Annemarie de Ruijter doesn’t know where to start. She has so much material and memories about her studies and work as a dance teacher. On the dining table are folders full of letters, contracts, reports. Endless stories about the world she has been in for thirty years: that of dance. A world she loves and at the same time loathes.
De Ruijter is a dancer. You can see that immediately when she opens the door. Small, slender, straight back. She is 47 years old.
Since the beginning of this year, a major investigation into the mores in the dance world has been underway. This is led by the lawyer Marjan Olfers (VU). She says that she is conducting hundreds of interviews and will only come up with conclusions at the end of this year. A number of De Ruijter’s friends will also be interviewed – she has many in the dance world.
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De Ruijter was eighteen when she started at the Lucia Marthas dance school in the Amsterdam Pijp in 1993. She came from the Veluwe and she knew since primary school: I am going to be a dancer. Dance is not really a choice, De Ruijter says very seriously: “You don’t choose dance, dance chooses you.”
It soon became apparent that De Ruijter was not one of the best dancers. She followed both directions the school offered: performing dance and teacher training. She got sixes for the first direction, nines for the second. Annemarie de Ruijter was, as it turned out, a born dance teacher.
But the first – becoming a performing dancer – had the most status in the training. And she knew that. She was humiliated and belittled daily. Not only she, she says, the better dancers also became that, but the less good dancers just a little more. “It was part of the culture. It wasn’t one person. We were told we were too fat, clumsy. We sometimes had to queue at the bar, with our back to the mirror. The headmistress would walk by and point one by one: ‘Five kilos off, ten kilos off.’ For example, when an assignment came in where they were looking for dancers for a television or theater performance, they would say: ‘We only need the sexy girls for this performance.’ I didn’t belong there. Don’t ask me why, but I didn’t belong.”
circus theatre
The performances. The students of the dance training had to perform endlessly. Gain experience, learn to perform – and at the same time build the reputation of the programme. Free. That was called ‘doing an internship’. At Joop van den Ende studios in Aalsmeer, at the Circustheater in Carré and at television programs by John de Mol. From Bet that† till the Mini playback showof the Surprise Show and love letters until Does it do it or does it not do it† An average of 40 times per academic year.
We wanted so badly. We were extremely motivated
The young dancers showed up everywhere. At openings, at the Lido, at parties in the Kurhaus, parties at the PvdA, Mazda and Esso. The management of the dance school proudly writes in the newsletter that “a student dancing on the table of Lubbers and Van Vollenhoven made the national newspapers during the World Press Photo Gala”.
De Ruijter: „The internship was unpaid and went from early in the morning until late at night. Then we were dropped off at the Central Station at midnight and the next day you just had to lie back in a split at school at 08.30. There was no choice: it was hard work.”
Afterwards she wonders: “Is the training there for you or are you there for the training?” The students learned nothing to arm them for the harsh dance world: dealing with rejection, reading a contract, and judging “what was a decent rate at all.”
They were also humiliated in front of customers, producers. De Ruijter sums up: “Your legs are too short, your breasts are too big, your shoulders are too stiff.” The students of the preliminary training were also urged to lie about their name when the Labor Inspectorate came by during an internship.
Why did they accept all that? “We wanted so badly. We were extremely motivated. Glad we were able to fulfill our dream. We felt we belonged to the chosen few: the dancers. And we were young. We knew a lot. We were also in a trap. I remember that I participated in the Christmas circus in Carré and those horses go so fast in the arena. I thought it was terrifying. But we did it because it was expected.”
Years later, in 2001, Annemarie de Ruijter herself started teaching at the Amsterdam Ballet Academy/Lucia Marthas school. She did that for five years; in 2006 she resigned because she still found the atmosphere and manners at the academy unpleasant and unprofessional.
Agile Agents
In 2007 she founded the ‘Danstank’ – a kind of action group that wanted to advocate for dancers’ rights. She had meanwhile studied in New York and seen what a strong union the actors had there. And agile agents who really protected the dancer from clients. “In the Netherlands, no one protected the dancers. They were always happy when they had work. They were outlawed and usually had to sign a secrecy contract with a major production.”
At the same time, the Danstank wanted the training to be professionalised. “There were hardly any requirements for dance teachers. There are so many unauthorized dance teachers in the classroom. They can dance but know nothing about anatomy, didactics or psychology. Don’t forget that many young dancers already have a backpack. They have come out or were bullied as children. Sometimes they have structural eating problems and they suffer physical damage as a result.” She has been to the HBO council with her recommendations, has written many letters to the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, but the hard conclusion is that little has come of it.
Olfers’ research is a good thing, says De Ruijter, because nobody wants to be known as a ‘whistleblower’ as a loner, and many are still ashamed, in retrospect, of what they all accepted and saw happen to others. “There is a lot of fear and sadness.”
Annemarie de Ruijter herself is doing well. She has been in therapy to get rid of the negative – “it’s never good enough” – feeling. Until a few years ago, she couldn’t post videos of herself dancing – so deep was the fear that ‘it’ wasn’t good enough. Now she can.
And she has “a wonderful life.” In her own studio in Amsterdam, she gives dance lessons to couples who are about to get married – she studies a favorite song with them. She lives with her boyfriend in the green, outside the city.
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