Broche Banter #42 -- Robin
Today on the show, I chat with Robin.
She danced a little when she was young, and then returned to it as an adult, even getting en pointe for the first time as a grownup.
We talk about the joy of the little wins in ballet, her experience on the board at her wonderful adult-only local ballet studio, and the interesting differences between home ballet and studio ballet.
Robin has a wonderfully cerebral outlook on the ballet world that you’re sure to enjoy!
Starting Ballet
Julie: Welcome to the show. Robin, I'm so excited to be able to chat with you today.
Robin: Thanks, Julie. I'm really excited to be here and to get to talk with you.
Julie: So fun. Well, we've been kind of following on Instagram, bonding over our pets doing funny things with us dancing. But we also dance together online, and we've talked a lot about your ballet journey. But I'm really excited to actually get to hear it beginning to end not just through the little pieces on Instagram. So I'd love to hear what got you to where you are today with ballet. you've developed a lot of really, really beautiful technique in your dancing. And so I'm really curious how you got that?
Robin: Yeah, so my cat might make an appearance. She is sitting next to me staring at me, which is a sign that she might come over and meow and beg to be up on my lap. So you might get to see her.
I danced as a kid. Not especially seriously, I quit when I was about 11, and I probably started when I was four or five taking Park District ballet classes. I was obsessed with the Angelina Ballerina picture books. So yeah, and I think I quit, and you know, my mother might have a different story, but I think I quit in part because all of the studios… I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago… all of the studios were competition-oriented. And all of the girls were taking ballet tap jazz, six or seven hours a week and I was just not down for that I just wanted to do ballet, I had no interest in pop music and dancing to the latest Britney Spears hits.
And so because the other girls were taking class so many more times a week than I was, they were improving much more quickly than I was. And so I just kind of lost interest and stopped.
I also started riding horses and that gave me a new athletic outlet.
So then as an adult, I got back to dancing I guess in 2011? I think that's right, or 2012. I studied abroad in the UK and the university that I was at had a student organizations fair. And there was a table for the Irish dance organization and it was something I'd always been interested in. I loved watching River Dance as a kid. We had a VHS tape of when it aired on PBS. And I played that many, many times. And so I went over to the table and I said, “do you teach people who have never done Irish dancing before?” They were like, “Sure, please come, here's where our meetings are.”
And I just remembered how much fun it was to dance. When I got back to the States, I was still in college, so it was hard to find a place to dance regularly. My schedule was irregular. I was moving frequently, all of that good stuff.
So I really got seriously back into dance as an adult. About six years ago now, almost six years ago, when I moved back to Chicago for graduate school. I found a studio that was conveniently located partway between my apartment and the campus, so it was easy for me to stop on my way home on a Wednesday, and I started taking this Wednesday night ballet class, with a really wonderful teacher. I still take that class — it's like the mainstay of my week in dance, the one that I am most dedicated to and make sure to make room for in my schedule.
But I got involved with a studio and I really haven't stopped, it's become kind of my home. I started taking all of the ballet classes that we offer pretty much. Got sucked into musical theater, I've done a little contemporary, a little modern. I just I love spending time with these people and the teachers there. And it's really been an important outlet for me during grad school.
Julie: And you’re still in grad school, is that right?
Robin: I am. Yeah. And I’m working on a PhD in medieval history.
Julie: So are you near the end of it?
Robin: Yes. I will probably take one more academic year to finish.
Julie: Wow, congrats. That's exciting.
Robin: Thanks. Yeah, the end is in sight.
Julie: That's a long time in school. Although I feel like the end may be a little nostalgic. Because you've been in school for so long.
Robin: Definitely. One of the things that I really love about grad school is being in the classroom and teaching students. And I think depending on what I end up doing afterward, if I don't end up…. I don't want to dwell on the realities of the academic job market here, this is not the place for that. But if I end up leaving academia, I think I will really miss being a teacher. I really love getting students excited about the past.
Julie: Well, that sounds like what I do in ballet, get students excited about the past, right? Ballet is kind of an old thing. But it's so exciting.
Okay, so six years, you've been taking this Wednesday class for like, six years? Is that..? really? That's amazing?
Robin: Yes, there was a year when I was out of the country doing research. So there, there was a year-long gap there. But other than that same class, same teacher, most of the same core students, we've obviously had people move away or lose interest or whatever, life intervenes, as it always does.
But I'm still learning from that class.
Julie: That's amazing. Oh, that's so cool. And so when did you get back on pointe? Or did you I started first time as an adult?
Robin: Yes. Okay. So I never did point as a kid. I don't know if it was ever really a big dream for me. I think I'm kind of unusual, and that I don't have huge ballet goals or hopes. I feel like I've accomplished a lot of the things like, I'm lucky that I developed my technique as a kid. And I did not have to learn how to do pirouettes as an adult, for instance, like some of these things that I think a lot of adult ballet students are working towards.
I kind of was lucky enough to already have… even though I'm absolutely working on my technique all the time. But my studio decided to start a pointe class, we had a serious enough group of women who wanted to go en pointe. And that was about a year ago, a little over a year ago. So it's been very slow but steady progress.
Julie: Yeah, well, that that's the name of this whole game, I think, slow but steady progress.
What keeps you coming back?
Julie: I don't think you're unusual in having no goals or expectations in ballet. There are definitely a lot of people's goals and expectations, and especially in the social media community because a lot of people go there to share their goals and to share their progress.
But why do you do it? If you don't have any goals? What does it bring you? What does it bring to your life that keeps you like literally making one day happen every single week?
Robin: Yeah, yeah. I think the thing that keeps me going back is that it's a way to move my body and to get to know my body in sort of a movement sense, where I absolutely cannot think about …. I'm an academic, my mind is always it's always going and it's really hard for me to shut it off. But during ballet I have to be counting the music or remembering the combinations or thinking about the element of technique that I decide that I want to work on that class. And it's just, it's really just an hour and a half or hour or whatever of escape.
“I’m an academic, my mind is always it’s always going and it’s really hard for me to shut it off. But during ballet I have to be counting the music or remembering the combinations or thinking about the element of technique that I decide that I want to work on that class. And it’s just, it’s really just an hour and a half or hour or whatever of escape. ”
And I find a lot of satisfaction in just the really tiny things. And I think dancing at home has been really good for that because I don't have a mirror. I don't have other people… other people in the zoom classes, you get a sense that you're dancing with other people, but there's none of the pressure of either that you put on yourself from seeing other people dance or that you feel like others are putting on you, which usually isn't the case. Everybody's always focused on their own technique, their own issues with their tendu or whatever today. But dancing at home, yeah, has been really good in that regard for me, I think.
“The ballet world is missing out on so much by trying to keep it so exclusive and so elitist. There are so many people like me who just want to like spend all of our disposable income on ballet.”
Dancing at home - no mirrors, no distractions, but also missing our friends
Julie: It's interesting. I've heard very, very mixed reactions with people who have the love of ballet because it's an escape, and either you're also still able to escape at home, no problem, or some people are really unable to escape at home and need that context switch of the studio environment. What is your take on that?
Robin: Yeah, I have a lot of sympathy for people who have struggled with dancing at home. It's been a really hard year for all of us, I think, obviously, and I don't want to kind of dismiss that.
But for me, it's as much about I guess, the mindset that even though I'm not physically… this is my living room, I'm sitting at my desk now, I dance over there, in between is my couch where I sit and relax and read or whatever.
And so I've kind of had to make the shift as much mental as anything else. And I just, I know that I would really miss the people that I get to chat to before classes, I would people would miss me, I think and I would miss them.
And that helps me kind of make that shift and get myself in the sort of quote-unquote studio mindset, even though I'm not in the studio. And I'm also really lucky, some of the teachers at the studio, we switched to zoom classes pretty quickly in March and have not stopped. But they've been really creative about figuring out combinations for very small spaces that make it feel like you're moving. There are lots of forward and back as much as side to side. And you kind of trick your mind into thinking that this is like a nice big diagonal, even though it's six feet by six feet.
Julie: Yeah, totally. I think that the combinations do make a big difference. If you're frustrated by bumping into everything every two seconds, it's super annoying, but if you actually just play with what you have, it's a lot more pleasant for sure.
Do you still go to that Wednesday night class on zoom now? Yep. Yeah. I love it. I'm for that that's nice to have that familiar face throughout this whole thing as well.
Robin: Yeah, I think I think we've all … I've talked with some of my friends at the studio, and so there was a period... I'm on the studio board, so I'm involved with a lot of the decision making, which has been, it's been a really exciting thing.
Although it's also been very eye-opening. My first couple of months on the board, we were dealing with all sorts of questions about our Marley floor and like, “do we need to clean it? Do we need to replace it?” and all these things that I would never have thought about.
But we obviously decided to close when everything shut down March 13, I'm sure everybody remembers the date that things came to a grinding halt in their city. And that's what it was in Chicago. And and we put a sign on the door, optimistically: “We'll be back in two weeks, stay home stay safe be well,” and obviously we quickly realized that that was a pipe dream. And we sort of talked about “Okay, do we switch to zoom classes? How do we do it? Do people want that? Do our teachers want that?”
But we also saw it as a way to like keep our teaching staff on the payroll, which we were really committed to doing because obviously, it's been a very difficult time for artists. Most of our teachers are dancers in their own right, and companies are not able to pay their artists when they're not rehearsing for performance.
And so, we we all said the first week back to zoom classes was like this breath of fresh air, this relief that we got to move again, we got to see each other again. We got to have this routine in a world that felt like it had lost any sense of routine or time of day or day of the month. It was so nice to know even if I'm never quite sure what day it is, I know “Okay, today It was Wednesday at 5:30. I get to dance with Brennan and all my friends and take this wonderful class that I've been taking for so many years.” I think it's just been a real anchor for so many of us at the studio.
Julie: Yeah, definitely. It's definitely one of those tough times where so many difficult choices had to be made. And every studio was kind of making different choices for themselves and for their team and for their staff. And, man, I would not go back to that period of time.
Robin: No, no. And I know you had to make some difficult choices, too. Although I'm really grateful that everything’s online now so I get to dance with you even though you're probably what? 800 miles away?
Julie: Yeah, different time zone, at least for sure. I don't know how many miles but a lot of miles. It would be a long drive to get to Chicago from here.
Being on the board of the dance studio
Julie: So when did you get on the board of your dance studio? How did that whole thing come about?
Robin: Yeah, so the the studio is run by volunteers. I was not one of the founding members of the studio, but it came out of a studio in a local neighborhood shopfront. It had been affiliated with a dance company, had kids classes, but became financially unviable. And so it closed and a group of the adult students, this was in 2013, decided that they wanted to keep dance in the neighborhood, on the north side of Chicago, and reopened the studio as a nonprofit, specifically, for adults.
We don't offer kids classes we never have. Occasionally we talk about it as like this dream for the future. Like, “wouldn't it be cool if we could expand in this way.” But the core mission is is adults of all levels, anybody, any background, any level of movement, can can come and dance with us.
So I joined the board in 20…, let's see, years are really hard right now. It's 2021. I joined the board in the fall of 2019. And two of the original women who founded this studio are still on the board. And the third board member at the time moved away. And so I was offered the role, and accepted gleefully. I love the studio, it has really been a huge community for me. And I was really excited to have the chance to give back and to have a voice in decision making and all that good stuff.
Julie: Wow, that was a special story. I actually have no idea that that was all happening at your studio. That's actually really awesome. I love that.
Robin: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm really proud of how we run things. And just the commitment to dance for adults, the commitment to our teachers. Yeah, it's a really, it's a really special place.
Julie: Wow, gosh, it really sounds like it. How awesome is that? I can see why you're so passionate about this studio. What a special place.
So fall of 2019. That was like five lifetimes ago.
Robin: Correct.
Julie: So you were actually only you were actually only on a board for a handful of months before the whole world ended.
Robin: Right.
Julie: Fascinating. Okay, interesting. It's actually weird to piece that together. Like, as you said, time is actually super confusing right now, when you said it's 2021. I was like, “Wait, is it though? Yeah, no, it is 2021?”
Robin: Sure is. I'm glancing at the clock or calendar on my computer just to make sure.
Julie: Are a lot of people in your studio still dancing at home? Have you gotten feedback from them about how they're doing, different challenges that people are having dancing at home? How is the feel and the vibe in your community?
Robin: So I think for the most part, people are really grateful that we have kept going online. And we had a few students who, even before it kind of became clear that we were going to have to move everything online and stop dancing together in the studio, who decided for their own personal reasons that they were not comfortable being in… our studio is pretty small, so you know, a small enclosed space with people breathing heavily and all that good stuff.
I would say, our core group of regulars has kept coming. You know, the regulars who go to each class have have stuck by it. Everybody is definitely looking forward to being back in the studio, but I think people have made the best of it. And it's also been really nice because people who have moved away who used to dance with us have been able to kind of come back to their favorite classes, which has been really fun. It's been really nice to see people that I danced with two or three years ago, just back in class now.
On dancing without a mirror
Julie: Wow, magic like that. And so you mentioned, kind of circling back to like many points ago on the topic that you, really found some different things with dancing at home and not having a mirror and all of that. I'm curious on your experience with that to dig just a little bit deeper and how it's been for you dancing at home, and any interesting takeaways you have or just like points on it, because it's been so different for everyone. So I'm really curious about your experience.
Robin: Yeah. So I have actually found it, I think I said, Really, a positive experience or I've tried to find as much positivity in it as I can. Just because there is like, so much, that's pretty awful in the world right now. And so finding things that are good has been helpful.
And I think one of the things that it really forced me to do is to figure out how to feel things in my own body and to feel my technique, operating and to find what it feels like when different muscles are working in different ways to not just look in the mirror and know that my coupe is, is where it should be that I'm not sickling my foot, or whatever. But to feel it without looking without seeing it, without somebody telling me. Because obviously, zoom is a different experience for teachers too, because they can't be looking at everybody in quite the same way that you do in a class.
And so sort of having to figure things out for myself and to know, when I need to make a correction for myself, even if it's not what the teacher is specifically focusing on for any given combination. It's been nice to sort of slow down and just really figure out [my technique]. I've always lived in my head, I'm an academic by nature. As a kid, I escaped into books. I never sort of played sports, I hated P.E. in high school. I don't think it taught me anything useful. I think we've talked about that on Instagram. Truly, truly learned nothing beneficial from my, my phys ed teachers. I wish I had, I wish they could have talked about moving for life, or whatever. But no, we had to play flag football.
“Having to figure things out for myself and to know when I need to make a correction for myself, even if it’s not what the teacher is specifically focusing on for any given combination. It’s been nice to sort of slow down and just really figure out [my technique]. I’ve always lived in my head, I’m an academic by nature. As a kid, I escaped into books. I never sort of played sports, I hated P.E. in high school.”
Julie: Right, which is terrible.
It's been really good for me to sort of figure out how my mind and my body can work together and not just be at odds, because sometimes I feel like they really are at odds, like, Robin is up here. Robin is not everything else.
Julie: Yes, I totally feel that I've often felt like my body was very disconnected from my brain and very discombobulated. And in trying to explain it to someone I once described it as basically like.. sometimes it's hard to feel where your body is in space, or I'm a very clumsy person, like, my body is kind of all over the place. It's like, hard to manage all these limbs, right? There's so many of them. So I was describing it to someone as almost like, I have my brain and then like a garbage bag full of body parts. And you're just like, there's a foot, there's the leg. Let’s put them together.
Robin: Like a Mr. Potato Head sort of thing. I love that. Yeah, I will sometimes get corrections from teachers and think, “okay, you're telling me to stand up straight and to align all of these parts, but I'm doing that? Surely, that's what I'm doing. That's what I'm thinking about and doing.” Sometimes it's easy to get frustrated by that. But again, I think I think it's been another way, that because I can't see myself, I just have to figure it out and play around with things and try different mental images or different ways of thinking, sometimes I will go and look in my bedroom mirror and be like, “Okay, how is this alignment working? I think about x does it change y, and how I'm doing something?” but my bedroom is not very big, so can only do so much?
Julie: I feel like in a way it gives you more, it's given me at least more permission to try different stuff because I'm not afraid of looking gross for a moment in time or like having this moment where I'm like, “Oh, I don't want to see that.” So I'm more open to trying different things, and seeing how they feel, and then looking after I've tried it to see how it looked in the end result. Whereas I feel like when you're very obsessed with how it's looking in the moment it's harder to decide to try something where you're not sure how it's gonna end up going. So I felt it easier to experiment without this judgment looking right back at you in the moment.
Robin: And I think I love that after class after class in the studio, it's so much fun to get to chat with your friends and you take off your shoes or pack up or whatever. But there is the pressure with the next class coming in, and everybody needs to kind of be moving. Whereas at home, it's me and the cats, and the cats are annoyed that I'm doing ballet instead of sitting on the sofa with them. But they weigh nine pounds each. So you know, whatever tough. I get to play around and figure out.
I am taking private lessons with one of the teachers at the studio. And she very quickly figured out that if she phrases things in terms of experimenting, or investigating that, that really resonates with me, and that that kind of gives me the freedom to just test things out and figure it out and see what's going on. And then she'll give me feedback. But I can also sort of think, “Oh, wow, okay, so I shifted that way, and that just totally threw me off balance, so no, we're not going to do that again.” And then, of course, I'm sure I will do it again in a week.
Julie: Right, right. But then you'll remember eventually, not to do it that way. Even if it takes a long time to remember.
Watching ourselves on video
Julie: Do you ever watch yourself on video?
Robin: I do. Yes. I don't tend to videotape during class. And but if there's a combination that I want to remember or think about or figure out why on earth, it felt so awful, then I will videotape myself afterwards. And I found that it's not something that I ever did, in the studio really.
I have, obviously have lots of clips of, if we filmed a combination that we were working on for performance.
One of the other great things about my studio is that we do offer performance opportunities for adults, so I have lots of video evidence of how I've progressed since I've been dancing in the studio. But I rarely ever filmed myself after class or doing class combinations, when it was in the studio.
But now I found it really…. It's helpful, but it's also very easy for me to fall into the trap of, “Oh, my God, everything looks awful.” I know it's not, I know if I go back and watch a clip, two or three weeks after I film it, even I can see the things that I'm doing correctly, and not only the things that I'm doing wrong, or need to work on, right?
Julie: Dancers, ballet dancers are the worst at watching ourselves on video. I mean, I don't know this is maybe universal, but I don't have deep experience with other kinds of people doing other kinds of sports the way I do with ballet, but definitely watching yourself on video is challenging, because we know all the things we're trying to do. And the video is incredibly unforgiving.
But where I actually find the most interesting time to video myself is during class, especially the moment when I get a correction, apply it and then see it happen on video. Because that moment when a teacher says lift up or align, and I didn't necessarily know that that's what I was doing. And then I watch it happen on video. I'm like, “Oh, so I actually did align. There was that moment where I actually did the thing that they wanted me to do, I can see that that's what they wanted me to do. That makes a lot of sense.” I feel like that moment of watching yourself get corrections is actually really, really useful.
Robin: Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting. And I feel like I should give that a try. Oh, hang on. We're being joined to this as Holly.
Julie: Aww, the kitty.
Robin: Yeah, and one of the things that I sent a joke to one of my friends I was like, “You know, it's like athletes watching tape before a game.” But I obviously am not an athlete, I never played a team sport. Never was interested in playing a team sport. And so I would be really interested to know how athletes approach that because I feel like they there must just be such a different mindset. That might be beneficial for us as dancers, more kind of like looking forward to something instead of necessarily berating themselves or ourselves over …. I don't know that is imagined.
Julie: It's interesting you compared to sports, I wonder if it's because they might watch it together with their coach and get the feedback in the moment while it's happening. Like I know, I've had this experience where you know, I released this exams product recently where people can send me a video of them doing specific exercises, then I send them back, like me talking over their video and like drawing on their body and giving them notes and stuff.
And I had some experiences with this where people watch themselves on video first before I watched it with them, and they sent me an email and they're just like, horrified by their performance and like “oh my god, everything is wrong. I don't think you'll be able to help me with anything. This is the worst.”
You're nodding because I assume this the things you've dealt with before, but I’ve felt them before when I've looked at myself on video too where they're just like, “gosh, this is the worst thing, I can't believe I look like this when I'm dancing, oh my gosh, I can't believe I look like this.”
And then I send them back a video of me talking and say like “here, this is going well, this is going well, this needs to change this is going well, this is not going well.” And they all report that they're able to look at it with different eyes and be able to see it in a helpful way. And not just like, “oh, that's ugly way” or like, “gosh, everything is wrong” or like, “Oh gosh, what is going on with that?”
But to be able to look at it with the critical eyes of a teacher and you're almost teaching yourself like, okay, “Gosh, I remember to put my foot Look at that. awesome, amazing. I should remember that more often. It looks really pretty. When I remember to put my foot I should remember that more often. But Gosh, there was a moment I forgot to tuck my tailbone. I bet it was because rond de jambes are hard. And I should focus a little more on it than that moment.”
So like, maybe it's because no one's really taught us how to watch our own videos. And no one's really, I don't know it because maybe in sports, they would watch it with their coach. And they would say “look at that moment right there when you did this XYZ,” and maybe that helps them understand what they should see when they look at their video.
Robin: Yeah, as you were talking, I was thinking about, you know, I obviously follow a bunch of professional dancers on Instagram. And I always find it really interesting to watch their stories or see their posts, and the corrections that are happening even for professional dancers.
I remember probably over the summer, I think it was David Hallberg was taking lessons with a coach or working with a coach. And obviously, hugely famous, hugely talented, professional dancer, danced with the Bolshoi, amazing dance resume. And apparently, he has been doing soutenu turns wrong for his entire career.
That was just such an eye-opening thing for me to think….. One of the things that I love about ballet is that we are doing the same things, little kids learning are doing the same things, and professionals at the most famous ballet companies in the world are doing the same things. We take the same class that starts with pliés and works its way in the same order through the same movements, and everybody is working to improve, whatever that looks like for them.
“One of the things that I love about ballet is that we are doing the same things, little kids learning are doing the same things, and professionals at the most famous ballet companies in the world are doing the same things. We take the same class that starts with pliés and works its way in the same order through the same movements, and everybody is working to improve, whatever that looks like for them.”
But yeah, I think we are really, really good at being self-critical, too. I think that's an unfortunate, or maybe fortunate, I don't know, upsides and downsides to everything, double-edged sword, two sides of the same coin, all that good stuff.
Julie: Yeah, totally, if we didn't have the self-critique, we wouldn't necessarily have the drive, we probably wouldn't even like ballet as much, because it's all so much about that.
It's also much about trying to improve and notice the areas where you can find more or express more or turn out a little more whatever. But I think it's about having that inner dialogue but in a positive way. So also not just like making yourself want to quit ballet or thinking that you're terrible at everything.
Once it gets down that road, it's like, “okay, no, we don't need to go that way.” We can use it as a positive tool. I think that's the difference. But I think we've all been in that boat, you watch a video and you're like, “oh, man, I felt like that was so much better than it looks on video.” But video was particularly unforgiving, to be honest.
Robin: Yes, yeah. But I think it's also really important to find there was a combination that we were doing in that good old Wednesday night ballet class. That I just felt like I was dancing. And I don't care how it looked. It doesn't honestly doesn't matter to me whether my foot was perfectly pointed in those balances or the turns felt pretty good. And I think that might have contributed to why it just felt so dancey. And so I love those moments where it just feels like you're dancing. I'm always trying to find that.
“There was a combination that we were doing where I just felt like I was dancing. And I don’t care how it looked. It doesn’t honestly doesn’t matter to me whether my foot was perfectly pointed in those balancés, it just felt so dancey. I love those moments where it just feels like you’re dancing.”
Julie: I think that's honestly, what makes the difference. Once you have your technical base, I think that being able to express that more often is what makes the difference at the high levels of ballet between soloist and principal. At those higher levels you can, your technique is there with you, but in that moment, you're not focusing on it, you're expressing a character, you're expressing a mood, you're expressing something and that's what the audience is drawn to. They don't care if your foot’s pointed all the way like the critics, obviously are gonna the haters are gonna hate let's say, but honestly, what they care about, what the regular person cares about is that you're sharing a feeling with them and that you're sharing. You're bringing them into your world, you're bringing them into a different world for a moment in time. And that's going to come from the feeling that you have not from the technique.
Robin: Yeah, yeah. And that's one of the things that I've really enjoyed about taking other styles of like… ballet is my first love. It is always going to be like the thing that I work the hardest at the thing that I take most seriously. And the thing that I want to keep in my life regardless of whatever else happens. But Wednesday night ballet originally was followed by a jazz class, I really have like zero interest in jazz. It’s just not my thing. A lot of admiration for people who can do it well. But yeah, not not for me dancing-wise.
But then the jazz class wasn't doing so well. So we replaced it with a musical theater class. And I thought, “Okay, I'm gonna go once to the first class, because I'm already at the studio, I will already be warm, and it will be good if there are people there for the first class.”
And the joke is on me because I've been going to that class, since it started pretty much. But I love it because I don't have to worry about the technicalities as much. It's a beginning class, we really have people who are beginner dancers who have never danced before who take the class and love it. But it's so much fun to have the freedom of expression and acting and be able to find that without having to think about technique really, at all. If I remember the dance, that's what matters. And then I have that freedom to try out acting. I'm not an actor, but I can try it out.
Julie: Doesn't mean you can't play, we all have something we want to share with the world. So to wrap up, and the end here, I want to just know from you any kind of last words you have for dancers. Because you have a very unique perspective, you have had experiences as a kid, you've had experiences as an adult, you have now experience on the board. So also being able to help people who are maybe coming into the world and being a part of making those decisions and guiding people in their journeys. So what, what do you want to tell people, our audience is people like us? What should they know? What do you want to tell them?
Robin: Oh, man, that's a great question. I think you, you have to always remember why you love ballet so much. I think when you lose sight of the fact that it is both athletic movement but also artistry, that's kind of when you lose why you're doing it.
I'm guessing most people who want just a good workout, there's so many other good workouts out there.
I think it's easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. In listening to you talk about being a teacher, and I'm also a teacher, I think it's really important to remember the things that you are good at, and the things that you love, and to use those as a base to build on.
We started dancing because we love it. I think that's, that's what I would say,
Julie: I think I think you make some awesome points. I would say there are a lot more efficient ways to get a workout. If you're in this for a workout, I can think of many more ways that you can get a much quicker and more effective workout. Obviously, it has health benefits ballet is so good for your body in so many ways, right? Especially if you're doing it healthily. But like if you're just here for the workout, there's definitely a faster way for you. Ballet is a very slow process, right, a 90-minute class, we could definitely pack into like 10 minutes of bodyweight squats and you're all good. Right?
So I think you're so right, that there's a huge piece that we can't forget about we can't get lost in the annoyance of not getting our perfect fifth we can't get lost in the frustration of the details. We have to remember to dance every once in a while.
Robin: Yeah, and I think there's so much freedom in knowing that you're never going to be called up by the Bolshoi and that we just are doing it because it's enjoyable because we love it.
And nobody is affected if we are never perfect. Not that anybody is ever perfect. But you know, as good as you can be, is good enough, because you're doing it for yourself. There shouldn't be I think as adults external pressure on your ballet.
“And nobody is affected if we are never perfect. Not that anybody is ever perfect. But you know, as good as you can be, is good enough, because you’re doing it for yourself. There shouldn’t be I think as adults external pressure on your ballet.”
Julie: Yeah. So important. Well, thank you so much for your perspective and for your passion. And it's so fun to hear about your wonderful studio and your ballet journey. Thanks so much for your time and for being on the show.
Robin: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. This was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed getting to chat with you.
Julie: So awesome.