and you don't even need a tutu.

photo by Chester Higgins, NYT

Judith Jamison, Artistic Director of the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, from The New York Times, July 5, 2006:

She says Ailey dancers "are all sizes and shape — all muscle, but tall, short, a little wider, a little narrower, from everywhere in the world, and every dancer knows when you start in my company, you come out on stage a 10; then you can work your way up to wherever you're going."

"I tell my dancers you achieve that by understanding that the body God gave you is a 10," she says. "He gave you something perfect to work with."