Big Ballet star Hannah
has the last laugh
at bullies who said
she was too fat to
dance
Hannah Baines took part in ballet competitions around her native Yorkshire and began to win - but then came the laughter as she hit 11st at 13-years-old
As a child, all Hannah Baines wanted to do was dance.
She took part in ballet competitions around her native Yorkshire and began to win. But then came the laughter.
By the time she was 13 years old, she was 11st, which lead jealous competitors and their pushy parents to ridicule her.
After all, ballet was just for the willowy, skinny girls, they sneered.
But now 18-year-old Hannah has had the last laugh.
In a unique project for Channel 4 , dance legend Wayne Sleep wanted to break down the taboos about weight in ballet and has brought together 16 plus-sized women and two men for a performance of Swan Lake.
In Big Ballet, a three part series which starts tomorrow night, Hannah who now weighs 14st, is not just one of the curvy girls who are transformed into swans, but she even landed the lead role of Odette.
Sleep, the 5ft 2in former principal dancer with the Royal Ballet, and Monica Loughman, a Russian-trained dancer who founded Ireland’s first national ballet, had just four months to get the outsized cast ready for the performance of their lives at St George’s Hall in Bradford, West Yorkshire.
Every one of them had once dreamed of dancing as a career but had been thwarted because of their size.
For Hannah, it is nothing short of a dream come true.
At 5ft 3in tall and a size 18, she had given up on making a career for herself in dance.
But the show has given her a second chance to enjoy the glamorous life of a prima ballerina, in stark contrast to her day job as a business manager
for the council in Doncaster, where she lives.
for the council in Doncaster, where she lives.
Breaking out into a grin, Hannah says: “I wanted to play Odette so badly – I’ve never been a princess and I’ve finally got to be one.
"And it felt so good.
“I have danced since the age of three and I have always loved it. It’s what I do, I live and breathe it, but I have always been bigger.
"Which is my own fault because I like food too much.
“I didn’t have a problem with my size when I was younger but when I got older I started going to dance competitions and people would laugh at me even though I was winning some contests.
“Getting laughed at for your dancing and size when you are so young made me feel horrible.
"It’s a terrible thing to do to a young girl.”
The first time it happened, Hannah was about 13 and doing a ballet solo at a local dance festival.
“I got fourth place and I was very happy but afterwards I overheard my sister telling my mum about the sniggering.
"She told her, ‘They were just laughing at her, Mum’.
“At another competition one parent said, ‘I don’t know why that fat girl got placed, it’s not ballet. You can’t put a tutu on someone that size’.
“Another time I was on stage and I heard people laughing at me and I saw the other dancers on the side of the stage laughing as I performed.
“Weirdly, it didn’t put me down, it made me want to be an even better dancer.
"I had got a higher place than the children of the ladies who were criticising me because of my weight so part of it was jealousy on their part and it made me want to continue being better than them.”
But professional ballet dancers are skinny and tiny and Hannah knew she didn’t fit the mould to make it her career.
At 16, she briefly decided to try to lose weight in an effort to fit in and silence the sniggers that followed her.
But she quickly realised it wasn’t for her.
“I went through a phase of trying to diet.
"The thought was always there in my mind that if I wanted to do ballet then I would have to diet but I accepted quickly that eating nothing and being thin is just not me, it’s not how it’s meant to be,” she says.
“But I think we have such a good opportunity with this TV series to change perceptions and open ballet to bigger people.
“I was very lucky when I was younger that my dance teacher, Debbie Marsden, was the most supportive person in the world.
“There are some schools where they put overweight dancers on diets and she is so against it.
“We go out for lunch all the time and enjoy it and she gives me dances that suit me.”
By the time she applied for the audition to take part in Big Ballet, Hannah had all but given up of her dreams of being a professional dancer after setbacks which she believed were down to her size.
“When I was 16, I applied to a performing arts academy in Wakefield but I didn’t get in,” she says.
“They didn’t say why.
“It could have been anything, any reason, but I took it that I’m fat and I wouldn’t get anywhere in the industry.
“It put me off going anywhere else and trying to make a career in dance. I carried on dancing but I stopped going to any auditions.”
But when she heard about Wayne Sleep’s show she decided to give it one last chance.
And after winning a place, she met Wayne, who famously danced with Princess Diana, and prima ballerina Monica.
But she was far from fazed.
“I wasn’t starstruck by Wayne and Monica. To be honest, I didn’t know who they were!
“I had heard of Wayne Sleep but I didn’t know who he was and what he had achieved,” she recalls.
“But he was very encouraging. He was harsh on us but he was funny as well. We all got on really well.”
To be ready for their performance in front of a hall packed with friends and family in Bradford, the two professionals drove their ballet corps to breaking point.
For two nights a week and on Saturdays, the keen amateurs had to become professionals in a matter of just a few weeks.
But one tiring day brought back all the memories of the laughter she endured as a child.
“Monica was pushing me in rehearsals and giving me a hard time, which is what she has to do,” she says.
“She said to me, ‘If you carry on doing it like that everyone is going to laugh at you’.
“When I joined the project I was so happy, I felt that finally someone believed in me.
"Monica and Wayne are so much better than all the people who have ever laughed at me.
"So when Monica said that, I thought they didn’t believe in me and I got really upset and stormed out. It brought back the old horrible memories.
"I cried and cried.
“But I pulled myself together and I thought I could do this every time they give me a hard time or get over it and take on board what she’d said and get better.
"So I went back in.”
By that stage, Hannah was at least able to handle the regime – but it was tough to begin with.
“I found it really difficult at the start, I got tired really easily. There was one class near the start where Monica sent me out because I was too tired.
“When we got into the swing of it, it all became a lot more enjoyable. I loved every minute.”
Many of the other plus-sized dancers dropped a dress size as the gruelling training took its toll.
All were told not to go on diets, not to use the series as a way of losing weight. All were closely monitored for any rapid weight losses.
But Hannah actually put on half a stone.
“A lot of people lost weight through all the training but I saw that I was doing a lot more exercise so that meant I could eat more,” she says.
“I was eating normally but I was having more snacks in between. I would have an extra chocolate bar a day.
"I would start the day with toast or cereal but in the evening I always have a big meal.”
The final performance of the one-act version of Swan Lake, choreographed by Sleep, saw the whole cast hit by nerves and fears that any injury would rule them out.
But the crowd gave a standing ovation after the company’s 30-minute performance.
“It showed all the people who laughed at me that I can dance, I can do this. I loved every second of the performance.
"I felt really beautiful and it was such a liberating thing to do,” Hannah says.
“The best part was right at the end when everyone was clapping and we got a standing ovation. It was just amazing.
"Everybody appreciated what we had done. All my family and friends were there and they were so happy for me.”
But doesn’t she worry she will simply find a new audience to laugh at her size by appearing on TV?
“I’m not worried about how it will look on TV.
"The ballet world has been around for hundreds of years and obviously we are going to get negative feedback for our size.
“I just hope that some people will appreciate what we have done and that it encourages more people to do ballet,” she says.
Last weekend Hannah and some of the other Big Ballet dancers flew to Dublin to take more lessons with Monica.
With the performance behind her, Hannah is determined that she wants to carry on dancing and prove that size really doesn’t matter even in ballet.
“This has given me the confidence to go on. I have an audition for a dance school in Manchester to do a degree course.
“This project opened a door that I thought was closed forever.
“Now I just want to dance all day every day. This is all I want to do.”
http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/big-ballet-star-hannah-baines-3112610#ixzz2sU7xZq8C
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