Balletic Bodies

I very much appreciated Lewis Segal’s Perspective regarding the extreme body type on which ballet has insisted for the last 25 years or so (‘The Shape of Things to Come,� April 1). It has been that long since I have enjoyed a live performance.

For me, a great part of the pleasure I used to get from ballet is seeing the dancer work against gravity-and that means seeing an actual body, inhabited by a dancer who has enough vitality and presence to be able to experience and convey emotions. Those too-thin bodies may be technically adept, but they project only that the dancer has been compelled to treat herself like a machine.

Let’s see some sturdier, or at least not anorexic, people up there.

KAREN GREENBAUM-MAYA

Claremont