Body Image: Are Tattoos Taboo?

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Salvador Dali had his mustache, Andy Warhol had his wig, and Wendy O. Williams had her duct tape. Artists have always drawn outside the lines in their work and their lives, decorating themselves as an extended form of creative expression. Over the years, the age-old art of tattooing has gained new currency, growing increasingly popular as an individual--and indelible--declaration of self. If you're a painter, a writer, a comic, of a rock star, you can ink yourself as often as you like, but if you're a working dancer, your body is your instrument. Beyond movement, how much freedom do you have to express yourself with it?

Dance companies are more lenient about tattoos than you might expect, and certainly more so than they once were. Urban Ballet Theater artistic director Daniel Catanach, for example, has no objections to his dancers having tattoos, and didn't think tattoos would have been a problem when he danced with Karole Armitage. But when he danced at the School of American Ballet and Kansas City Ballet, he said the dancers would scarcely have dared. "We were too afraid," he said. "We didn't do anything--we didn't even speak."

Ballet companies aren't necessarily more strict about tattoos than modern companies, though. In fact, many …