Broche Banter #10 -- Kristen
Today on the show we have Kristen, a writer, quilter, and dancer who started ballet as a grownup.
On this episode, we talk about having kids and finding time for yourself, the power of being ok with being a beginner, and her journey from student to teacher.
Enjoy!
Julie: Kristen, welcome to the show! I am so excited to chat with you today. We’re gonna talk all about beginning ballet, teaching, and everything in between.
Kristen: Sounds like fun!
J: Awesome!
Let’s talk about the beginning of your journey with ballet
J: So you started ballet as an adult. Had you danced before at all in the past?
K: So I started ballet when I think I was 31. I had done tap dancing and I started that also as an adult. I started that midway through college. I got inspired to start tapping because I went to see Stomp, which ironically has no tap dancing in it at all. So I tap danced for a little bit just on and off in college, a little bit after that but I didn’t really start tapping until I was probably 29 and then I fell into ballet, so I really hadn’t. I didn’t dance as a kid, I didn’t dance as a teenager. Dance was entirely new to me and for a long time I thought that it was a nice hobby that I could do but then I was too obsessed with it for it to be a hobby so I thought, “maybe I should take myself seriously.”
J: Just got to back up for a sec-- What kind of dancing is it if it’s not tap dancing in Stomp?
K: It’s mostly body percussion and percussion. I mean they’re dancing and moving, right? But they’re not making sounds with their feet, they have a matchbox, or a tube or whatever.
J: I’m not sure I realized that. I’ve seen Stomp and I loved it! I saw it when I went to New York City as a teenager and it was earth-shattering. It was amazing, but I actually don’t think that all of this time I ever put it together that they weren’t making noise with their feet!
K: I mean they would stomp their feet but they didn’t have tap shoes on and they weren’t doing tap steps, they were just making rhythm, but that was it. I was like, “I will be a tap dancer now.”
J: How funny. I would’ve guessed that it was tap dancing. So tap dancing is then defined as tapping with your feet specifically and not body percussion.
K: Yeah, and I definitely think that many, many tap dancers also do body percussion, but that is not a prerequisite to tap dance.
J: How funny. And it’s called Stomp, like you said it’s very ironic.
What does it mean to take yourself seriously? Dealing with voices who may not agree with your choices.
J: So you figured out that you liked dance enough to take yourself seriously. What does it mean to start taking yourself seriously? What does that mean for you?
K: I feel like that is such a profound question. I recently during this pandemic have been really thinking about taking myself seriously. I think the biggest thing was getting over the fear that people will make fun of me for taking myself seriously. Like, if I’m walking around like a dancer and people think that you’re not. That’s a really big, scary thing especially with your family when you want their support and you tell them you’re doing something and they’re like, “okay, get a real job.” So that’s what that means deep down, but it also just means what is the journey? There has to be some goal and some arch, so do I need to start a business? Do I need to get an LLC? Do I need a website? Do I need an Instagram account? What do serious artists do to make a living out of this? So that also is very much the practical side of taking myself seriously.
J: So in the studio, you’re saying that if you really go for it and put yourself out there, if you really take yourself seriously and go for the emotion and go for the feeling, that that is the scary feeling that you’re identifying?
K: Yeah, and I think we all make judgements about what people do with their free time. We all know that word “hobby” and we all get what that means. It’s something you do and you don’t take yourself too seriously and it’s your Saturday afternoon thing that you do. It’s almost a derogatory thing right? If someone says that you’re a hobby-pianist or a hobby-carpenter, and it’s like, “isn’t that cute that you do that?” But then if you take yourself seriously in the studio and you smear your heart all over the stage and you really put yourself into it and the vulnerability required to do that for someone to then be like, “isn’t that cute? She’s got a little hobby!” That is crushing. It’s crushing. So that’s the kind of fear that we’re talking about is that I’m going to go for this and I’m going to really try to take a go at it, but you’re not going to take it seriously and you’re going to think that I’m being ridiculous.
J: Isn’t it funny? The word hobby is so loaded. Especially as I’ve never identified ballet as a hobby. I’ve done it on the side of my life but to hear it called a hobby has always been a little bit stinging to me as well, so it’s interesting to hear you put that in words. I’ve never really explored it, I just actively ignored the word “hobby” because it never felt like what I was doing.
K: Yeah, I also quilt on the side.
J: She’s sitting in front of one, for those of you watching the video.
K: Yeah, I made that one. I actually made that one for my husband when he was my boyfriend and I gave it to him and I said, “I really like this quilt, and I want it back, so maybe I should marry him,” and now it’s in my studio! But the word “craft.” Craft is another one of those dirty words that’s like, “she does arts and crafts. She makes things out of popsicle sticks.” So there’s a huge divide in the art community on whether or not quilting is an art or if it’s a craft. Don’t call it a craft, it’s demeaning. Don’t call this a hobby. I sell these-- or at least I’m trying to! So there’s lots of little words that make it sound like it’s not serious. Even “adult” ballet. You’re walking a fine line between people who think that adult ballet is a real, serious thing like we’re doing at Broche and there’s like, “oh, isn’t that cute? Adults are trying to do ballet,” and I hate that. I don’t like that divide, but there’s that judgement out there.
J: Right. The language is really important in how we identify. I had a teacher once, Kat Wildish actually. She’s from New York City, she’s amazing, a really fun teacher. She would always call us dancers. Always, many times in a class. When I had first started ballet, I felt awkward being addressed as a dancer and I felt like I didn’t know if she was talking to me, I’m not a dancer, I’m not yet a dancer, who is she talking to in the class. I always felt super awkward being called a dancer because I didn’t call myself a dancer, but then over time I thought, “oh, I am dancing, therefore I am a dancer.” It can be your identity, even if you’re not a professional or whatever, it can be your identity. So now I call my dancers dancers because I think it was really important for me to have someone re-enforce that and give me permission to say that you can call yourself this.
K: I think that naming it and calling ourselves that is extraordinarily powerful. We’ll talk about this later, but I quit my job as a teacher to become a dancer.
J: A high school teacher.
K: Right, a high school history teacher. When I first quit my job and people asked me what I was going to do, I was like, “well, I don’t know I’m going to quilt, write, and dance,” and they were like, “okay, well that’s not a job.” So I thought I needed to take myself seriously, so I went and made myself some business cards and there was this moment of truth where I had to put on my business card what I did. I wanted to put down “retired high school history teacher” or “searching at 35.” I had all of these things that I was going to put on there that was not calling myself a dancer, a writer, or a quilter. So I was about to hit publish and get my business cards sent and I thought, “screw it. I need to own this,” so I put on that business card “writer, dancer, quilter,” and I panicked that I had done something wrong, that I had claimed this thing that wasn’t actually mine yet, but it’s important for us to claim that. A writer writes, and I write. A dancer dances, and I dance so what else am I going to call myself? What else should we all call ourselves if we do these things that we love?
J: How old were your kids at that point? Had you had your kids at that point? Where were they in your life?
K: They were blessedly at the moment where they were just about to start elementary school. Finding time to do things when they’re around is really hard so I was just about to be gifted with lots of time. I think Oliver was about to go into ESE and Tristan was in first grade.
J: I see.
K: But yeah, reinventing yourself and starting a new job with two small children while I have a Master’s degree in history and then I was like, “okay, I’m done with that. Let’s have a new life!” is pretty terrifying.
J: It’s pretty terrifying and then you almost feel like you need to make it work because otherwise people are going to be like, “I told you you couldn’t be a writer.” Did you have any of that?
K: I worked so hard-- I still do-- I work so hard to prove myself. I think I get panicked when I’m not achieving the success that other people are expecting. I’ll be at parties and be talk-- not that I go to parties, why did I say that? I’ll be talking to people and they’ll ask me what I do, and I’ll say I’m a writer and they’ll ask what I’ve published, and I’ll say, “well, nothing.” Then I’ll say that I’m a dancer and they’ll ask what company I’m in and I’ll say, “well, I teach.” Then, I’ll say that I’m a quilter and they ask if I’ve sold anything and I’ll say, “well, my dad bought something once,” so how do I present this confident body to the world that I’m doing these things without the traditional markers of success? But if you ask me, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my whole life and I feel like I’m bringing happiness to other people who want the same things that I do, so that’s a huge success, but that’s not how society measures success.
J: Right. Why does it matter what society thinks about your success?
K: It doesn’t. Except those little voices get in your head.
J: It does in the sense when we begin ballet as adults too because those little voices as you mentioned with adult ballet not being real ballet or whatever, that little voice is already telling you that you’re not cut out for this.
K: And then you add to the invisible voices with all of the actual people who have said that you’re too tall to ballet, you’re too heavy to do ballet, you’re too old to do ballet. There are people who have actually said those things to you, so how do you deal with that?
J: It’s a lot to deal with, but is it worth it?
K: Oh my God, it’s amazing.
J: That’s the ultimate question, right?
K: It is the ultimate question.
J: Why is it worth it?
K: I think you have to have a real serious conversation with yourself and say what am I doing here on this planet? For some of my family members, it’s making money and being prestigious, and that’s good for them but that’s not what it is for me. I was never going to make money and be prestigious -- I was a high school history teacher!
J: Right, that’s not where you were headed.
K: Right! So that never was important to me and being happy is tremendously, extraordinarily important and people think that you need to give back and be a doctor and stuff like that. But I’m happy, and that means that I ripple happiness to other people who get happy and ripple happiness to other people. If we were all happier, maybe we wouldn’t have wars or conflict or all of those things. I think it’s really important.
J: It’s hard I think for us -- maybe even especially as women or as mothers in your case -- to be okay with that sort of “selfish” notion or what we would call selfish of I’m doing this for me so that I can be happy and that in and of itself creates value for the world. Does it? Does it create value, our own happiness?
K: Yeah! I mean I tell my family all of the time that if mommy’s cup is not full, no one is happy. They see that, they get it. I am more patient, I am more caring and focused on them if my cup is full. My cup is not full by watching them play, and I feel terrible saying that where people will hear me, but I’m not that kind of mom and I never have been. Maybe that makes me a “bad mom” but I am a human-being and I am as important as my children. I get to have the same things that they get which is a chance at working, a chance at playing, a chance at fulfilling dreams. I reject the idea that as a mother or as a woman or whatever that we have to self-sacrifice in order to make the world a better place by raising contented children. I want to be content!
J: Wow, that’s really powerful. I’ve never heard it put like that “I am as important as my children.” I think that’s a fascinating notion that I’m sure is very difficult to accept because there’s so much pressure to put them first at all costs, but that’s not necessarily the case. I mean, after your kids grow up and go, you have to still be a whole person. You still have to be a whole person for your husband and for your family and not have a piece of you missing.
K: Well I think that’s the whole idea of the “empty nester” and people panicking when your kids are going to leave the house and that I’ve done nothing for eighteen years and now I have to somehow reinvent myself. I don’t subscribe to that at all. I also don’t subscribe to the idea that you wait to fulfill your dreams until after you retire, that’s hooey also. This is really an American notion. In Europe, many countries don’t feel this way. The only parenting book I read was by this American woman who was raising her kids in France. She said that after your kids go to bed, hide their toys so you pretend they don’t even exist so you can be a grownup. And that’s fine! In America, I feel like people would be like, “you want to pretend like your kids don’t exist? That’s so awful,” but we have to have that.
J: Well your kids should also probably see what a whole person looks like so they can look up to being one themselves.
K: Exactly, I agree.
On kids & self-care
J: On the topic of moms, we lose a lot of moms during this phase when they have kids. We lose them in the ballet studio because life is all-consuming when you have kids and as you mentioned, it’s hard to get things done when the kids are around, childcare is expensive, and can you even get an hour away from the kids? How do you balance that? Should you take a break from dance? Everyone’s experience is different, but tell us about your experience about how you fit your passions into your life with kids.
K: When I first had kids and when I was still teaching high school, I went to one hour a week of dance class and it was literally the thing that got me through the week. The whole week was horrible except that one hour with my tap teacher. Over time I realized that that’s not okay. That’s not how life should be, that one hour a week is everything. But that was great, because it was a manageable one hour a week and my husband could take the kids and it wasn’t a big deal. It just happened to be that I transitioned into doing dance a lot more frequently when they were old enough to put their shoes on and go to school, things like that. So, I don’t know if I had wanted to do this much creative production and teaching as a brand new mom, I don’t know if I would have been able to. My husband is much more willing than many husbands to take the kids because he appreciates that I need these things too, so I don’t know. It’s always so easy to say that I did it, so everyone else should do it, but everyone’s [different] and it’s hard. Even my mother-in-law was very much saying that I should stay home and be with the kids, but I want more than that. So the people you love are telling you that you need to stay home and be with your kids while you sneak away and there’s so much guilt! The guilt of leaving your kids behind so that you can go do something for yourself is tremendous!
J: That’s intense. I’m very curious to see how the rise of the online ballet classes helps the mom population because even in our online classes, we have a handful of new moms who I never would have seen in the studio. They would have never been able to come into the studio. There’s a kid running around their studio and I don’t care! If you can enjoy it still with your kids with you, then more power to you. That’s amazing, do it. Find the time, even if you can only join for half of it because your kid needs your attention after half of it, you still got half of it. That’s still amazing, but you wouldn’t necessarily be able to do that in the studio.
K: I agree, I think this is a godsend. I really think the way dance is traditionally taught is very unfriendly to moms.
J: Totally.
K: Broche has been really good about letting you if you need to bring your kid to class. Broche is really good about that, but even then I think there’s still a little guilt and people will apologize. So this innovation of letting people take class in their homes with their cameras off or whatever they need to do is revolutionary and I really do think that that’s going to be a really big development for moms.
J: Yeah, and even just the ability to do a shorter class because you don’t have to put the effort into a commute or a babysitter and feel like you have to make it worth your time. You can do a twenty minute class because you had your computer and you had twenty minutes and then you can just go back to whatever you need to do so I hope that that will enable moms to be more present in the community and not have to lose themselves as much in that period of time.
K: Absolutely. I agree. I think there’s a lot of grief when moms come back from having babies and all of a sudden they’re like, “I have to get my body back,” and all of this stuff and that’s a really hard transition for people, and if it doesn’t have to be such a hard black and white transition, I think that would make a big difference.
J: That would be hard; the concept of getting your body back. I mean, a lot of dancers are going through that right now with the concept of getting your body back after the coronavirus, right? So is the feeling of loss actually similar? I don't have kids, I’ve never experienced getting my body back after that. Is that feeling actually similar to this or is it totally different?
K: It’s so similar. I think the hard thing is that because I didn’t dance before I had kids, it’s not like I had anything to compare it to, but I did have the numbers on the scale. I gained 55lbs with each kid which is a lot of weight. So you lose some of that right away but then the last 10lbs you can never get rid of, so there’s this sense of loss that everything is misshapen and it doesn’t look the way it used to and there’s stretch marks everywhere and you’re still 10lbs too heavy. There’s despair that it will never be that way and that’s exactly how people are feeling after the coronavirus. How do I get my strength back, how do I get my flexibility back? So those transitions are hard and online classes are a way to make that bridge for people.
J: Intense no matter how you slice it!
K: True!
How has starting to teach ballet affected you as a dancer?
J: I want to get a little bit into your transition to teaching. I’ll just give the listeners a little background: Kristen started at our studio as a dancer, she didn’t start ballet with us for the first time but after about 6-8 months of being in the studio with us, we invited Kristen to be a teacher of our beginner dancers to help grow our next generation of new dancers. So we transitioned together. She still is a dancer with us but also now a teacher so we made that transition together, which is very exciting. Has it changed your dancing? Has it changed your outlook? What was that like?
K: It’s been life-changing and amazing. It’s funny, so when I taught high school, I taught for the very first time in inner city Los Angeles. So it was obviously a super rough time and a lot of kids were super low skill-level and had not had any good history before that so they were not engaged and kind of lost and needed me to explain things a lot in a lot of different ways. So I got pretty good at creative ways of explaining things, but in the process of coming up with creative ways and explaining things, I realized that I learned the history myself so much better when I taught it than when I just listened to it in class and I was a very engaged history student. I literally outlined the entire textbook when I was in high school because I loved it so much, but I never learned history nearly as well as when I was teaching in Los Angeles because I was teaching it. I had to break it down and explain it and figure ways for them to get it from a lot of different angles because they were having trouble with that. That is exactly what I’m experiencing with this dance shift from being a dancer to a teacher, is that my own ballet practice is tremendously improved by teaching it because I am explaining it in a lot of different ways, from a lot of different angles just like I did with my high school students. How do you do a tendu? If it doesn’t make sense to them, how else can I explain it? The more I explain it, the more I show them and the more I practice, the better I get a dancer. It’s like the best thing ever to sort of double practice and get paid for it!
J: So, why bother? Why did you bother trying to explain things in so many ways, either to the teenagers or to the dancers? That’s a lot of work.
K: With my high school students, if they were not engaged and they didn’t get it, they would make my life a living hell. So it was either they got it and they were engaged, or I was going to quit. It was so hard and the behavior problems were so tremendously psychologically difficult for me. Kids with ankle bracelets, this one kid used to shoot at me with invisible guns. So if you’re not reaching those people in some way, they were sitting in the back flipping you off, so that was not going to fly with me. I needed something to get them engaged. I also genuinely love history and I genuinely love kids so I wanted them to get it and love history as much as I did because I knew that they had bad teachers. With ballet, I love ballet and I want people to get it as much as I do and I want them to fall in love with it as much as I did. Maybe so I don’t feel so alone in my horrible obsession. So it’s more work in a way, but in a way it’s easier because then you have someone along on your journey with you because you have someone who loves it as much as you do and you’re sharing something, you have this connection with someone because you get it and they get and all it took was explaining it in a different way, or five different ways. Whatever it took.
J: If they don’t get it, they’re not on the journey with you.
K: Exactly. If you just think about this life as a journey. You and me Julie, our journeys went [together] and someday they’ll go in different directions. Walking with someone along your journey is powerful and I think we see that in this coronavirus time when we can’t be with each other how devastating it is to be alone on our journeys and not have people with us. I don’t need everyone to have my journey, but I need you to walk with me on the same path for a while so I don’t feel lonely and you don’t feel lonely and we can hold hands and say that this is special.
J: Does one group need that more than the other or does everyone as a human need that the same amount?
K: I think everyone as a human needs that. It’s funny, because when I was teaching high school I thought that this is the most important job in the world, that I am a crucial link in the history of the world because I am taking young people and turning them into adults and that’s important. But then I quit and I thought I’ll have to reevaluate that. Then, I started teaching adults and I found that there was a trickle down effect. If adults are fulfilled and happy and satisfied, that trickles down to their kids. So many of the problems I saw in high school weren't really about the kid, it was about their parents who worked ten jobs, or they’re in jail, or they have substance abuse problems because they’re not happy. If parents aren’t happy, kids aren’t happy. So yes it’s good to help kids, but it’s good to help anybody. We all need validation and we all go into the studio and look in the mirror and judge our bodies. We all have these petty, catty thoughts and we all need our mommies and that doesn’t ever change.
J: So true. I think as teachers in the studio, sometimes it can feel like we’re the mom of our dancers, even if they’re older than us it doesn’t really matter. You still feel like you’re helping them on their journey to finding happiness and fulfillment themselves.
K: Totally. I always say that I’m so proud of them and I think, “is that condescending?” But I am! I do feel motherly pride for them because they faced a challenge and they crushed it and I was there to witness it and that’s pretty darn cool.
J: It was funny when I started teaching, I was in my mid-20's maybe, and teaching people who were older than me, I assumed that they had their life together better than I did and I assumed that they were already whole people. You know, you assume when you’re a kid that everyone who is older than you is a whole person and you’re going to get there one day. It’s a funny thought. But then the older you get, everyone is still figuring it out. So it’s been fascinating to watch people figure that out through the classes and through the studio where you watch someone come in not whole and you watch them leave as a whole person.
K: So true. I just got chills thinking about that because it’s so true! When I started ballet, I was so disillusioned with my body. I’m 6’2 so I’m enormous and people always told me to stand in the back, be invisible, try to be smaller. So I came in there with really bad posture and bad self-esteem and just feeling terrible about myself. What ballet has given me… I came in as an adult and I am a totally different adult than I was. So much of it has to do with what you learn in the studio, what you learn about yourself, what you throw out, what you keep, what you build, it’s such a big growth and it doesn’t matter what age you are. That happens no matter what.
J: There’s always growing to be had. And that’s why we like ballet so much.
K: Amen.
Why should you start ballet as an adult?
J: One last question for you Kristen. Starting ballet is really scary because starting things as an adult is scary and you don’t want to be a child or like we talked about, you don’t want to not be taken seriously or whatever it is. So what’s your parting wisdom for people listening to this thinking about getting back to the barre, or people who have always wanted to and think, “these people are inspiring, maybe I can do it but I’m still super scared,” what last wisdom do you have to leave them with?
K: I think what you just said is really important to acknowledge; you’re scared. It’s scary. No one should ever tell you that it’s not scary and you should never try to deny that it's scary. It takes vulnerability, it takes courage, it takes determination, it takes falling down and getting up again. All of that is true and it needs to be acknowledged, but I think what I would say is that literally there is only once. You get one shot at this and you don’t even know how long you’ve got. My mom died at 59 and that really lit a fire under my pants. You don’t get to say that you’ll start ballet at 60. She wouldn’t have gotten to do that. You think that it’s too late, but if you start today versus tomorrow, then you are one day ahead of where you would have been if you hadn’t started. There’s nothing to lose except for some fears that are okay to lose and some vulnerability which is okay to have, so there’s nothing to lose and everything to lose if you never get around to it.
J: So true. Just got to get in there and get started.
K: Exactly. You know what, the worst thing happens and you get in there and realize it isn’t for you then go play field hockey. Go find something else. But you might as well try and who knows, maybe it will change your life like it did mine.
J: Well Kristen, I could literally talk to you for 12 hours--
K: I hope we do someday.
J: I’m sure we will one day. I’m not a night person but I’m sure our conversations would go into the night.
K: We will have a slumber party, you and me.
J: I would make an exception to have a conversation with you, Kristen.
K: You’re very sweet.
J: But it was very fun to chat with you. We hardly talked about ballet, but we talked about ballet in the deepest of ways. I think all of this is ballet. It’s so much more than dance. It’s really just becoming who you want to be as a human-being and it’s been awesome to share with you along this journey, especially because we are very much kindred spirits.
K: Amen. It’s so wonderful that Broche Ballet lets adults explore these things and it doesn’t just have to be about ballet. Broche gets that it’s about more than ballet. It’s about deep down human-being stuff.
J: That’s right. Human, adulting, all of that stuff.
K: All of the stuff.
J: Well, we’ll keep dancing as long as we want, as long as it makes us happy and whole and we’ll keep having fun with it.
K: I can’t wait!
J: Thanks for being on the show, Kristen.
K: Thanks for having me, Julie. It’s been a pleasure.
