Dancing Through It

January 6, 2014
“The ballet world is a narcissistic world made up of circles of interlocking insecurities,” says New York City Ballet principal Ringer as she looks back on more than two decades in the company. With disarming candor, she relates devastating low points she experienced as a young dancer, invited to join City Ballet at age 16, as well as years of ascension through the hypercritical ballet world. Her story is turbulent, littered with trials and failures, but also with miraculous comebacks, like after she was fired from City Ballet, criticized for her atypical body size in the New York Times, her problems then dissected in the national media. Ringer infuses her narrative with a deep appreciation for the magic of the theater and a moving sense of gratitude toward her success in such an arduous profession. She is candid about her struggle with eating disorders, her rediscovery of the Christian faith, and her realization, with motherhood, that performances need not be the only measure of success and happiness. Fans of the ballet will revel in her intricately detailed, gently humorous descriptions of rehearsals, hair and make-up preparations, and onstage mishaps. When writing about her religion, occasionally Ringer’s words seem rehearsed, but her memoir is an eloquent reminder that moving forward often involves a few falls, missteps, and leaps of faith.

December 1, 2013
Faith buoys one dancer's life. At the age of 14, studying dance in Washington, D.C., Ringer was chosen to fill in at the Washington Ballet. The piece was George Balanchine's lyrical, elegant Serenade, and performing, Ringer recalls, felt "like a light taking up residence in my chest." She decided then that she must become a professional ballerina. When her family moved to New York, she was accepted into the prestigious School of American Ballet, the feeder for the New York City Ballet. There, she undertook a grueling schedule of classes, as well as finishing high school. She was also faced with Balanchine's ideal of the perfect ballerina: "small head, long neck and limbs, slim hips, arched feet, tall and very thin." When Ringer reached puberty, however, her new curves generated anxiety that her body was out of her control. At the same time, she was accepted into the New York City Ballet as an apprentice, which intensified her training and also her feelings of vulnerability about her body and her talent. Dancers, she realized, never admit pain, exhaustion or weakness but instead sacrifice their bodies "for the approval of whoever happened to be watching, whether it be a ballet master or the audience." Desperate to exert control over her life, Ringer became obsessed with her body image and spent the next few years alternating between anorexia and bingeing. Finally, she gained so much weight that ballet master Peter Martins fired her. The author reclaimed her life and her career through a renewal of her religious faith: prayer and a belief in God's watchful care. Married now, with two children, she is a principal ballerina with the NYCB. Told with modesty and humility, Ringer's memoir exposes the unrelenting rigor of a dancer's life and the passion and exhilaration of dance itself.

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February 1, 2014
Dancing has always been essential to Ringer. As a child, a student, and a principal dancer for the New York City Ballet, dance and her strong faith in God were at the center of her life. And she has danced with the best over the course of her extremely successful career while also becoming a wife and mother. With ballet dancers, body image can become an obsession, and like so many others, Ringer suffered from anorexia and bulimiauntil she ended up gaining enough weight to be fired from the company. Perseverance, prayer, family, and church helped her to get past these issues and return to the company. Then, just when she finally came to terms with her body type, a New York Times critic suggested that she was fat, creating a publicity storm that drove her to the talk shows. Ringer now offers a frank and open account of her demanding dance life, revealing seldom-seen technical aspects of this rigorous art form. A sure hit for balletomanes and everyone concerned about body-image issues.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

October 15, 2013

A principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, Ringer was put through the ringer a few years back when New York Times dance critic Alastair Macaulay made scalding comments about her weight when reviewing a performance of The Nutcracker, commenting that she looked as if she had had one sugarplum too many. That launched a nationwide conversation about the fraught issue of dance and weight, which Ringer participated in and addresses here, even as she ranges widely over her life as a dancer.

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