Without dance, they'd just be … Roni Mahler brings ballet to the sports world

Dance Magazine, Jan, 2004 by Rachel Howard

WHEN THE DANCE community erupted in anger last year over an ESPN ad featuring the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders and the provocative tagline "Without sports, they'd just dancers" (see Dance Matters, July 2003), Roni Mahler had a unique perspective on the controversy.

As an early proponent of ballet training for athletes, Mahler, now an artistic associate for Ballet San Jose Silicon Valley, had once been just as guilty of underestimating sports players as the ESPN ad writers were of denigrating dancers.

One day, while teaching a beginning ballet class that included a few football players, she asked the students to dance around the room. She turned to the athletes and said, "Oh, you guys don't have to do this," assuming they'd feel embarrassed. But after class one of the athletes set her straight.

"He came up to me and said, 'Just because we look like this doesn't mean we don't enjoy dancing,'" Mahler remembers. "He said, 'Ever since we were little, people assumed we didn't like to do things like this because of our size.'"

Those stereotypes were even more pronounced when Mahler began teaching ballet to college football players in the late 1970s, during her tenure as a professor at Kansas State University. In 1984, when Mahler taught a twelve-week series of ballet classes for the Cleveland Browns, the idea was so novel that major press agencies sent photographers.

Because the men were so large and powerful, Mahler ditched the barre ("They would have ripped it out of the wall," she jokes) in favor of center exercises, and held the class on a football field, where an athlete's large frame would not send him crashing into the wall. The players soon discovered that ballet training delivered some real benefits. Using turnout to rotate legs from the hips helps to strengthen smaller, more injury-susceptible muscles in ways working in parallel can't, Mahler says, by engaging what Pilates practitioners call the "smile muscles" beneath the gluteus and around the pelvis. By practicing changement and tendu, players gained improved flexibility in their ankles and feet, which translated to increased agility come game time.

And John A. Bergfeld, the Browns' medical advisor, saw results too: Groin injuries decreased the season following Mahler's class. Ballet training had taught the players, who had to crouch during games, an awareness of their pelvis positioning and had increased the range of motion in their hips.

Former Pittsburgh Steeler wide receiver Lynn Swann, who appeared in the ESPN "apology ad" that ran in DAXCE MAGAZINE in May 2003, can attest to the benefits of ballet training for athletes. His Pro Football Hall of Fame citation notes his "fluid movements" and "tremendous leaping ability"--products of several years of childhood and college dance training. A sportscaster once referred to him as "the Baryshnikov of football."

Though Swann volunteers as a spokesman for Pittsburgh Ballet Theater, he knows he's no Baryshnikov. Still, he says his classes in tap, jazz, and especially ballet greatly enhanced his athletic skills. "If one movement flows to another, you're going to be able to be evasive on the field and a good football player."

Mahler, a sports fan, spotted the connections between sports and ballet after her parents took her to a baseball game at Yankee Stadium. "A shortstop does a huge chasse before releasing the ball. And for both ballet and baseball you need strong ankles and knees," she says.

Swann sees similar parallels. "Certain dance movements are fundamental to the movements you need to make in sports," be explains. "A basketball player can't jump without doing a plie. It may not be graceful and deep with your feet turned out, but it's the same thing."

"Had ESPN talked to me beforehand, they would never have made that mistake," Swann quips about the Cowboys cheerleaders ad. "Dance in itself is a sport, and an incredible art form."

Rachel Howard is former dance critic of the San Francisco Examiner.