Food has played a role in Jay Carlon’s work since 2020, when the pandemic prompted his deep reflection into what it would look like to decolonize performance. “I wanted to do that with feeding the audience,” he remembers. “If you ever go to a Filipino household, the first thing that they will make you do is eat, and if you don’t eat, it’s rude. So I was trying to infuse that into my practice.”

Dancers know they need to eat well to fuel their performance. However, pervasive messages from diet culture, combined with dancers’ perfectionistic tendencies, often lead them to label certain foods as “bad.” In addition to damaging your overall relationship with food, dietitians say this habit could lead you to miss out on some real nutritional benefits. […]

Stephan Azulay has been helping out in the kitchen ever since he was a kid. “My dad’s a flamenco dancer, and part of the flamenco culture is food,” he says. When he began dancing professionally with Joffrey Ballet Concert Group and then Nevada Ballet Theatre, Azulay looked to restaurants for side gigs—everything from washing dishes […]

Growing up on a farm in Canada, eating meals made from scratch, Steve Konopelski assumed every family always had fresh baked bread and homemade jams. “Baking was second-nature to me,” he says. “I found it very comforting.” He started dancing at 8, and trained at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School for three years at the […]

The story usually looks like this: You feel the pressure to get in shape before your upcoming intensive or an important performance. But you know that starting a diet will bring its fair share of critics. Then you see your favorite Instagram star tout the misguided benefits of a #glutenfree lifestyle and voilà! A self-diagnosed […]

COVID-19 has taken a grip on the world. On Wednesday, the World Health Organization announced we officially have a pandemic. Thursday, we learned that Broadway is suspending all shows for a month—as are many other dance organizations. Around the country, we see responses to the coronavirus. It’s led many people to ask what foods they […]

When the cat food started smelling good, I knew I had a problem. I’d always considered eating disorders to be extreme. Someone who never eats. Someone who weighs less than 100 pounds. Someone who gets hospitalized. My behavior didn’t fit the mental health definition of an eating disorder. I ignored it because I didn’t know […]