There is a myth, perpetuated in the ballet world, that ballet training prepares dancers for whatever endeavor comes next. It’s a half-truth, really. We do, of course, learn discipline, focus, determination, and hard work from an early age. But because of the all-consuming nature of the profession, and professional-track training (on a par with gymnasts or, maybe, racehorses), there is little room for much else. And because I happened to dance for a prestigious institution, the New York City Ballet, I was under the misconception that I’d be ushered into my next career with open arms.
That was not the case. So where do these stories come from? Maybe we tell them to ourselves so that we’ll be less terrified when it all comes to an abrupt end. Or maybe they are reiterated over generations so that young dancers give themselves completely to the form, a necessity in order to become truly great. But what are the costs, beginning in childhood, of a monomaniacal existence?
As a professional-track child, I was regularly reminded by my ballet teachers how brief my career would be, so I put a lot of thought into my transition into the “real world.” It looked a lot like this: During a wonderfully fulfilling career with the NYCB, I would, simultaneously, become exceptional at some other artistic enterprise—and whatever that was would become so important that I would slowly be drawn away from the ballet, gracefully transitioning into that other medium that deserved (and demanded) more of my time and attention.
What I failed to take into account was that it would require a solid decade of training to become a professional ballet dancer, and it would likely take another decade to become exceptional at some other venture, whatever that should be. And because I had plans to dance in the corps de ballet of the NYCB—a company that once performed 40 ballets in a single season—there would be no time to prepare for my next exceptional career, let alone have time for a load of laundry.
Despite the folklore, I never heard of a ballet dancer who had a breezy transition, unless she changed jobs within the dance world or happened to be independently wealthy (although, even then, a sedentary lifestyle can feel existentially catastrophic to a former dancer). Former Miami City Ballet dancer Zoe Zien, for example, already has plans to set Justin Peck’s Year of the Rabbit at Houston Ballet, while choreographing photographer Alex Prager’s gallery opening and doing a Broadway lab. She credits her years in the ballet for instilling a fervent work ethic: “I’m good at getting things done,” she says. Former NYCB dancer Gwyneth Muller also has plans to stay within the arts, albeit behind the scenes. She is an MFA candidate in theater management at the Yale School of Drama and plans to do a joint degree with the Yale School of Management.
Vincent Paradiso, another former NYCB dancer, says that the transition to pedestrian hasn’t always been easy. Initially, Paradiso planned to capitalize on his muscular legs and began taking steps to become a punter—”I could kick the hell out of a football”—but scrapped his plan after a single day of training (“Do I really want to go from one career of pain to another?”). Instead, he began to invest in properties in Florida and on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in the hope of gaining his real estate license. But he realized that real estate wouldn’t fulfill him creatively. Out for drinks one evening, Paradiso came up with the idea for a website that capitalizes on the concept of splitting the dinner bill, only on a much larger scale.
When I was let go from the NYCB (as part of a mass 2009 layoff), I decided to finish my undergraduate degree at Columbia. As a dancer I had fancied myself worldly because we toured internationally, and social because I ventured below 14th Street and hobnobbed with non-dancers. But in the classroom, I felt as though I had just exited a bunker. As helpful as my work ethic was for the rigors of academia, I had to unlearn a lot of destructive behaviors left over from the ballet world.
For example, when I felt intimidated entering a lecture hall, I caught myself leveling the playing field in my mind—that is, cutting everybody else down to size in order to make myself feel better—just as I had as a child at auditions. When I snapped at a teaching assistant because a printer wouldn’t work, I realized that the anxiety I’d developed as a dancer struggling to pick up choreography had carried over to the classroom. And after years of training, I was so conscious about how my body moved through space that it always felt as though everyone on campus was looking at me. Since childhood, I had been taught not to speak in the ballet studio; I had to learn to speak up in class. I remember raising my hand for the first time in a literature course, and how thrilled I was when my observation led to a discussion.
In the theater, it was sometimes unclear where one body ended and another began. We were used to the way each other smelled, and sometimes sweat or strings of saliva spat into our faces during pirouettes. We wiped smudges of mascara from each other’s cheeks and borrowed a neighbor’s strand of hair to floss. We shared leotards, Altoids, and occasionally sexual partners. But as a student, everyone sat at their individual desks with a little table to rest an elbow and a notebook. If someone was absent I emailed my notes, or occasionally I’d ask for help from the TA. One time when I dropped my pen my hand accidently brushed against the girl sitting next to me. “Thanks,” I said. We sat in rows in packed lecture halls, the way we had filed into the wing for our first entrance in Swan Lake, only at Columbia the experience of learning didn’t feel shared the way it had with my fellow dancers. But there was something exciting about that, too: a private revelation.
At school, I had to learn to deal with my body as something that sits all day: The most exercise I got was hustling from one building to another. There was the occasional huff up a staircase or jaunt to the cafeteria for tea before a long lecture; but that was it. As a dancer, the gym was where we went to increase stamina in order to make the performance easier; as a pedestrian, the concept of the gym was a mystery. A friend had to explain to me that people went to the gym so they’d look good naked—”and for, like, health’s sake,” she added. Getting my cardio in wasn’t something I’d ever had to worry about before.
I decided not to mention that I had been a professional dancer unless someone asked why I was a 25-year-old sophomore. The only flaw was that I still looked like a dancer: I walked with my thighs so turned out that it looked as though I’d just dismounted a horse. So I taught myself to walk in parallel, like any pedestrian.The other problem was that I nabbed a book deal detailing the world I’d just departed (albeit a fictional account), so I wasn’t able to divorce myself from the ballet world as I’d hoped. After graduation, I continued to write professionally. It occurred to me recently that, as a freelancer, I have finally found the solitude and isolation I had sought as a member of the corps de ballet yearning for the validation of a featured role. Only now I’m hunched in my cubicle rather than on a lit stage. I can’t imagine dancing again—I can’t fathom the daily grind it takes to be great—but on some days I miss the visceral intimacy of the dressing room, where nothing is hidden and everything is shared, and that feeling onstage that we were all creating something much larger than ourselves.
I’m grateful for my ballet career because it made me who I am today. I only wish we’d revise the myth to more accurately depict the oft graceless struggle of a dancer in transition.
Sophie Flack, the author of Bunheads, writes for the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, and other publications.
