Britain’s top ballet school settles body-shaming lawsuit with former student
By Lianne Kolirin, CNN
(CNN) — A world-famous ballet school has agreed a legal settlement with a woman who claimed she developed an eating disorder as a result of body-shaming while studying there.
Ellen Elphick, who was a student at the Royal Ballet School in London, said she became anorexic while participating in an intense training program as a teenager.
The school trains students between the ages of 11 and 19, selecting the most promising to join the Royal Ballet company as professional dancers.
According to a media statement issued by her lawyers Leigh Day on Thursday, Elphick was a student at the school between 2009 and 2012, from age 16 to 19.
The settlement does not represent an admission of liability or an apology by the school, the lawyers said.
“In her first year at the school,” the lawyers said, “Ellen says she was made to stand in front of a mirror while a teacher pointed out areas of her body on her buttocks and leg that she would cut off if she had a knife, stating that she was disgusted with the size of these parts of Ellen’s body.”
Elphick alleged that in the following year her teacher praised her for losing 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds) and went on to make the other pupils applaud her weight loss.
She claimed she began drinking coffee and smoking to suppress her appetite and would frequently make herself sick. Then, during her third year in the school, she said, a senior teacher circled her buttocks on a photograph she was sending to prospective employers, saying that area was Elphick’s “issue.”
According to Leigh Day, a consultant psychiatrist confirmed that Elphick had previously suffered from atypical anorexia and continues to be affected by body dysmorphia.
A spokesperson for the Royal Ballet School told CNN in an email: “We are pleased that both parties were able to reach a mutually acceptable agreement in this way and we wish Ellen and her family well for the future.
“The School continues to take the well-being of its students very seriously.”
Elphick, who said she gave up a career in dance because of the experience, said in the press release: “As I reflected on the training I had experienced at the Royal Ballet School, and the eating disorder I developed, I felt there could have been different approaches in teaching in the years I was there.”
“I decided to bring a legal claim, which I am making public because I want to bring awareness so that children can go into dance and not leave it damaged as I am,” she added.
Her lawyer, Leigh Day partner Dino Nocivelli, said: “The settlement of this case is an important step in finally highlighting not only the body shaming and abuse that so many ballerinas have had to suffer but also the significant impact on them.
“It is time that the ballet community now finally accepts the duty of care it owes to its dancers, accepts where failings have taken place and the harm caused, and changes significantly for the better.”
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