The Melancholy Swan is currently reading Adrienne McLean's Dying Swans and Madmen: Ballet, the Body, and Narrative Cinema, and came across this photograph of the members of George Balanchine's and Lincoln Kirstein's American Ballet. It was a revelation! Look at their powerful thighs and rounded calves! The curves of their bodies!
This is my new ideal ballerina body and with a lot of hard work, it is one the Melancholy Swan might actually achieve.