The Big Ballet dancers are as happy to show off their 100 kilo plus figures as their steps. Katherine MacAlister tracks down these Russian heavyweights to find out just why Big Ballet requires a very special sort of discipline.

Apparently doing the splits when you’re 16 stone is much easier because your own weight pushes you down.

Principal dancer Tatyana Gladkaya, 33, laughs when she tells me this, proud of her physical achievements on stage.

“It’s surprisingly easy to do the splits when you have 120 kilos of downforce,” she adds.

But when you consider that dancing on points makes her toes bleed, you’ll begin to understand what these dancers go through every time they perform, and what they suffer for their art.

But first to dispel some myths. The 23 Russian dancers who make up Big Ballet aren’t there because they eat too much, but because their genetic forms are larger than most, leaving them unable to qualify for the more conventional ballet companies.

“We eat normal amounts of food and the same kind of food as everyone else; it’s in our genes. That means we don’t lose the weight like other people do and the food is stored as fat,” second principal dancer Katya Yurkowa, 42, explains.

“But it also means that from childhood, all of us were large and often taunted as children, so the hardest thing was living your whole life being teased, and then having to go and find the confidence to perform on stage in front of many people. But now we are all happy and cheerful about this” Katya adds.

When Big Ballet was formed 13 years ago in the Russian Ural mountains to demonstrate how able bigger dancers were, the producers were inundated with hopefuls.

The 23 who make up the present company, many from the beginning, were specially selected, and have to maintain a minimum weight of 100 kilos.

So what does your bog-standard ballerina make of the Big Ballet troupe?

“They are extremely jealous of us,” Tatyana laughs. “Generally the feedback they give when they see us perform is very good as we move in very similar ways, and they are able to appreciate what it takes for us to dance like this, so we have appreciation of each other’s work.”

Katya adds: “We have all gained enormous confidence since we became a troupe, so hopefully our stories are an inspiration. Everybody has a right to express themselves how they like, so we will do that if nothing else. The Big Ballet works very well for the heart and soul.”

* Big Ballet appears at Oxford’s New Theatre on Friday, April 8. Call the box office on 08448 471585.