's Hospital to determine her eventual height. Years later, when she became a statuesque woman, she says, "The director of the Royal Ballet Upper School said I should consider flower arranging." She didn't listen and enjoyed a 20-year dance career.

Fortunately, teachers have generally become more enlightened about counseling students, but prejudices still exist. "To a great extent, there is still this idea about what a dancer should look like as opposed to what a dancer looks like when she moves," says Rhatigan. "I look for students who are prepared to accept what others might see as limitations and work within their own physical realm to become dancers." (She often has students work without a mirror to feel the correct line and movement rather than gawk at the reflected image). Working with difficult bodies, in her opinion, has made her a better teacher. "I think there is laziness and ignorance on the part of a lot of teachers," she says.

Guiding a talented student with an atypical physique in the appropriate direction means fitting the right person to the right job. "Ira dancer with flat feet and bulky thighs comes to me and says she wants to get into ABT, I'll tell her I don't think that's a good decision," says Rhatigan. "In some cases students may have to create their own professional environment." Jefferson frequently invites directors and choreographers to the Ailey School, so students can recognize their options (including commercial theater, like a recent Lion King seminar and audition held at the school).

Bottom line? In the dance profession, no matter how your body is shaped, you must be resourceful. And Jefferson offers this perennial advice on body image to all her students: "Analyze, don't judge, and move on."

Joseph Carman is a contributing editor to DANCE MAGAZINE and author of Round About the Ballet (Limelight Editions).