The ideal dancer’s body is unrealistic in many ways: bendier than a Barbie, incredibly lean but super-strong, with very particular proportions (in ballet, small head, long legs, short torso, high insteps). And also, it’s hairless. As with swimmers, athletes, gymnasts and others who wear leotards for a living, constant depilation is part of the job.
That goes for men as well as women. “I choose to shave because it gives me a sense of readiness,” says dancer and choreographer Eliot Smith. “I believe it gives me better outlines of the body against the stage lights.” On ballet message boards, it’s not uncommon to find parents of teenage boys asking what to do about hairy legs showing under white tights (wear two pairs of tights, or paint over hairs with pancake are two suggestions, if shaving isn’t an option).
But is there an alternative? When pole dancer Leila Davis was pictured in an Adidas campaign in March showing off armpit fuzz, as well as toned abs, there were plenty of online haters, predictably, but lots of lovers, too. And there are a few – although not many – contemporary dancers who are happy to let their body hair be seen on stage.
“I want it to be normalised,” says Jessie Roberts-Smith, a performer with Scottish Dance Theatre. And independent choreographer Ellie Sikorski sees it as part of a bigger picture. “It’s not the first fight I would pick about the homogeneity of bodies on stage,” she says. “But there’s something archaic in dance – where your body is policed in certain ways. You’re taught not to have agency over your body and body hair is a tiny detail of that.”
In ballet, land of smooth, clean lines and impossible perfection, it’s hard to imagine unkempt hairs sprouting up on stage any time soon. “In classical ballet you’re never going to see a beautiful tutu princess with loads of armpit hair,” laughs Nancy Osbaldeston, a principal with Ballet Vlaanderen in Antwerp, who fits in leg shaving and Brazilian waxes around her performance schedule. She recently danced Palmos, a ballet of bare legs and high-cut leotards by Andonis Foniadakis. “There were definitely some crotchy moments,” she recalls.
In fact, Osbaldeston thinks hair removal is so much part of the job that dancers might be able to claim it as an expense. “I think someone did tell me that if you have a good accountant to do your taxes, you can write it off,” she says. When Osbaldeston danced with English National Ballet, she remembers a woman coming in once and waxing everyone in turn as a job lot.
Begoña Cao, winner of a National Dance award, had a similar experience. “We’d put a mat down and lock the door.” Laser removal is popular as well. “I like to be tidy,” adds Cao. “The thought never crossed my mind to not take it off. If you have a tutu on, the audience from further out can’t see anything. But you’ve got your colleagues and people in the wings and those ballet fanatics that have their binoculars!”
Outside ballet, though, there are some hairs peeking through, in line with a wider cultural shift among Gen Z-ers happy to show off their armpits au naturel on Instagram, or even dye their body hair. And then there’s the beauty brand Billie, which advertises razors with pictures of models and their proudly furry bikini lines.
“I do feel like we’re getting more into a world where both are normal,” says Roberts-Smith, who is 26 and leaves her hair as it is, which is fine by Scottish Dance Theatre. “I don’t even think about it any more. I’m lucky to be in a company that embraces different shapes and sizes and hairless and hairy. It needs to be happening. For me, it is one of the most profound inequalities between men and women, that we have been removing parts of ourselves for such a long time, and that’s just deemed normal by society. It’s bonkers when you think about it, absolutely bananas.” Obviously, men do shave their faces, but it’s the sense of disgust attached to women’s hair that’s so gendered. “There’s all this deep-seated stuff about cleanliness, which just isn’t true,” says Roberts-Smith.
Sikorski, 33, stopped shaving her legs at 17. “Because, I suppose, I discovered that was possible,” she says, and because shaving irritated her skin. She’s more likely to get a reaction now on the tube than on stage – she’s had people take pictures of her when she’s been holding on to an overhead support. There’s a hierarchy of hirsuteness, though. Sikorski remembers that, in one of the first pieces she made, she wore a swimming costume. “I had hairy legs, hairy armpits, but I plucked my bikini line.”
“I think the bikini line is still a no-no,” says Robert-Smith, with regard to the move towards letting it all hang out – although she has a leotard piece coming up and isn’t planning to buy any Veet.
There are plenty more hair-related issues – most seriously, the dancers with afro hair who are told flat-out that it’s not appropriate for ballet. French dancer Marie-Astrid Mence talked about this in the film Pointe Black last year. The vagaries of personal grooming may seem trifling by contrast. But the discrimination against afro hair is changing, according to Northern Ballet’s dancer Aerys Merrill, who’s heard those stories, but hasn’t experienced negative comments about her own afro hair. In the US, she danced Clara in The Nutcracker with her natural hair proudly on show. “Some companies are more accepting; some companies want it to be extremely uniform, with the same slicked-back look,” she says.
Like Merrill, 17-year-old Taïs Vinolo, who appeared in Amazon’s The Show Must Go On advert last Christmas, used to straighten her hair. “I didn’t feel comfortable with my own hair until two or three years ago,” she says. Now she’s wondering if we’ll see ballet dancers with braided hair on stage. “I hope it’s going to happen. I’m pretty sure we are close to it,” she says, but adds that as a young pre-professional dancer, “I am scared to approach that subject with my teachers.”
Some choreographers actively incorporate (head) hair into their choreography, Pina Bausch being the queen of long flowing locks, whether swooping around the dancer like an extra limb in 2006’s Vollmond or being used to whip the cruel Bluebeard in her 1977 version of the folk tale. Osbaldeston says she missed out on being cast once because she had short hair and the choreographer wanted it long and swishy. Choreographers have a vision in mind – and that includes facial hair. Sikorski knows of a male dancer who has lost jobs because he won’t shave his beard off.
Smith has become more relaxed about his own facial hair, he tells me, in line with a general shift across the industry that includes dancers having visible tattoos. As an artistic director he has an open mind, he says, but expects the dancers to look “presentable” and be open to what’s needed for a particular character.
“I guess it’s a question of whether ballet is a personal expression or whether a choreographer has the final say over how you look,” says dancer James Forbat who, incidentally, shaves his chest and leg hair out of choice for performances, but has never explicitly been asked to.
Sikorski raises a similar point. Do you see a body as an abstract tool to create visual art, or a person who can’t be separated from what they’re doing? “People think you can abstract a body, and I fundamentally think you can’t, and shouldn’t,” she says. “That’s where I differ with a lot of people in the dance world.”
All these dancers agree on one thing, though: each to their own, everyone’s personal choice should be respected. But the decision to shave and wax, or wear your hair straightened or natural, inevitably reflects the values of their art forms as well as the wider culture at large. Osbaldeston doesn’t think any of her female colleagues will stop shaving their armpits soon. “I would feel bad for partnering, if a boy was holding you under your arms,” she says. “But they have hair there too,” she muses, “so I don’t know the difference really.”
