Dancer's death at 22 casts shadow over Boston, ballet world.

BOSTON -- The death of a 22-year-old Boston Ballet dancer, two years after BB officials suggested she lose weight and six months after they told her she was too thin and should stop losing weight, has cast a shadow over the company and the ballet world.

Heidi Guenther collapsed suddenly June 30 -- as her mother and brother watched helplessly -- near Paso Robles, California, in a car headed for Disneyland. She was rushed to the hospital in nearby San Luis Obispo and pronounced dead at 9:55 p.m., according to the local coroner's office.

The coroner had not determined the cause of death at press time, although a spokesperson said the initial autopsy had ruled out both a heart condition and anorexia. Still, the death set off a flurry of controversy in Boston and the nation when the Boston Globe reported July 10 that BB spokeswoman Nina Berger confirmed that Anna-Marie Holmes, then assistant artistic director, had told Guenther in 1996 to lose weight. The newspaper said "several dancers said ballet members had become noticeably thinner as Holmes took over more and more duties from artistic director Bruce Marks." The newspaper alleged that "the [Boston] ballet ... acknowledged that Guenther, and several others, had been told that they must lose weight, especially if they wanted to dance principal roles."

Holmes, now artistic director of BB, told Dance Magazine the Globe charge that she had told Guenther to lose weight was "absolutely false. Two and a half years ago when she first came to the company, she was a little chubby, and the artistic staff sat with her and asked her to lose five pounds." Holmes denied telling dancers that getting principal roles was contingent on losing weight.

Lola de Avila, who taught Guenther at San Francisco Ballet School for seven years until she joined Boston's second company in 1994, said Guenther did not need to lose weight at that point, "but her last year here her body was changing when she became a young lady." De Avila remembered her student as "teeny, small-boned, and very energetic. She was very young, because when she left here she was eighteen, and her body was like a young girl's body. She was a very lovely girl, very sweet and talented."

By the 1995-96 season, Holmes said, "she came back and danced a full season with us. She had lost the five pounds and looked beautiful. I don't know how much she lost, but she looked beautiful, and we told her she looked good and to stay the way she was." Guenther joined the first company in 1996.

Guenther apparently didn't stop losing weight. In Nutcracker last December, Holmes said, "she looked too thin." During the dancer's January evaluation, the director said, "I said to her to be careful not to look too thin and please don't lose any more weight, we are concerned and hope you are eating well. I told her I'd make available any nutritionists." This advice is recorded in the evaluation, Holmes said, which Guenther signed. Holmes said she asked BB's staff nutritionists to "monitor" Guenther, although she did not ask them to specifically examine her for a possible eating disorder. "We were trying to make her have good, healthy eating habits, but there was no sign here that she had an eating disorder," Holmes insisted.

If Guenther's death was related to an eating disorder, specialists in dancers' health were not shocked."I'm not surprised," said Dr. Linda Hamilton, a Dance Magazine contributing editor, former dancer, and clinical psychologist who has a regular column in this magazine. "We can't blame all eating disorders on the dance world, but there are a lot of eating problems, and dancers take the same approach to weight loss as they do to everything else: they put their whole heart and soul into it. So if this director [Holmes] told her to lose weight, I wouldn't be surprised if she took a drastic approach, because I see it all the time."

In a recent Dance Magazine survey [November 1996], 34 percent reported using fad diets. 17 percent of females and 6 percent of males reported eating problems.