Food!

When I was of baby-sitting age, I would offer parents the option to pay me with money, or not pay me, but I'd be able to eat their food. New 'clients' often thought, ooh, bargain! and said sure, eat all you want-assuming, hey this kid's a twig and a dancer, what's she gonna do, eat us out of carrots sticks?

I almost felt sorry for them, but not sorry enough to keep from raiding their refrigerators. What the parents thought they'd be saving...well let's just say,they soon realized it was MUCH cheaper just to pay the usual going rate. One evening coming home to a half empty refrigerator, or missing all their junk food was usually enough to convince them that I could eat more than they could afford. And there's a simple reason for that: Dancers can out-eat anyone.

Ballet girls eat like teenage boys. Or like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. They eat. A lot. Granted, most ballet students, and professional dancers are the size of tiny birds. But have you ever seen a small creature like a bird eat? They almost never stop eating.

If a dancer for some reason is expected to stick to the three meal a day thing, or has been unable to eat for a while- watch out. As Agnes De Mille once said about dancers at a dinner party, "Why didn't you get more food? These are dancers, not normal people! Give them more food, or they'll eat the patterns off the plates!"

It's true. The dancing body needs to be fed, often. Dancers are ravenous, and if they are hungry things can get ugly. Ask a ballet student what they're thinking about at any given moment and the answer will either be dance or food. Usually food.