Most ballet dancers lead physically demanding lives and often have short careers, especially if they want to have families. However, there are a handful of top ballerinas who are challenging the standard.
Photographer Lucy Gray followed the lives of three lead ballerinas from the San Francisco Ballet over the course of 14 years for her book, Balancing Acts. The three women — Kristin Long, Tina LeBlanc and Katita Waldo — were at the top of their careers when they decided to have children and continued to dance after they became moms.
“As a proud feminist, I once held negative, unfounded beliefs about ballerinas,” Gray wrote in the introduction of her book. Apparently, before starting this project, her view of dancers was more of a stereotype of rail-thin women who worked tirelessly to please male directors for their art — over the course of time, she found that was not so.
“When I first started this project, I was a working mother, like the ballerinas in this book…but I was not inspired by our likenesses…It was my hope, even my intention, that they would reframe my views, open my mind, and help me let go of prejudice. They did not disappoint,” Gray wrote.
Balancing Acts by Lucy Gray – book trailer from Princeton Architectural Press on Vimeo.
Gray first met ballerina Katita Waldo and her son in 1999, who inspired her to begin her series. Waldo introduced Gray to fellow dancers Kristin Long and Tina LeBlanc. “I couldn’t miss noticing her: she was thin and pale — she looked destitute — and was carrying her infant son…I ignored everything I thought I knew about ballerinas and opened myself to discovering the reality of her life,” wrote Gray.
The emotional and physical toll of pregnancy is not lost on the three dancers, or on Gray. “A ballerina’s belief in her power is reflected in her body…Letting go and gaining weight and then pushing another being out of her is anathema to every experience she’s ever had,” Gray wrote.
Over the next decade and a half, Gray recounts her experiences with them, documenting the dancers practicing their art through the births of their other children, overcoming stage fright and even eventually dancing their last performances.
Image: Balancing Acts Lucy Gray
One important detail she notices while documenting the women’s lives was that contrary to popular belief, pregnancy and maternity did not hinder their performance, but rather improved it. “[The dancers] all felt that the break from dancing — the first since they were toddlers — was rejuvenating in the extreme, and each dancer found that the new commitments in her personal life freed her on stage,” Gray wrote.
Gray notes that Waldo, LeBlanc and Long were lucky to have had the understanding and assistance of Helgi Tomasson, the artistic director and principal choreographer of the SFB, who helped the women rearrange their schedules in a way that was beneficial to them financially and personally. Tomasson was also lenient with allowing children backstage once the women gave birth.
Gray hopes that these three women’s inspiring stories will help break the stereotype that ballerinas must end their careers to have families, which particularly plagues the American ballet world.
Gray’s book, Balancing Acts, is available for purchase.
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