This Dancer Is Helping to Expand What a Ballet Body Can Be (opens in new tab)

Technical prowess isn’t the only thing that makes Olivia Book stand out as a dancer on stage. She is also one of the first professional ballet dancers to have a congenital limb difference — her right arm is smaller than her left. Ballet has a reputation for upholding rigid body standards. In recent years, though, the art form has been rethinking its relationship to diversity in areas like race and body type. Many of the challenges Book has encountered as a dancer, she said, have to do with ma...