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Bodies that beat the odds: dancers of unconventional shapes and sizes talk about the challenges they face.

Article Excerpt
Nearly a century ago Sigmund Freud declared. "Anatomy is destiny." Today's "Extreme Makeover" culture, where rampant cosmetic surgeries are performed to attain instant ideals of beauty, tends to belie that notion. But in the world of dance, Freud's dictum is still generally the order of the day. For it is in dance, where gravity rules and the body is the vehicle of artistic expression, that form not only follows function--form is function. Dancers with unconventional body types have struggled--physically and psychologically--in their quest to find places in a dance world that is ever more competitive.

In getting a bead on such performers, Dance Magazine spoke to five dancers from different genres. Their stories, all unique, nevertheless have a common thread: coupling hard work with confidence in the face of rejection and, most importantly, never giving up hope.

Take Alisan Porter, now projecting her defiant charm as Bebe in A Chorus Line to the back row on Broadway ("On the Rise," Oct. 2006). She never grew past 5' 1", but that was not the only problem. "I always knew that I would never be a ballerina," she says, "mainly because I have big boobs." She became conscious of how others saw her. "I...

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