LONDON, Feb. 28 (UPI) -- The Big Ballet, a Russian dance troupe whose dancers average 280 pounds, said it enjoys challenging conventional thinking that ballerinas must be thin.
"People are bored with the ordinary stuff," Natalia Lenskikh, the show's director, told the Telegraph. "The Big Ballet is unique. In the normal world you don't find many overweight people dancing, ladies especially."
The 18-member troupe will dance to familiar music from Tchaikovsky and Vivaldi with a dose of Tom Jones's "Sex Bomb" tossed in during The Big Ballet's monthlong British tour.
Founded by the late Russian choreographer Evgeny Panfilov in 1994, the troupe calls Perm home.
At first, the company's applicants didn't need to pass an audition or demonstrate previous dance experience. There was but one requirement: they had to be at least 168 pounds. When the company was overwhelmed with applicants it changed the weight requirement to 238 pounds.
Panfilov "realized that overweight girls have a special movement of their own, and that's what makes it so unique," Lenskikh said.
While ballerinas can eat as much as they like, they exercise and are monitored to ensure they aren't endangering their health or joints, Lenskikh said.
