Vienna’s ballet academy endangers children wellbeing, asks students to smoke to stay slim

Vienna’s prestigious ballet academy tells students to smoke in order to stay slim, an investigation has alleged.

A government-backed commission found that the welfare of child performers was disregarded at the academy of the Vienna State Opera, according to an executive summary of the report.

The State Opera announced a personnel shakeup on Friday, days after an official commission reported that it was endangering children´s wellbeing.

The director of the academy Simona Noja-Nebyla has been relieved of her duties, according to a statement by the Austria´s public theatre organisation.

Noja-Nebyla has not been sacked but her functions will be taken over on an interim basis by the State Ballet´s commercial director until a new director is appointed in September 2020.

The commission also said students were addressed with their first names and clothes sizes and that they were not being protected “from discrimination, neglect and negative medical effects”.

The scandal originally broke in April when a report on the academy in a newspaper detailed allegations of serious physical and mental abuse against students, as well as sexual assault.