"We're like the All Blacks, or any other sporting team," Miss Balfour (27), of Christchurch, said, before the company's Tower Tutus on Tour show in Invercargill, yesterday.
"We're always around the food and drink at functions. We are athletes ... we put in just as much work and we need the fuel to get the best out of our performance."
The popular belief dancers do not eat much was not the only stereotype the only South Island born and raised dancer on tour has encountered during her eight-year professional career.
The ballet orientated psychological movie drama Black Swan was "extremely cliched", she said.
However, dancers could relate to it because, "you have to be a little bit crazy and a little bit obsessed with it to be performing".
"It really is a lifestyle choice, down to what you eat and looking after your body, although we like to push the boundaries sometimes."
Balfour and the 15 other dancers in the South Island touring half of the company pushed those boundaries this week when they took a two-day break in Queenstown to enjoy gondola, luge and jet-boat rides, paragliding and skydiving.
The dancers and support staff return to the Queenstown Events Centre on Saturday, March 26 with their new production of Pinocchio and Verdi Variations.
The Queenstown show has already sold out.
Miss Balfour plays the cat and various roles in the fairytale and is in one of five couples for the classical ballet showpiece.
Moving two Royal New Zealand Ballet touring parties of 50 people to 40 halls nationwide requires the logistics of a military campaign.
It involves the 32 dancers and support team staying in almost 600 motels, a five-tonne truck filled with costumes and sets notching up 3000km, a lighting rig, sound system, sewing machines, a washing machine, tumble dryer, 280 rolls of PVC tape and 40m of ballet shoe ribbon.
Tutus on Tour shows in the South include include Gore (today), Te Anau (tomorrow), Queenstown (March 26), Wanaka (March 27), Alexandra (March 29) and Twizel (March 30).
