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New York City Ballerina Defends Herself Against Body Insult

By DNAinfo Staff on December 14, 2010 12:01pm

New York City Ballet principal dancer Jenifer Ringer was called fat by a
New York City Ballet principal dancer Jenifer Ringer was called fat by a "New York Times" critic.
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Broadway World

By Jennifer Glickel

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

MANHATTAN — Dancing sugar plum fairy Jenifer Ringer defended herself on Monday against a critic who called her fat in a review of the New York City Ballet’s production of "The Nutcracker."

The 37-year-old New York City ballet principal ballerina appeared on NBC's "Today Show" on Monday to respond to New York Times critic Alastair Macaulay’s review late last month in which he wrote that Ringer "looked as if she’d eaten one sugar plum too many."

"I really had to tell myself that's one person's opinion, you know, out of the 2,000 people that were there that night," the dancer, who used to suffer from an eating disorder, said on NBC's "TODAY Show."

The critic did not apologize to the ballerina in a follow-up article he wrote on Dec. 3, but instead he defended his original words, saying, "If you want to make your appearance irrelevant to criticism, do not choose ballet as a career."

Ringer said that she did not want or expect an apology from Macaulay.

"I know as a dancer that I'm going to get criticized, and I also know that, again, there were, you know, 2,000 people probably out there, and so he got to put his opinion in the paper, but everybody else had a different opinion as well," she said.

Ringer credited the New York City Ballet with being composed of dancers with a diversity of body types, including her own.

"I do have, I guess, a more womanly body type than the stereotypical ballerina," Ringer said. "But that's one of the wonderful things about actually the New York City Ballet is we have every body type you can imagine. We have tall, we have petite, we have athletic, we have womanly, we have waif like."

"And I think dance should be more of a celebration of that, of seeing these beautiful women with these different bodies all dancing to this gorgeous music, and that's what should be celebrated," the ballerina continued.