Broche Banter #5 -- Ryan
Today on Broche Banter, we have Ryan a 31-year-old IT sales person, former synchronized swimmer and color guard performer who turned her performance skills towards ballet.
We talk about tenacity, mental setbacks, and our love/hate relationships with frappés.
Enjoy!
Why did you get started with ballet?
Julie (studio owner): So Ryan, why did you get started with ballet? What got you into it?
Ryan: So I’ve had a “background” of performing arts for a long time. I was a synchronized swimmer, I was in the color guard, and when I was little, I did ballet as my mom pushed me into ballet, tap, and jazz combo classes. I didn’t know what I was doing when I was little, so my sister left ballet and then I left ballet to go do what my sister was doing, but I had always loved the performing arts and the sport of performance, if you will. So with synchronized swimming, it was a huge presentation, and the same for color guard, so there was some dance background. I had been following ThePointeShoppe with Josephine on YouTube for a while and I just thought, “man, it’d be so awesome to get onto pointe,” and then I saw the video with you and her having that interview and I thought, “huh, I wonder where this Broche Ballet is,” and I Googled it. I was like, “shut up!” It’s in my state and not only is in my state, but it’s in Denver and there’s the Englewood studio that’s close to my office, so I said I was going to do this and I signed up. I almost waited for the Overture Program but I had the activation energy to just sign up and get started. So, that’s how I restarted ballet, but really it was mostly from the beginning.
J: That’s so random. It’s so random when that sort of thing happens. Of all the places on YouTube, of all of the people on Youtube to see and it happens to be in Denver. Super random.
R: I know, I was like, “Oh my god, I had been looking for something like this!” Ballet is a sport, let’s be real. It’s hard as crap and I’m sweating after every single class. For me, ballet meets the aspect of ultra performance plus working so hard for every little improvement.
J: Yeah, it’s funny how you can work so hard to do nothing, to stand still. To create stillness is in fact, quite challenging.
R: Yes. Oh my gosh, it’s so hard. So hard.
J: So how long have you been back? It’s been maybe 4 or 5 months?
R: I started back at some point in November, but with the Thanksgiving holiday and then the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, the studio was closed for a time. Then, last year every major event in my life happened to be on a Wednesday, which I was in a Wednesday class, so I only took maybe 3 or 4 classes. I signed up for the Prima Pass which I started in January, so I kind of consider my start on January 1, essentially.
J: Like when you got super intense about it?
R: Yeah, I was like, “what else am I doing?” I was accepted into the Prima Pass, so I started taking class like 4 days a week. I was seeing major improvements, which is super exciting, and to then take it back and improve [for instance], not falling into my arch when I plié. I started focusing on minutiae, which I still get a kick out of improving.
J: If you don’t, then ballet is probably not going to be a fun journey.
R: Exactly! It will be miserable. It will be utterly miserable for you.
J: Yeah, because it’s all about the minutiae. You get excited when you can lift your neck one eighth of an inch higher. It’s very minute.
R: Or when you’re in a long combination in class and you finish it, and you realize that your arm is still out in second position instead of being a dinosaur arm where you’re like, “I worked so hard that I had no idea what was going on with anything aside from my feet!”
J: Right. The claw hand develops.
R: Yeah!
What keeps you coming back?
J: Totally! Wow, 3 months in their entirety. Awesome! That’s a long time to be doing something so minute as ballet. What makes you want to keep doing it?
R: The constant need to improve everything. There’s nothing I don’t want to improve, and I have that personality that I just want to keep working at it and keep getting better. Also, the social aspect. Broche has small classes so that means you get really close with the people you’re taking class with on a regular basis, and then meeting new friends through dropping in with the Prima Pass. I actually live in Evergreen, so I’m a little bit removed from Denver, so that social aspect is awesome.
J: That’s a long drive!
R: It is what it is. I’ve always ended up having long drives, except maybe color guard in high school. But when I was a synchronized swimmer, it was like 45 minutes to the pool and I didn’t drive at that point, so my mom was driving three times a week for 45 minutes to hear me whine about how terrible I am at synchronized swimming.
J: Man, mothers are amazing people.
R: Seriously, I don’t know what I’d do without mine.
J: Totally.
What are your goals?
J: So you love to improve. Totally get that! Ballet dancers are that kind of person, and this sport definitely lends itself to that. What are your goals?
R: My goal— and I would love this to be more of an immediate goal— is to be en pointe. So of course I’m working towards that every day. I tried to break down [focusing on one concept per month], but it’s so hard to just turnout for a month, so now I’ll do turnout for a week, and then core for a week. But specifically, balance on my left leg in particular. Which is interesting, because I’m left-handed when I write, but everything else I do is right-handed.
J: Are you a right turner? Do you know yet?
R: I don’t know yet. I almost think that I’m a left turner based off of the small turns… I have no idea. I’m looking forward to learning!
J: I have no idea what the correlation is between handedness and turning. It does not seem related to anything at all. Some people have told me that it’s related to what side you sleep on, that you’re better at turning on that side. Like if you sleep on your left side, your body turns to the left better, but I don’t know. It seems like a mystery to me. I’m right-handed, and I turn left, but en pointe, I turn to the right so it’s very unclear how this whole thing works.
R: Bodies are amazing, but also such a mystery.
J: So was it hard to be left-handed in color guard?
R: At the beginning, yes. Because in color guard, everything is a right-handed [action]. So yes, to adapt with my right hand being on top as my non-dominant hand, but for larger actions I am primarily right-dominant. Every time in college when I’d play on the softball team, I’d be batting right, I guess. I don’t know, it took me a little while to figure it out, but I also stood in my yard doing color guard outside of practice just to not be scared of this thing with a metal pole coming down towards my head.
J: Reasonable!
R: I thought so!
Do you practice at home?
J: What’s the equivalent for that with ballet? Do you stand in your yard and practice ballet? Do you like to practice at home?
R: Oh yeah. I like to work on my point. So I work on pointing my feet, I work on the back of the knee strengthening. I’ll just sit on my couch watching TV, and if I don’t have a theraband with me I’ll just sit there and flex and point my feet. With the pre-pointe classes that we’ve had online, I’m like, “okay, keep your ankles tracking straight,” which is so hard! Super challenging. So, yeah I practice, but that’s the challenge for me right now with online ballet is making sure that I’m establishing correct technique when I don’t have an instructor walking around and poking me saying, “no, do this, do that,” so, yes to practice but mainly the smaller things.
J: Yeah, I think that’s a good way to think of it. I’ve always been of the belief that-- as far as a lot of people being worried about practicing at home and learning bad habits or wrong habits-- it’s often times better to at least learn something, and then the teacher can tell you that it’s not correct or tell you how you can change it because then you would have the understanding already of what you were doing wrong versus if you have nothing to come to the table with, then you wouldn’t be able to say, “okay that wasn’t it, this is it instead.” So that was interesting to encourage practicing at home while also making sure that we’re not building the wrong habits. Having said that, if you have the capacity to build a permanent incorrect habit in three weeks, then you are amazing because it is unlikely that you are going to build a permanently unfixable habit in that time.
R: Yeah, totally. You hear someone tell you to change it enough and you’re going to change it.
J: Right, and much of ballet is layering habits on top of each other. So in the beginning, you learn a rudimentary set of habits and then every little layer you add on, you actually have to sort of unlearn some of the stuff you’ve already learned in order to layer on something higher. Each layer you build on changes the one you did previously, so we’re always changing and adapting.
R: I have found that with battements in particular because in 2a you keep your battement as low as you need while also releasing your hip flexor, and apparently I have good hip flexors but I have terrible hamstrings. Which is funny, that doesn’t seem like it would go together. So my battement front goes pretty high, but then to the back I was like, “Well I’m not supposed to move my hips,” but also, I can as long as I’m remembering to bring my hip back to that neutral position when I get back down to the bottom. Then I start to think, “which technique is right? How do I compromise and still not hurt myself?”
J: Yeah, always a fine line to walk. Always.
Have you had a favorite “light-bulb” moment?
J: Do you have a favorite revelation that you’ve had so far? Or a “light-bulb moment” that was really fun?
R: Figuring out frappes to music. It sounds so strange, but it took me literally a month of frappes to not just be throwing my leg all over the place into space, and maybe I’m pointing it or maybe it’s flexed. And then with the music and getting the arms, the first time I did a full combination and I was hitting the ground, I was like, “Yes!” I know it’s so weird and everybody hates frappes but I sort of love frappes because that was my first, “Oh my god, I got it!”
J: I think people don’t like frappes because they don’t have such a fun moment as you when they learn them. They’re just always frustrating and if you don’t work through it and push through it, then they just stay frustrating.
R: I’m sure that as I progress with doubles and triplets and everything, it’s going to happen over and over and over. I just have to hold onto that, “okay, I’m going to get this. I’m going to get better.” I have to work really hard at holding onto that.
Do you ever want to give up?
J: Do you ever get frustrated or want to give up?
R: Oh yeah. I left the studio and I was like, “oh my god. What did I do? Is this the right thing? Am I cut out for ballet?” But then I thought, I did it. I got through the class. I had to hold onto that, especially here at home with some of the center stuff. I thought, “this is terrible, why did I come to class tonight?” So yes, I’ve wanted to quit but still, I did it. I still did it and I’m getting better. I know what I did wrong, which makes me mad, but then I know what I can work on.
J: It’s tough to push through that frustration, especially when ballet attracts people like you and me who are perfectionists who want to work really hard and keep improving, and then when you have these sort of setbacks-- I don’t know if they’re actual setbacks or if our mind made them up-- it can be very difficult to keep pushing through them.
R: Yeah.
J: Do you have that in other aspects of your life, that you already had this grit already in other aspects, or is this you developing it for the first time through ballet?
R: I think I learned it when I was younger. I was a competitive swimmer in addition to color guard and synchronized swimming, so having to work through those stupid, awful sets of four 500’s in a row to work up [stamina], I would not be able to breathe before I start the next one and then just thinking, “okay I can do it, just get back to the freaking wall and then I’ll live.” I think I learned that grit from an athletic perspective. And then in my job, I’m in technology sales so part of that is learning about technology that I really have no clue about. I know what networking is and how to configure a network, but there’s so much minutiae that goes into that. You get it wrong, wrong, wrong, and then you get it right. So I know I’m going to get it right eventually, it’s just like, “when am I going to get to that point?” So I think I’ve had the grit, but it comes from different places and it’s definitely applied differently in ballet, for me.
What you would say to adults wanting to start ballet?
J: So for someone who is developing it for the first time as an adult-- it’s extremely common that we’ll get people who haven’t had these kinds of experiences-- what would you say to them as far as how you can work on building this? Do you know what it is for you? How can someone get it?
R: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” is kind of something that I’ve been living by with ballet, but that’s also because I have the personality that I want to keep improving. Even though I’m going to leave the studio mad tonight because I messed something up that I know I shouldn’t have, and then we ran out of class time so I couldn’t keep going and try again. I think it’s kind of personality dependent, honestly, just building up the tenacity to continue. You have to either really know that you’re going to suck, and accept that and know it gets better, or… Yeah, just know that you’re going to suck and it gets better. Everyday, with my a la second leg out to the side, my turnout is terrible. It’s so bad! But everyday, I know I can work on this, I can get better at it. I’m bored at home all the time now so I’m going to work on pliés at home!
J: Might as well!
R: I don’t know if that was a great answer to that question. I don’t know how to help other people get that. Honestly, the encouragement from teachers and instructors really helps. Hearing that I will get this, that helps me too.
J: I think something that you said earlier about continuing to come back and try over and over again, and pushing through. Like when you were talking about that really hard class that you had where you were like, “can I do this? Am I cut out for it?” and then reminding yourself that you in fact did do it, so obviously you did get through it. Reminding yourself of those small wins can be helpful as well in terms of encouragement. Maybe it wasn’t 100%, but it was at least 30% which is still more than zero! We’re not at a black and white scale here.
R: Absolutely.
J: It’s fascinating. I love to see how the ballet studio either reflects your life outlook, or vice versa can shape your life outlook. Your grit that you’ve developed elsewhere helps you in the ballet studio, and then vice versa people who are learning it for the first time in the ballet studio can then help them outside of that, where at work they can push through the problem that they’re having because they think, “well if I can figure out a pique turn, obviously I can figure out this problem,” so that can translate both ways.
R: I think the other thing too that helps me with grit and getting through the hard things is knowing that you’re going to do a combination on both sides and then you’re going to move on. So just endure the miserable bit or whatever it may be, and then you get a reset. You finish a combination, you do the other side, and then you get something new. That for me helps me compartmentalize, get that out, and start fresh.
J: That’s a good way to think of it, I’ve never thought of it like that before, like there’s a bookend of the things that you hate. You mentioned a lot of people hate frappes. Frappes last for about 3 minutes, they’re the shortest exercise in class. So if you hate frappes, all you’ve got to do is make it 3 minutes, and then you’re done with it, we’re moving onto fondus and it’s all going to be fine.
R: Exactly! Now that I’m thinking about it a little bit more, that is something that helps me get through class and then the harder classes are the ones when I leave and think that everything was terrible. No it wasn’t, not everything was terrible. I had a really nice rond de jambe combination, I feel like I improved my arm presentation and technique. So yeah, being able to bookend that is definitely helpful for me.
J: Yeah, awesome. You mentioned that you didn’t know if it was a good answer and I don’t know if there is a good answer. I’m just always very curious to explore this because it’s such a big part of ballet and how we all reach our goals. Our mind is the biggest blocker up there, so learning how to control the mind and those negative thoughts and getting through all of that is so important to getting anywhere in anything you’re trying to do.
R: Yes, absolutely. It goes into my other sports. I’m a mountain biker and skier as well, and you want to talk about mental blocks? I’m looking down this really rocky hill and I’m like, “I’m supposed to ride my bike down this? Excuse me?” [Getting over] mental blocks in ballet have definitely helped. It’s really fun to see one sport transition into another.
J: Yeah, that’s awesome! Ryan, this was such a fun conversation and it’s so fun to have you in the studio and help you achieve your goals. I can’t wait to see you in those pointe shoes with your leg over your head in your developpe side! It’s gonna be fabulous.
R: Everything’s a work in progress!
J: Always a work in progress, and once you get that, you’re going to want more. That’s just how it’s going to go.
R: Absolutely.
