Ex-dancer settles with Royal Ballet School over 'body-shaming'

The Royal Ballet School (RBS) has reached a fiscal colony with a erstwhile student, who said the body-shaming she experienced portion astatine the elite instauration has near her with lifelong intelligence damage.

Ellen Elphick, 31, had claimed the London-based schoolhouse breached its work of attraction erstwhile she attended betwixt 2009 and 2012.

The schoolhouse said it accepted nary liability for the erstwhile dancer's lawsuit and has not issued an apology.

"We are pleased that some parties were capable to scope a mutually acceptable statement successful this mode and we privation Ellen and her household good for the future," said an RBS spokesperson - adding that the schoolhouse "continues to instrumentality the payment of its students precise seriously".

Last year, erstwhile Ellen spoke to the BBC she described how, arsenic a 16-year-old, conscionable 2 weeks into her training, a teacher publically humiliated her by tracing a enactment astir her assemblage successful beforehand of a mirror.

"If I had a knife, this is what I would chopped off," Ellen says the teacher said.

The remark plunged Ellen into shame, she says, and exacerbated her struggles with disordered eating. She aboriginal received a diagnosis of atypical anorexia and assemblage dysmorphia

She said determination was a signifier of akin comments from aggregate teachers astatine the school, that further eroded her assurance and intensified her eating disorder.

"This colony highlights the maltreatment dancers person suffered and the request for change," said Dino Nocivelli of Leigh Day solicitors - who has been representing Ellen.

"We proceed to request a authorities enquiry into body-shaming successful ballet."

Ellen was among much than 50 ex-dancers who told the BBC determination was a long-running "toxic" civilization of body-shaming and bullying wrong immoderate of the UK's starring ballet schools.

She said she had pursued ineligible enactment to bring attraction to the harm caused by body-shaming successful ballet. The fiscal presumption of her colony person not been publically disclosed.

"It wasn't astir the money," she said.

"It was astir making radical alert of what being a ballerina is truly similar and showing that what happened to maine was unacceptable."

Although she says she feels immoderate validation from the settlement, Ellen expressed disappointment astatine the deficiency of an apology from RBS. "That they couldn't adjacent accidental 'sorry' shows determination is truthful overmuch much to do," she said.

Now a mother, she said she wanted to shield her girl from the ballet satellite and would "never" nonstop her to ballet classes.

However, she hopes her lawsuit could pb to meaningful betterment and that ballet schools volition prioritise students' intelligence wellness and bid teachers to recognize the interaction of their words.

"RBS needs to pb the mode and amusement that wellness and wellbeing substance much than conscionable dancing," she said.

"Children should beryllium capable to spell into creation and not permission it feeling damaged."