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Dancing pared the body, honed the musculature, subtly shifted bones. Training was transformation, and working with Balanchine involved a kind of metamorphosis entangled with pain, self-destruction and shame, but also with desire and joy. External form could even harmonize a fractured inner life, at least in the moment of dancing. It didn’t erase a person’s faults or dull her anxieties, but it did hold out the promise of a more ordered soul. At peak the dancer felt fluid and strong, integrated, coordinated, and above all clarified. Less mass and less food clogging the system (more blood to muscles) added to the feeling of the body as “true light” and a well-lubricated machine. Even the salty sweat purged through the ritual exercise of daily class felt like an unburdening, a purification that set a dancer apart from her unholy and civilian self. She was a different creature, part of a tribe, a chosen member of art.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/books/jennifer-homans-george-balanchine.html
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