Broche Banter #11 -- Natalie Danza
Today, we have Natalie Danza, a leader of the adult ballet community online.
On this episode, we talk about her journey with ballet, from studying at a conservatory, to becoming a professional latin dancer, to finding herself in a holistic and healthy way.
Enjoy!
J: Welcome to show, Natalie. I’m so excited to have a chance to chat with you today all about your adult ballet journey!
N: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited because we’ve been Instagram friends but it’s always so nice when you get to speak to people that you feel like you know but you don’t actually really know yet so yeah, I’m super excited to be here!
J: Totally! It’s so funny to be talking to you because I’ve been seeing you on video for so long and hearing you talk about things and hearing you on YouTube and on Instagram and all of that so it feels like I know you, but we haven’t actually “met.”
N: Yeah, not yet! I want to though. I would love to meet in person one day.
J: Yeah that would be so fun. Speaking of in-person, you’ve put together some adult ballet holidays where people kind of get together and take class as a travel thing. How fun is that?
N: Yeah it’s been amazing. It’s been such a blessing. I just had the idea not actually knowing that people were doing retreats and I called mine a holiday because I didn’t really understand that I should maybe not use that language but anyway, people understood the concept and we did the first one in Malaga. That would have been three years ago which was so fun and I was so grateful for everyone who came on that because it was the first one I had done as a holiday and I just had the loveliest, loveliest people come to that and they were super supportive and understanding that it was my first time running one. We had loads of fun. We went and saw Sleeping Beauty at the theatre and then we also did some of the variations from Sleeping Beauty so I kind of tried to have a theme for each holiday. Then, the one we did last year was in Madrid and that one was Don Quixote themed and that one is obviously set in Spain, so it was kind of perfect. They’ve just been amazing and it’s been a great opportunity for me to meet people in the community. Some people came from the states, it was amazing. I thought that this would probably be more European because it’s easy-ish to get to Spain from Europe, but I was amazed that people came from all over the place. It was so cool, it was so nice. As well as for me getting to meet people and dance together, one of the other beautiful things about it was just seeing how people made lifetime friendships at the holidays which has been just so beautiful as well. I’m super grateful that people took the chance to go to the first one and once it was established that people have been excited. I had to cancel the one this year because of COVID. It was supposed to be this week actually. It was supposed to be on right now in Cypress, but it’s okay. Everyone obviously understood that we couldn't do it and I’m excited to set up another one as soon as we can.
J: It’s so fun to take ballet in other places. I think one of my favorite things about ballet and music and the arts is that there’s no language. It’s cross-culture right? So even though we’re from different places, we have this shared language. We use the same words to describe everything. You can take class from people who you don’t speak the same language as and you can still understand it. That’s just the coolest thing.
N: Yeah, it’s amazing. I love it. It’s honestly so much fun. I’ve had people come visit me, like my friend Debrah for example. She came to Madrid and took a class. That class was in Spanish, obviously I teach in English but this class was in Spanish, and as you said, there’s no problem because all of the words are in French so everyone recognizes them and even if you’re a complete beginner and don’t know the words, the movement of the body, like you said is a universal language. It’s so special, it really is.
J: It’s so cool, and I think as adult dancers, ballet is our leisure activity. “Leisure” is a funny word for it because it’s not leisurely at all, but it’s our leisure activity. So I loved that you called it a holiday because that’s what it is for us. It’s not work, it’s not hard work, it’s not stressful, it’s like we get to go play in a new place and go play in ballet class.
N: Yeah and that’s exactly been my philosophy on ballet, especially for the last few years. There’s been a shift for sure, but shifting from that idea of it being a very goal-oriented thing for me at the beginning when I started it certainly was in a way or it quickly transitioned into being that and then I realized that as you just said, the joy is in doing it. It’s not about only enjoying it when you get that double pirouette. You enjoy it from the beginning and I think that’s something that I really try to include now both in my own dance journey and also as a teacher now, I try to include that for my students that it’s not about beating yourself down when things aren’t going well. You acknowledge it but you also enjoy the things you do really well and praise me when it’s myself and praise my students with that as well because I think that’s really important, especially in ballet as you know. It’s so hard and you have to stay positive and celebrate the little wins, because they do seem little in ballet.
J: They do seem very little, but they’re huge. So ballet generally attracts pretty driven people. I’m sure you have that in your ballet community as well; we tend to be more Type A, more intense, more intense careers, more intense goal-oriented people. So how do we reconcile that preexisting mindset with what you’re talking about with ballet which can be taken as so literal and goal-oriented. How do we deal with that?
N: It’s such a good question and it’s something that I definitely, definitely struggled with. I think I’ve been on a whole journey with it, but as you said, it’s not just the mindset when you come to ballet class. It’s not like you put that mindset on when you step into ballet class, it’s the mindset for a lot of us and as you said, it does attract people who are driven, hard-working, all of those things because those are the things that you need to get good at ballet. You need to work hard, there’s no way around it. So the shift is in enjoying the hard work and not seeing it so much as work but as passion, I guess. For me personally, it’s been thinking about the mindset outside of ballet as well as in ballet. I don’t know, I just started to do a lot more work in my inner world I guess. All of these terms are becoming more popular and I try not to get too spiritual about it or anything but I think I really started to realize that like you said, this is not just about how I am in the dance studio, it’s about how I am in life and how I want to show up. Do I want to show up constantly judging myself? I think that was maybe for me one of my breakthroughs was realizing how judgemental I was towards myself and therefore to other people sometimes. Judging my own ballet, judging my own technique, and judging my own pirouettes, and just constantly judging. I think at one point while I was at the conservatory and struggling with all of that, I think after that, when I decided that my journey wasn’t going to be trying to become a professional ballet dancer and I accepted it and then deciding that if that isn’t the goal, then why on Earth am I being so hard on myself? Surely if this is where I’m going, I want to improve and I will carry on working hard to improve but there doesn’t have to be a specific moment where I get into this certain company because that was never going to happen at that point. So it turned into how do I learn to enjoy this and not judge myself all of the time and not think that I’m not worthy or I’m not good enough if I can’t do a double pirouette that day or I can’t hold that balance en pointe. I started to separate myself as an adult dancer and that kind of being my identity from my actual dancing and just enjoying the dancing if that makes sense. That was a lot of different thoughts at the same time. I hope that people can get something out of that.
J: Well I think there’s a really important point that you’re making that I want to pull out and kind of dig into specifically which is the difference between wanting to be better and being good enough already. By good enough, I mean good enough as a person, as a human-being, as a dancer, as a whole person, we often equate I can’t turn out my legs, therefore I’m not a good person. Our mentality can sometimes get to that whereas I can’t turn out my legs because I’m a human-being and I’m working on getting them to turn out. How can we change that thought process?
N: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s acknowledging where you are on your journey as well. That’s so important; the acceptance part. Even if we did train as youngsters or even if we did carry on or especially if you didn’t and you had a big break and then you came back to it, the expectations have to shift. They have to for our mental health because otherwise we have a standard that’s not realistic and it doesn’t have to be that only at that standard you’re allowed to enjoy ballet and you’re allowed to think of yourself as worthy, like you said. So it’s acknowledging where you are in your own journey and that translates also into the dance studio, especially in group classes to not compare and remember that you are on your own journey. Why are you looking at that person over there who has got their leg higher when they’ve been dancing for three years longer than you? So it’s acknowledging and accepting where you are and then working from there, because otherwise it’s too much resistance, I think.
J: It took me a long time to reconcile the fact that I wanted to continue improving, but I should be nicer to myself along the journey. I felt like if I wasn’t super critical and judgemental of myself, I wouldn’t have the drive to keep going and I wasn’t sure where that motivation was going to come from if this wasn’t what was happening.
N: Yes, 100% and that comes back to that personality type that you were talking about before and that was the driving force for a lot of the things that I’ve done and probably the same for you. In school, the drive was always to get that grade, so it was the end result and whatever [it was], that was the goal, that was the end-point and I’m judging myself and pushing myself so that I get there and not knowing another way, not knowing that there is another way. Then, at some point I realized that maybe that way did push me, but this new way that I’m doing things… I feel like it’s getting me 90% of the results, but 100% of the enjoyment along the way as opposed to getting 100% of the results but only like 10% of the enjoyment. For me that is definitely worth it. Some people might even say that the results are better, that’;s probably still the judgemental part of me, but just in terms of mental health and enjoyment and just coming from a place of pure joy towards ballet instead of the other side of it is worth it for me, anyway.
J: It’s a huge transition and I think many of us are faced with it right now having had to leave the studios for a couple of months. I think there’s so much pressure on ourselves to practice in the perfect environment. I cannot practice unless my teacher is watching me, I cannot practice unless it’s perfect, I cannot practice unless I am as flexible as I was, I cannot practice if I don’t have enough space or if I don’t have the perfect floor because we’re always so judgemental of ourselves and I think a lot of us have had to come to accept it on such a greater level in the last couple of months of accepting that you can still do stuff even if it’s not in the perfect place.
N: Yes, absolutely. I think being able to also be okay with a regression is such a big life lesson. It’s a lesson that I learned when I left the conservatory and I stopped dancing like 4 or 5 hours every single day and went back to just doing a normal adult class either every day or sometimes missing a day and noticing certain things decrease. Other things increased like musicality and expression because there’s a different environment in adult ballet class which I love, I love it so much. But to be able to become being okay with these things and like you said, in this moment right now, yes, when we get back into the studio our grand allegro is not going to be the same as it has been but to be able to accept it and be okay with it and still love yourself and still say it’s still worth dedicating time to doing what I can now in preparation for that and then being kind to yourself when you do see that lower grand jete in the mirror when we get back to it.
J: We’re really being forced to work on that mindset now, I would say. I mean, this work on the mindset will help us in the future. You see this with injuries, so professionals or any of us have been through injuries and we feel the same thing. I really equate this feeling to the feeling of injury. It’s easy if you’ve got an injured ankle and say that you can’t work on anything, but you can still lay on the floor and do core work, you can still work on port de bras, but it’s finding the motivation when you feel like everything is lost to still find what you can actually work on and be more surgical about it.
N: So true.
J: So tough.
N: So tough. It’s important work.
J: It’s maybe perhaps the most important work for all of us to be doing right now at this time because discouragement and wanting to leave ballet is rampant throughout the adult ballet community so people getting discouraged, beating yourself up at the end of the day can make ballet very stressful and so perhaps the work that we’re all doing collectively over these few months will help us through the next time that we have a challenge.
J: Let’s back up a little bit and give some context to what’s going on. Tell me about the beginnings of your ballet journey.
N: I’m going to do a very fast version because I mean, I have the full version on my YouTube channel and I think it’s about 15 minutes long, so we’ll spare anyone of that version.
J: We'll link to that YouTube video as well in case anyone wants to watch your whole story, but we’ll do the abbreviated version today and link everyone to that.
N: Perfect, thank you so much. I think that some people in adult ballet can relate to that I danced ballet as a very little kid. I think I started when I was three and I really loved it, I was doing all of the fun parts of ballet and then just by coincidence, I was living in Scotland and my parents moved back down to England. When I moved to England, I didn‘t find a ballet teacher that I liked, so I stopped. I didn’t stop dancing but I stopped doing ballet. It was so funny because I was nine years old but I told my mom, “I don’t like this teacher and I don’t wanna do it,” like, why is a nine year old making that decision? But I did, so then I just carried on doing other dance styles. It was more like commercial-type, contemporary stuff. Nothing even close to professional stuff at that point because it was just for fun, but I always just enjoyed any kind of dancing. Then I remember when I was choosing my GCSE’s -- I’m sorry because that doesn’t translate into any other countries, but it’s what they let you choose between the ages of 14 and 16 years old -- dance was an option at my school so that was amazing and I did that. It was kind of contemporary stuff. Then, for A-levels (ages 16-18), there was another course that was also dance, so I did that and then I decided to apply to both universities to study dance and I also applied to some of the conservatories and this was contemporary, so I wasn’t even doing ballet at this point. So I realized that my technique wasn’t good enough because I hadn’t been going to a proper dance school. I had just been doing it in school and it was more choreography focused, theory, all of that. We did some performance stuff as well, but it was much more the study of dance as a whole rather than honing the body to be on stage. I hadn’t done that work, and that was my problem. So I didn’t actually get into any of the conservatories that I applied to and that was a big punch in the face at that point and realizing that it doesn’t take just talent. Talent is not enough in anything and I think that was a hard lesson to learn at that age, partly because of that Type A personality, but also because lots of things had felt like they came naturally to me, which was the wrong mentality to have. I learned that lesson then, and I was like, no, hard work is very important as well and don’t underestimate it. Anyway, I studied dance at university, which is different than studying dance at a conservatory because then you’re studying dance as a whole thing as in history and theory. I did a lot of choreography, I’ve always enjoyed improv and choreography in contemporary. That was when I started the latin stuff. So I did salsa, samba, rigatòn, merengue, I just really got into the latin stuff and long story short, I ended up being a professional samba dancer in the UK and teaching samba and other latin styles after I graduated because by then I had learned the lesson to work really hard on the things that you love. I moved to Madrid 8 years ago, joined a dance school where they had salsa and samba, because that’s what I wanted to be dancing and they also had a ballet class and I thought that I was going to do a class because I’ve always loved watching ballet. Especially if you are very into classical music, because I also played the cello, so there’s something very special about ballet as an artform even though I wasn’t doing it, it always had a very special place in my heart. So I thought I’ll just go back and do a few classes. If anything, it would just be good for my flexibility and strength, and then of course, as many people can relate to, I got addicted. When I say addicted, I was teaching English at the time, so literally in the hours that I wasn’t teaching, I was dancing at the dance school. I was training six days a week, I used to go on Saturdays as well. One of my teachers said to me, “Natalie, why don’t you audition for the conservatory?” I thought, “really? Could I do that” and as soon as he put the idea in my head, I couldn’t get that out again so I thought maybe this was the unfulfilled thing of when I didn’t train at the conservatory for contemporary, maybe I was meant to do it with ballet. I still had that chip on my shoulder probably. So, I trained for a few months after that before applying and I auditioned, and I got in so thank you so much to that conservatory who was open-minded enough to let an adult ballet dancer in because I was 25 or 26 I think and they were very open-minded. It was a great experience but it was also an extremely intense experience. I was still working while I was training and it was quite a lot and also they’re training people to become professional ballerinas. It was not even the kind of more intense training in an academy, this was like we were little ballet robots, basically. I think that’s where that mentality of the goal-oriented stuff sort of took over because that was how it was in a way. I was forcing my turnout, I was improving very quickly because of the quality of the teaching, the hours that I was dancing, all of that but it was too quick for my body as an adult. I sustained a bad hip injury that just wouldn't go away. I just remember waking up in the morning and I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t walk in the morning. My hips felt like they were frozen and it was very painful. I remember I would have to very slowly get out of bed, walk very gently or else I would fall over because they were frozen still, and then by the end of breakfast I was kind of okay, and then by the time I had warmed up in the studio, I was absolutely fine. It was this very weird thing that when I was warmed up and the adrenaline was going, I could dance through the pain and I did for a long time and that was also a lesson in injury prevention and listening to your body and taking things as they come, rather than rushing towards the goal. There’s no rush. So that happened, it was an amazing year and I learned a lot apart from the injury. Ity was really hard, but an amazing year and I took all of these lessons that get neglected in adult ballet sometimes because they don’t always demand as much from adult dancers, where we’re very capable. Even just focusing on lines is something I personally love because it’s just something I’ve always enjoyed, and I think sometimes with adult dancers, they’ll think, “I’ll never have perfect turnout so I can’t have nice lines,” but it’s not true, you can work with what you have. So just little lessons that I took from there, and then when I decided that I wasn’t going to continue, I took back into the studio for my adult ballet classes and just tried to honor those little things that I learned there and carry on but now in a different environment. Since I left, like I said, that was the mindset shift where I’m really doing this because I enjoy it now and not because I’m trying to get anywhere or do anything specific. I still have to set myself some of my own goals sometimes because I still had a bit of that mentality left over and it helped me focus in class, but more recently, I’ve just been going and enjoying it. If I feel like that day I want to work on musicality, or I want to work on my arms that day or whatever and go in with a more general goal rather than beating myself over having not gotten a triple pirouette or whatever. So, that’s the very quick version.
J: Isn’t it funny how winding all of our journeys are with ballet especially as adults? We piece things together here and there, we have a very winding journey in our own minds and in the studio as well. I want to dig into a couple of things within there; Were you kind to yourself when you were a teenager in these dance classes that weren’t ballet? Did the non-ballet environment change your mindset or did you still have the mindset of having to be better and not being good enough yet? Do you recall?
N: That’s a really good question. I think because the focus was much more on not performance or technique, like I said I was much more contemporary and that kind of focus, I didn’t. It was slightly different. I was always goal-oriented on getting high grades and so I knew what I needed to do within the dance curriculum to get those grades, but there was still quite a lot of wiggle room because it’s one grade and there’s a lot of ways that you can’t get there, whereas technique is right or wrong and that’s it. But for some reason, it didn’t really translate into ballet. I think just because of the movement vocabulary of ballet and it is so precise, whereas what I was doing with contemporary -- and it’s not true for all contemporary like with people who study Graham or Cunningham technique, they know that there is a very specific technique, but that wasn’t my journey with contemporary -- so I think in that way, it was compartmentalized. It’s so funny that you’ve just asked me that. I hadn’t thought about that connection yet but I didn’t think to bring that more experimental or creative thing to ballet because ballet is introduced to most people as rigid. It’s changing now a lot, but I think there’s still that underlying thing of being no other way and you have to do it just like that.
J: How about with the latin? Was it the same with the latin dance?
N: This is very interesting, actually. The latin stuff that I do is “in its original form” so samba from Brazil is not the same as ballroom in latin samba, the same as the latin that I dance that is done in New York or Cuba is not the same as the more technical stuff that is done on the ballroom floor. So again, I was focused on learning the steps and getting good quickly, that never leaves me. But that was a different kind of impression. It was much more enjoyment and I think that is why I ended up doing those styles professionally is because there was so much joy there for me so I was mentally able to process it much better, but interestingly in the partnering dances where it’s completely improvised on the dance floor, and you as the female has to learn to follow and it was something I could not do for the longest time because I’d be like, “this is count 1. Why do you keep dancing on count 2? You’re supposed to move your arm like this so I can do that,” and it took me a very, very long time to relinquish the control of that and that taught me a lot about myself as a dancer and as a person. The fact that I couldn’t do what was “wrong” in my head of not dancing on the right count, so it taught me a lot and I’m very grateful for that lesson.
J: So many of us as ballet dancers specifically, we feel like a lot of times that any practice in dance that is not ballet is a waste of time, or that if we took two years off to learn tap that that would be a waste of time and our ballet would be reset to zero. What do you think about that?
N: I have to disagree with that. Since I was 25, I haven’t taken a longer break than I think 2 months one summer and that was the summer when my hip finally healed. Of course at the beginning you go back and you think, “why did I stop?!” but then after a few more classes, everything’s back and you’re working again. The things are still in there, the alignment is still in there, even sometimes I remember after taking a break, pirouettes were easier. Something had shifted but the alignment and the memory of what position I should be in was still there somehow, and I was very happy when I figured that out. So I’m allowed to take some time off and it will still be there. So in that way, I think that some time off is always good if it’s necessary. In terms of the other dance stuff, I remember at the conservatory they said to not do other dance styles. I remember them even telling one guy that was going skiing that he shouldn’t be going skiing, so that’s a different environment but I think for me, you have to and if you want 100% improvement in just ballet, there will be some compromises. But for me dancing latin stuff, the amount that it gives me mentally, physically, and also just as a human-being and reconnecting to that pure joy, whereas ballet is more serene, beauty, elegance, but I get to reconnect to a different part of myself when I’m dancing latin stuff. Maybe it does affect my turnout by 10%, but for me -- and I think those are the decisions that you have to make individually, it’s not the same for everyone -- I’m willing to lose little things in ballet to gain a whole other side of my life. So that’s how I rationalize it to myself. But the very small differences that I’ve seen since I’ve left the conservatory are worth it, they’re stone worth it because I can still have nice lines even if my turnout is slightly less, maybe my legs aren’t as high but for me, it’s all worth it to have that balance in other things.
J: Has it given you anything for your ballet?
N: I think if I’d have only carried on dancing ballet I would have maybe fallen out of love with it at points, and I’m sure I would have fallen back in love with it because it’s ballet at the end of the day, but I think it gives me the breathing space. It’s like a relationship; if you spend 100% of your time with that one person, even if you love them, so even if ballet is your match made in heaven, it’s still healthy to see your family, to see your friends,to do other things and then you come back to that person with a renewed interest and excitement. So it’s healthy to have time away and that doesn’t have to be a different dance style, it can be pottery, a musical instrument, but I think it is healthy to have a little bit of something to give you space and I think it’s even more about finding another side of your identity that you can bring into that. I’m sure that in some of the latin stuff -- when I’ve allowed myself -- brought the fire into [ballet]. It feels scary at the beginning, or it did for me anyway.
J: I love that you talk so much about the deep soul-searching you’ve done through this period of time and I know that you have spent a lot of time in the last few years figuring out how to serve other adults like you. I almost said dancers, but we are dancers and we are humans and people and we are all of those things. So tell me about what you’ve learned through the process and what you’ve tried to sort of give back to your community.
N: I think, like what I was talking about before about actually being demanding from adult ballet dancers but in a very positive and encouraging way. I think that’s what I’ve tried to bring the most because I remember in those first classes, going to the barre, putting my leg on the barre doing barre stretches, looking at the girls either side of me with this beautiful turnout, and my leg in perfect parallel because everything I had done was in parallel, and thinking, “my leg will never look like that.” I just couldn’t see that I would ever be able to do that and I think lots of people also have that with pointe where they love looking at it but they don’t think they’ll ever be able to do that. The message I want to send is that there are no limits within your own body, if that makes sense. Giving that message has been so, so important to me and that as an adult, be good at all of the things that you do. When you’re a kid, it’s fine to try different things, it’s fine to be a beginner, but then all of a sudden, as an adult you’re supposed to know what you’re doing all of the time. Try different things, go out of your comfort zone. I think that that’s probably what allowed me to go back into that ballet studio, especially because I had been a professional dancer in a different style and it really took a lot for me to swallow my pride and go into that studio with my identity of a dancer but being so bad at ballet. That was really hard and I think that’s also a nice message to remind people that it's okay to be a beginner. You’re still good enough as a person, so I love to remind people of that. As a teacher, it’s encouragement and it’s demanding. It’s finding the balance between those two things. You want to make sure people still feel positive about their own potential, not pulling too hard, but also not letting people get complacent. It’s a fine line in a way but it’s fun to find that in different people which is what I’ve loved about this time being able to teach private lessons online. It’s been really fun and I’ve been very grateful for the people I’ve been able to work with. They’re so hard-working and they love ballet so that’s such a joy to share that.
J: It really is and like you said, there’s a balance of pushing and hard-working while accepting where you’re at and working through that and for dancers, that changes for us. As you grow and learn, you can take on more and more as you open your mind and start to accept these kinds of things so it’s fun as a teacher to see people grow in that way as well and grow outside the studio too, because we’ve been talking about how this applies in your life outside of the studio as well. So not being good at something or being a beginner at something applies to so many areas of life. It’s a huge deal.
N: As an entrepreneur I have to remind myself of that for the first time I have to learn how to build a website or for the first time I have to file taxes, whatever it is, you’re so out of your comfort zone but you just have to be okay with not knowing and asking for help, which is another lesson I learned too late in life, to be honest. The power of asking for help and collaborating, that took me a long time because I was so focused on [myself] and there’s no truth to that. When you start to release all of these limiting beliefs, and you realize that this is about enjoying things, learning, and being in the community through a different way which is why I’m so happy that I’m talking to you now because I think it’s something that I didn’t appreciate the value of for a while, and now I’ve gotten to the point that I really appreciate that and understand the power that it has.
J: Yeah the community is a huge part of it and something that helps us through the hard times. We’re all in the same ocean, maybe we’re in our own boats but we’re all in the same situation. I want to ask one more question; I always like to ask your message that you want to put out. Let’s say for someone who is in the middle of their dance journey and they’re feeling a little discouraged, how would you encourage them to find who they are, be a whole person, continue with their dance journey? What advice would you have to leave them with?
N: The first thing that came to mind is check that you are in the right class. Like we said before with balance, check that you are not in a class that is too easy for you now so you feel that you’re losing motivation because you’re not being challenged, or check that you are not in a class where you’re overwhelmed as it’s very difficult to enjoy a class when you’re overwhelmed. Check that you’re in a class if you can -- in an ideal situation -- with a teacher that you resonate with because I think we all know that depending on the teacher, it can be a very different class experience so finding the teacher that will help and support you, I think that’s really important. I think for yourself, something that I’ve done because of Instagram is sometimes just film yourself. You’ll see different things, but I think for me it’s nice that I have this whole catalog to look back on and the progressions in ballet are so, so slow and sometimes you don’t notice them because it is quite repetitive which is also the beauty of it in a way because you get to really hone in. Acknowledging your progress and taking the time to celebrate the little things as they come is something that can really encourage you. Also, if you do need a break, don’t feel pressured because it’s ballet and it becomes your identity. If you do feel like you could use a 2-month break, and you want to explore other things, you may find that you miss [ballet] with all of your heart and you can’t wait to get back! Just be kind to yourself, listen to yourself, follow your intuition more because in the end, if ballet is meant to be in your life, you will come back to it. Every dance has its beautiful things and it’s about finding what works for you as a person.
J: That’s wonderful. I love that we’ve talked so much today about the whole person. This episode is about ballet but it’s also about you as a human-being, you as who you want to become in life and how you want to be a holistic person and not just a series of compartments, how you want to connect everything in your life and how you want to use ballet as a tool in your life to become a better dancer and a better person.
N: Yes, I love it.
J: Thank you so much for being on the show. What a fun chat! I’m really excited that we were able to have this conversation today.
N: Yes, thank you so much! And when I come to the US, which is definitely on my list, I’d love to meet up and dance together.
J: That would be so much fun, we can have a New York City holiday.
