THE glittering world of ballet hides a nightmare behind its curtains – a world of control, cruelty, and corruption.
An ex-ballerina has lifted the lid on the dark, damaging and deeply disturbing reality of elite ballet training – revealing how teenage girls were ranked, starved, humiliated and even hit in the name of “perfection”.
Speaking exclusively to The Sun, Jeanie Francis, now 24, described her time training under a Russian-style ballet scheme as “one of the most damaging experiences” of her life.
“You’re totally immersed in that environment,” she said. “There’s no outside balance at all.”
Dr Sharon Chirban, who runs a nationally recognised clinical sports psychology practice in Boston, has spent decades treating dancers pushed to breaking point by the demands of ballet.
In her work with young performers – many of them already battling eating disorders – she has seen firsthand how early the pressure takes hold.
Sharon told The Sun: “Ballet demands perfection. Forty-five per cent of people who dance, men and women, would endorse using some kind of disordered eating to support their body composition.”
Dance has long dazzled audiences – the grace, the discipline, the illusion of effortlessness.
But for many dancers, the spotlight hides years of silence, suffering, and abuse.
For some, the stage is their only escape – a rare moment of expression in a career defined by suppression.
Behind the elegance lies exhaustion. Behind the smiles, pain.
The art form that celebrates control has often demanded it in the cruellest of ways.
Hours spent staring into mirrors, searching for perfection, as teachers bark orders that break bodies and spirits.
Many dancers describe a twisted tale of resentment – a lifetime devoted to an industry that worships perfection but forgets the person.
When the music stops, they’re left with the scars – physical and emotional – of a world that prizes endurance over empathy.
Nowhere is that pressure more intense than in Russia’s famed ballet institutions.
Revered for their discipline and precision, they’ve also become notorious for the darkness behind the discipline.
For decades, young dancers have been pushed to the edge – starved, shamed, and sacrificed for the sake of the art.
Behind the dazzling productions are stories of punishment and control.
It’s an industry famed for its discipline, precision – and its unforgiving demands.
For generations, dancers have been pushed to the brink, trained to embody perfection at any cost.
Behind the breathtaking performances are stories of exhaustion, punishment, and control.
Former ballerina Jeanie began dancing at a very young age and was accepted into one of the harshest ballet academies in Washington, the Kirov Academy – an institution run with the severity of a boarding school and the pressure of a military camp.
The dancers lived on site in what Jeanie described as “closet-sized” dorm rooms, cut off from normal teenage life and constantly monitored.
Food, she revealed, was tightly controlled.
“You weren’t allowed to have food in your room,” she said. “The only food you could eat was what the chef prepared.”
Every morning, students were forced to eat breakfast with their teachers so their meals could be watched.
“Sometimes they’d serve bagels in the canteen,” Jeanie said. “But teachers would say, ‘You can’t have carbs, you can’t have bread anymore,’ so we’d only be allowed fruit for breakfast.”
Meals were often barely recognisable.
“They’d serve this thing we called ‘slobber’,” she said. “It was basically applesauce mixed with cauliflower.”
Once a week, the girls were allowed a supervised trip to Walmart – a rare taste of freedom.
“We’d buy a pack of M&M’s and eat the entire thing in one go,” Jeanie admitted. “It felt like such a huge treat.”
Inside the studio, the pressure intensified.
Jeanie recalled how she had once been one of the leading dancers in her class – until a new teacher arrived.
“She just didn’t like the way I looked,” Jeanie said. “She preferred shorter dancers. I’d always been very tall.”
Despite ballet’s reputation for tall, lean bodies, Jeanie was suddenly deemed too tall.
She was quietly removed from core dances, given less attention and left to fade into the background.
“She didn’t nurture me the way she did the others,” Jeanie said.
At the academy, dancers were ranked using a brutal “bar system” – physically placed from worst to best during class.
“You were literally ranked in front of everyone,” Jeanie said. “It was so discouraging – and I was only 16.”
The strongest dancers stood in the middle of the bar. Those who slipped in favour were pushed further and further to the edges.
“Every lesson, the order changed depending on who was ‘doing well’ and who wasn’t.”
The psychological toll was relentless.
Once a month, the girls were weighed in front of their peers.
“It stopped a lot of us from eating when we actually needed to,” Jeanie said. “Everyone was terrified of not meeting the weight.”
Dr. Chirban said: “Some dance schools support a very restrictive diet that doesn’t allow dancers to be necessarily healthy.”
The rise of Ozempic and access to the thinning drug has become increasingly easy for teenagers to obtain – adding yet another layer of danger.
Chirban confirms she has treated “many cases” of dancers using them in pursuit of the “desired shape” demanded by directors and teachers.
Jeanie’s Dance School has made its expectations for aspiring dancers strikingly clear with a chart detailing ideal weights according to height.
For example, a girl standing 174cm (5.7ft) tall is listed with an ideal weight of 49.8kg (109.8lb), while someone 168cm (5.5ft) tall is suggested to weigh 45.7kg (100lb).
Even those on the shorter side aren’t exempt, with a 155cm (5ft) tall dancer recommended to maintain a weight of 37kg (81.5lb).
The chart doesn’t just offer numbers – it serves as a guideline for ambitious dancers aiming to meet the school’s harsh standards and succeed in its rigorous training programs.
It finishes with a cautionary note: “Girls who weigh over 50kg (110lb) will have very limited access to partnering classes, to protect the boys from potential injuries.”
Cruel comments were thrown around freely.
“Things like ‘I can see your lunch’ were said all the time,” she recalled. “It was super detrimental.”
Speaking with Dr. Chirban, she said: “Children don’t have a core ab structure at that age, or a muscle tone. A tummy is completely normal.”
Jeanie continued: “I remember being in the middle of the bar when we started preparing for exams – but by the time the exam came around, I’d been pushed so far off to the side I was basically hidden in a corner.”
“It was everything I’d worked for,” she added. “And it was taken away.”
The physical treatment was just as shocking.
Jeanie claimed teachers would use canes to “correct” students – sometimes striking them.
“They’d hit dancers with it,” she said. “Or repeatedly hit a foot until it was forced into the right position.”
Students were even graded on their appearance.
“I’ll never forget what was on our report cards,” Jeanie said. “‘Maintenance of aesthetic body condition.’ That was an actual grade.”
Jeanie said due to her “height”, she was always graded a “B”, not the worst, but never the best.
Despite the trauma, Jeanie admits ballet still shapes her today.
“It never really leaves you,” she said. “The perfectionism, the discipline, the obsession with aesthetics.”
“I’m always trying to make things look put together, classy, visually perfect.”
But the cost, she said, was devastating.
“In the end,” Jeanie said quietly, “that experience is what pushed me out of ballet completely.”
That pressure manifests differently for every young dancer.
Dr. Chirban said: “There’s some dancers who just seem to feel like it works for them to be pushed,” she explains, “and then others who kind of crumble underneath it all.”
One case has stayed with her for years. A 15-year-old girl had just returned from a prestigious summer intensive in New York when she was bluntly told she would “never have a career as a dance teacher” because her breasts were considered too large.
What followed was a decision that still troubles Chirban.
The teenager and her mother agreed she would undergo a breast reduction at just fifteen.
“This is a story of extreme measures people would go to to be able to try and make something work, even with no guarantee,” she said.
“They made a decision that they thought was right for them, even if it’s morally not ok.”
Within ballet, compliance can feel like the only currency that matters.
“Following rules, being dutiful, and being compliant is still one of the more sure ways into a professional company,” Chirban said.
“You don’t want to be the whistleblower if you also want to be chosen.”
The result, she argues, is an environment where parents are “pretty much sacrificing their children for the sake of having a future that is not even promised.”
For her, these aren’t isolated incidents but symptoms of a system built on silence, sacrifice and an unrelenting vision of perfection – one in which even children are conditioned to shape themselves, sometimes literally, into whatever the industry demands.