The Royal Ballet School reaches settlement with ex-student after body shaming claims

The Royal Ballet School has reached a legal settlement with an ex-student after she claims she was body shamed whilst at the institution.

Ellen Elphick, claimed the school’s body shaming culture led to her development of an eating disorder.

The Royal Ballet School (RBS), based in central London, trains dancers between the ages of 11 and 19 in the hopes of professionally recruiting them for the Royal Ballet company. Ellen, now 31, was a student at RBS from 2009-2012 as she dreamed of one day joining the company as a professional dancer.

According to the BBC, during her first year at the school, Ellen’s lawyer claimed she was made to “stand in front of a mirror while a teacher pointed out areas of her body on her buttocks and leg that she would cut off if she had a knife, stating that she was disgusted with the size of these parts of Ellen’s body”.

The following year, Ellen says the same teachers commended her weight loss and pushed her colleagues to do the same. Ellen’s subjection to these comments led her to a diagnosis of atypical anorexia and body dysmorphic disorder.

A similar case occurred in 2001 when students at the San Francisco Ballet school complained the school was discriminating against them based on body types. The Department of Admissions wrote that such standards are a consequence of a particular aesthetic in ballet called “line” where “the arrangement of the body’s parts in relation to one another is a critical factor in academic dance.”

Adding: “Parts should be disposed against one another in a varied and pleasing design.”

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The instillation of such values from a young age has resulted in around 16.4 per cent of ballet dancers to struggle with eating disorders, an analysis by Alicia Anderson at Marquette University reveals.

Upon the settlement was reached, a spokesperson for the RBS voiced that the school is “pleased that both parties were able to reach a mutually acceptable agreement in this way and [they] wish Ellen and her family well for the future.”

They then go on to comment on how the school “continues to take the welfare of its students very seriously”.

Ellen is among 50 other ex-dancers who reported the culture of toxic body shaming to the BBC. She told the media organisation that she came forward “so that children can go into dance and not leave it damaged as I am.”

Featured image via Unsplash – Michael Afonso