Amy Cheng is a former ballerina who struggled with low self-esteem, challenges eating and insecurities while dancing. Audrey Villegas
Each strand of her hair is perfectly tied into a sleek, clean bun. She is dressed in a compressing leotard and tights with pointe shoes tied at her feet. Wrapped in close-fitting attire, you can see every outline of muscle and bone on her body. In a room full of girls, the only one she notices is herself glaring at her in the mirror. Posed in a graceful arabesque, Amy Cheng looks at herself in the mirror, but she only sees a stranger.
“It was like, I was literally dead,” Cheng said.
Cheng, 20, was a ballerina since she was a toddler. She danced for 16 years of her life, until she decided to quit after her second year of college. The competitive atmosphere of the sport combined with her self-esteem and perfectionist mentality drove her to a breaking point. The sport that she fell in love with at a young age became her exhaustion. She was burnt out.
“It kind of just destroyed the dancer in me, and then it started the whole grieving process,” Cheng said.
In the professional dance industry mental health disorders are frighteningly common due to the competitive nature, and constant expectations to improve. One in five, or roughly 20.8%, of professional dancers have at least moderate symptoms of either depression, generalized anxiety disorder or eating disorders, according to a study by the National Library of Medicine.
“It’s hard to describe the amount of shame people carry about their disordered eating behavior said Annetta Ramsay, a Ph.D. trained, licensed, board-certified counselor and an internationally certified eating disorders specialist-supervisor. She is also the founder of Chrysalis, a treatment program for eating disorders in Denton, Texas.
Ramsay noted that “clinically significant depression or anxiety is always a part of the picture.”
Cheng grew up in Coppell, Texas. She is the youngest of four siblings born into a Taiwanese American family. Cheng grew up watching her older sister practice ballet and traveling to her dance camps and intensives. Then, Cheng attended the same ballet studio as her sister after she left.
Cheng said she grew to resent the studio after they changed ownership her last couple years of attending. She gave the teachers all her effort, time and energy, but she knew she was disliked despite the amount of hard work she gave every day. She said she was tired of the people around her and ready to move to the next chapter of her life.
During the summer of 2022, she attended a summer intensive with a ballet company called Ballet West in Utah. The teachers praised her ballet technique and offered her a position to stay with the company, but she declined because she still needed to graduate high school.
She graduated a year early from New Tech High School in Coppell in 2023. Then she moved to Utah to be a student at Ballet West and attend the University of Utah to study film.
Cheng was thriving in her first year in Utah. It was a fresh start for her. She enjoyed her freedom, meeting new friends and being in a comfortable environment. She enjoyed her busy schedule because she was happy when achieving goals. She always had a need to prove everyone wrong by doing what they said she would fail at. That is what excited her about ballet and film. They are both difficult careers to succeed in, but she loved the challenge.
“I think this stems from the fact that I’ve been the artistic youngest sibling in a family full of mathematicians, historians and doctors,” Cheng said.
Cheng was a very determined and dedicated person; with these qualities self-criticism follows. In her dancing career, she was always wanting to improve and push herself further than the day before. Therefore, when she looked in the mirror or rewatched videos of herself, she only noticed the improvements she could have made. She noticed that when watching her peers she only noticed their strengths, but when watching herself she felt like she only found ways to criticize herself.
“Confidence was the biggest thing that my teacher would tell me that I need to work on. They would say, you’re so pretty you just need to believe it,” Cheng said. “And when people tell me that, I don’t believe it. I can’t see it.”
Cheng began struggling with eating regularly when she moved to Utah. She was never diagnosed with a disorder; however, it affected her daily life. She would intentionally skip meals when she was alone. She relied on Celsius energy drinks and few calories each day. She was sure not to show any indications of alarming eating behaviors by finishing her whole meal at restaurants.
“I remember thinking to myself that it would be easier to not eat if I was busy, so that’s why I kind of liked the whole college ballet thing,” Cheng said.
She saw first-hand friends and peers struggle with mental health issues as well. However, mental health was never addressed with the whole ballet company. Cheng simply noticed little behaviors of peers that showed signs of eating disorders and could tell based on appearance.
After Cheng’s first year at college, she took a summer intensive that consisted of seven-hour days for six days a week. This is the best she had ever felt about her dancing. Then she took a month off for summer break between the intensive and beginning of fall semester. At that time, she realized her passion for ballet faded. She thought of the uniform they had to wear, the certain hairstyle they had to have and the meaningless classes she did not want to go back to. It all sounded like torture, she said. However, she went back anyway because she already committed.
“Going to class every day and not feeling it was just the worst feeling ever,” Cheng said.
During the duration of her second year in Utah, her self-esteem and confidence lowered more each day. Standing in front of a mirror multiple hours a day in skin-tight clothing took a toll on her mental health. She became overwhelmingly discouraged because regardless of her successes, she was always reaching for more. She knew ballet would never bring her the happiness she desired.
Cheng decided to end her dancing career and transfer to the University of North Texas to continue studying film for convenience and financial reasons. She was not excited to live at home again, because she loved the freedom she had in Utah. She is still figuring out her life without dance in it.
“My future was so simple when I was going to be a ballet dancer, because there’s only one track you can take when you’re a ballet dancer,” Cheng said. “But now I have different options with so many different ways to get there.”
Audrey Villegas
Audrey Villegas is a Mayborn School of Journalism student studying digital and print journalism with a minor in photography. She is expected to graduate in spring 2027.
