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by Molly Dowell

I recently saw a photography piece, "Dancer" by Irving Penn on exhibit at the Whitney Museum. The striking thing about the photos was not that they were of a nude Alexandra Beller, but that hers is not what one would typically think of as a naked dancer's body. She's not tall and thin with well-defined muscles and barely developed breasts. No. She's fat.

Beller took a big risk posing nude for Penn's camera. She dared people to see her as a dancer, not just a fat woman. She dared people to see her as a sex symbol, not just a fat woman. She dared people to see her as an emotional woman- sensitive, powerful, frightened, bold, shy, loving, rebellious. She owns her body, and she challenges the audience to own their hesitation and move past it to see her exposed for the woman she really is.

The exhibit made me immediately curious about Beller and her work. Formerly dancing with Bill T. Jones' company, Beller is now choreographing her own works. When I heard she would be presenting her latest work, It's Not You, It's Me at the Joyce Soho, I got out my umbrella and waited for over an hour in a standby line to see her perform.

My friends had teased me for wanting to see Beller's show, saying "Wouldn't it be weird. I mean you saw her naked," and "Do you think she'll dance naked too?" But that was one of the reasons I wanted to see the show. I really identified with Beller in many ways. I was deeply impressed with her confidence to pose nude in the first place. Obesity, seen as repulsive, is despised at best, yet politely ignored. But Beller will not be ignored. I wondered what it was that gave her this confidence in her body. And I wondered what she would express with her body in her dance works. I was compelled by the risks she had taken with Penn, and compelled to see what else she would risk.

When I saw It's Not You, It's Me, particularly the last piece, 50 Ways to Find a Mate, I was bombarded by feelings of pain, sadness, confusion that come with rejection, insecurities that are connected with bodies and body images. I got the feeling that Beller, though a beautiful and talented dancer is still an imperfect woman who struggles with her self-confidence, especially in romantic relationships.

In one of the scenes I remember vividly, Beller seemingly finds her soul-mate in a deaf man, shirtless and skinny-as-a-rail. But as they are about to sail into the sunset together, Beller realizes her dreamboat is looking past her to another, thinner woman.

In Beller's work, I see situations and emotions from daily life reflected back to the audience through her choreography. Jane Desmond explores dance as a means of studying culture. She looks at how people move in social dance, theatrical performance, and ritual, saying, "We can further our understandings of how social identities are signaled, formed, and negotiated through bodily movement" (29). If Desmond were to look into the mirror Beller offers, what would she see about the culture Beller lives in? Beller's work inherently explores physicality in relationships. Her choreography includes interesting choices of coupled dancing. She transitions between small "scenes" in the dance (such as the one with the deaf man) with two, three, four dancers, or sometimes the whole ensemble performing synchronized movements. She employs men and women, women and women, men and men in paired movement. Many of the moves she takes from social dance and yoga. The movements and positions of the couples suggest relationship status, such as power struggles, sexual encounters, and emotional health. Suddenly, partners trade, repeating the same score of physical movements. They trade again, leaving two dancers performing the same ensemble movements, but partnerless, alone.

The intricate dance of bodies finding a mate is eerily mirrored in Beller's dance. The dancers constantly trade partners searching for their other half, portraying emotion through movement. In my acting class, we've been talking about sense memory, or how our bodies know how to respond to particular emotional situations. My teacher continually tells us that our bodies already know what to do. Sometimes in class if he is trying to get actors to portray paranoia and fear in a scene, he will ask them what they're most afraid of; then they spin out images of snakes, rats, roaches, and other creepy-crawlers skittering and slithering all over in a small enclosed space. Immediately, the students' bodies writhe, and grossed-out looks come over every face. Our bodies do know.

As Beller's rejection unfolds, I'm sure that someone watching me would likewise see my body remembering rejection. I become aware of myself closing the doors to the vulnerable parts, which had been pried open by Beller's honest, intriguing choreography. As she herself slumps back into a contracted body and slowly backs away from the happy couple, which she is not a part of, I struggle to keep myself open to her work instead of being turned off by the blatant mirror of reality that Beller holds up to me and her audience. This hesitancy is not an isolated incident. My reluctance to remain open to Beller's expression at this point in her piece reflects my initial reluctance to see the photographs of her. My first response to them was not appreciative, but shocked. I was afraid to face the truth of them. I went into the Joyce with a residue of the same hesitancy and fear, ready to don my protective shield of aloofness with my academic pose. I think it also parallels my hesitancy to access the full range of movement that my body possesses.

My acting teacher is forever telling me that I need to be more physical, release more energy in my movements. He claims that I start to open up and release, but don't do so fully, that he can see there's more there trying to come out if I'd just let it. This encouragement initially perplexed me, as did my fear of viewing the Penn exhibit.

Why do people shy away from a fat woman posing nude before a camera? Why am I afraid to use my body and let it dance? Why do people marvel at the fact that Beller, fat and gross by society's standards, can still dance? Why is she considered a freak show? Obviously the body can perform beautiful, graceful, artful movements through a rail-thin bulimic ballerina as well as through the plus-sized Beller. But we are not accustomed to such beauty.

I am studying dance semi-seriously for the first time in my life. I find myself thinking that as soon as I lose a few pounds, as soon as I develop a few more muscles, I will be able to move with much more ease and grace, and won't be so hesitant to let my body access its knowledge of movement. This thought never strikes me as out of the ordinary, since I often feel the solution to all my problems would be to loose a few pounds. What's more, it seems to me that every woman in America shares this thought. It is as if we are always striving to achieve a certain stereotypical look of the female sex symbol.

What I find to be even more intriguing, and perhaps quite disturbing is how many of the young women in my studio harbor the same dissatisfaction with their bodies. They look perfect to me. They are slim, yet not sticks, muscular, yet still smooth: the embodied female sex symbol. Why then, do they want to be thinner? I think the reason women of all shapes and sizes are inclined to be obsessed with the desire for "perfect" bodies, is all about finding a perfect mate. So many cultural dances are, or mirror, dating rituals. The way a woman moves determines whether or not she is attractive to a mate. And the way a woman feels about her body determines how much or how little she will let her body move.

Desmond considers the question of restricted movement:

We can ask who dances, when and where, in what ways, with whom, and to what end? And just as important, who does not dance, in what ways, under what conditions and why? Why are some dances, some ways of moving the body, considered forbidden for members of certain social classes, "races," sexes? By looking at dance we can see enacted on a broad scale, and in codified fashion, socially constituted and historically specific attitudes toward the body in general, toward specific social groups' usage of the body in particular, and about the relationships among variously marked bodies, as well as social attitudes toward the use of space and time. (32)

When Desmond asks, "Who does not dance," I could answer, I don't. Girls or women who feel they are overweight don't. I sometimes feel that my body is forbidden to dance. I feel that the "socially constituted attitudes" towardmy body are that people don't want to see my body on a stage moving. My body is marked with weight. The attitude says it's okay for my body to look the way it does, that I should accept it, and that other people should accept me just the way I am. But at the same time, the attitude also puts women who do get up on a stage and dance under a barrage of harsh criticism.

During an interview at New York University, Bill T. Jones spoke of his use of dancers with "non-traditional body types," including the 350 lb. Lawrence Goldhuber and later the full-figured, voluptuous Beller (Jones). I was shocked by what he said about the reception audiences gave Beller. Prefacing with "People are really hard on women," Jones went on to say, "People would go out of their way to say mean things about [Beller]." He even shared a comment made by a friend of his, an educated, respectable man who said that it was "very distracting to see her body onstage." Distracting.

I thought about this in terms of my own hesitancy to dance. Did Beller's body distract me when I saw her perform? Yes. I remember wanting to protect her, cover her, not wanting her to let people see her so exposed, exposed both figuratively in the vulnerability in her work, and literally in her skin and flesh that I could see.

These feelings of inadequacy connected with body image that many women carry are cumbersome burdens, which often result in a restricted movement, or no movement at all.

There was a big campaign in public schools all through my elementary school years to accept everyone, according to this philosophy that others will like you just the way you are. But children are brutally honest; many haven't learned discretion, political correctness-that way that we adults have of lying and sugarcoating. Little boys on the playground don't chase the fat little girls to show them affection the same way they chase the rest of the girls.

The idea that to be thin is to be beautiful is also ever-present in the media as well as in our casual cultural exchanges. Advertising campaigns play off women's sensitivity and envy of "classically beautiful" leggy models, using them to sell beauty products. What women buy when they buy these products is the image. Children learn these values from immersion in a culture that buys into the vicious cycle. It may start with little boys and girls, but big boys and girls do it too. As my male friends drool over the Playboy bunnies, it's as if they were screaming, "Now she is hot! Look at what she has! That's what I desire in a woman."Take the woman who's in the front of the line at a posh copy house, when in waltzes a classic looking long-legged blonde. The boy behind the counter waits on the newcomer first as the waiting woman asks herself, what's she got that I don't? With one look it's obvious what she has-a different body, a body that this first woman is now going to measure her own body's worth, beauty, and attractiveness against. I think of times when people have said how great I look. But looking good implies dropped pounds, and yet that comment makes me feel so good. Slimming down pays off in dividends of positive attention.

Attention. Desire. That's what I want. I want it from men. That's what most women want. We want men to love us. But we also want men to desire us. Perhaps there is something to be said for catcalls, stares, murmurs of "Damn, I wanna hit that!," a manifestation of animal desire-not only physical lust but also a biological urge to find a healthy, viable, "perfect" mate.

Beller is fierce in her desire for men and passionate about her desire to be accepted for who she is and what she does. There's something about Beller that is very sexy; the essence that evokes catcalls, evokes physical desire, is present in her performance and in her body. However, I don't think everyone is able to see this at first glance. The stigma of body image and the stereotype that thinner is prettier weighs heavily on the collective unconscious. With Jones' friend, it was distracting enough to prohibit him from fully enjoying and appreciating Beller's work.

No wonder that women are not free to move inside their skin, and accept their movements. Neither can the audiences or general public watch and appreciate those movements. So women do not dance because we fear that someone, man or woman, will negatively judge our bodies.

Beller presents a new way of valuing the body. She uses her choreography to expose and present a reflection of skewed evaluations of the female body, and challenges these preconceived, loaded standards. Her presence, her movement, her art are a living challenge to her audience to think differently. I began to see that there is nothing freakish about her, though there is perhaps something freakish about the bulimic ballerina who thinks she's fat, just as there is something freakish, or at least not natural, about most women who want to be thinner.

When I found myself hesitant to watch at watching Beller, or now when I am restricting the natural movement that my body knows (being one of the people who doesn't dance), the only way I know how to deal with it is to acknowledge the hesitance and then put it aside. Only then am I open to seeing and receiving what movement offers. I have to get past the obstacles. Once I am able to do that, I revel in the photos of Beller because her body type is so much like mine. I revel in her dance because so many of the scenes she portrays represent me. Perhaps now when I view my naked body in the mirror, instead of judging myself against societal standards, I will be able to see instead the beauty and grace that Penn saw in Beller. Perhaps now, as I concentrate on my figure in the wall of mirrors in my ballet class, instead of thinking how terrible my technique is, I can see the grace and power that I too saw in Beller. Perhaps I can see the dancer in her dance.

Works Cited

Desmond, Jane. "Embodying Difference: Issues In Dance and Cultural Studies." Meaning in Motion. Ed. Desmond. Durham: Duke UP, 1997. 29-54.

It's Not You, It's Me. Chor. Alexandra Beller. Perf. Alexandra Beller, Toby Billowitz, Megan Brunsvold, Sarah Carlson, Tracey Dickson, Justin Donham, Tarek Halaby, Christopher Healy, Mira Kingsley, Adam Klotz, Jill Locke, Christina May, Brendan McCall, Toni Melaas, Gretchen Pallo, Greta Parsons, Brian Reid, LiYana Silver, and Anna Smith. Joyce Soho. New York. 10 Feb. 2002.

Jones, Bill T., and Michelle Dent and MJ Thompson. Interview. "Writing, Speaking, Moving: The Choreography and Critical Reception of Bill T. Jones." New York: New York U. 20 Mar. 2002.

Penn, Irving. Dancer. Whitney Museum, New York.

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