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76. Love Your Body (or Don't) with Katrena Cohea
169 Plays29 days ago
In this powerful conversation, I’m joined by Katrena Cohea, the creator behind Your Body Image BFF, to explore how dance educators can reframe conversations around body image, teaching methods, and dancer wellness.
Katrena shares her journey from bunhead to flamenco dancer to teacher and studio owner, and how her experiences led her to create resources that help teachers integrate body neutrality and self-respect into dance training. Together, we discuss how early messages about body image begin forming in childhood, how pop culture reinforces harmful norms, and why the common “love your body” message can sometimes feel inaccessible to dancers.
We also unpack the importance of evolving beyond the “we’ve always done it this way” mindset in dance culture and finding a balance between discipline, accountability, and compassion in the studio. This episode is full of honest insights, practical teaching tools, and hope for a more supportive dance world.
Key Points in this Episode:
- Katrena’s dance journey from ballet to flamenco and teaching
- How early body image messages shape young dancers
- Why “love your body” can feel vague - and what to say instead
- The creation of Love Your Body (or Don’t), Katrena’s five-day toolkit with Nicole Sabella
- Simple classroom practices that combine wellness and technique
- Rethinking traditional dance teaching methods and finding balance between rigor and empathy
- Encouraging curiosity, respect, and realistic self-awareness in dancers
Connect with Katrena:
INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/yourbodyimagebff
LOVE YOUR BODY (OR DON’T): https://www.thenourisheddancer.com/love-your-body-or-dont
Links and Resources:
Get 10% off registration for Étoile Dance Competition with code BRAINY10.
Get your copy of The Ultimate Audition Guide
Let’s connect!
My WEBSITE: thebrainyballerina.com
INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/thebrainyballerina
1-1 CAREER MENTORING: book your complimentary career call
Questions/comments? Email me at caitlin@thebrainyballerina.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Body Respect and Podcast Purpose
00:00:00
Speaker
You don't have to actively love your body. I hope you don't actively hate your body. But so in the middle ground there, can you just cultivate a little bit of respect for your body?
00:00:13
Speaker
I'm Caitlin, a former professional ballerina turned dance educator and career mentor. And this is the Brand New Ballerina podcast. I am here for the aspiring professional ballerina who wants to learn what it really takes to build a smart and sustainable career in the dance industry.
00:00:29
Speaker
I'm peeling back the curtain of professional dance world with open and honest conversations about the realities of becoming a professional dancer. Come along to gain the knowledge and inspiration you need to succeed in a dance career on your terms.
00:00:48
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Brainy Ballerina Podcast. I'm your host, Kaitlyn Sloan, and I am joined today by Katrina Cohe.
Meet Katrina Cohe: Dance and Body Image Advocate
00:00:55
Speaker
Katrina is the founder and CEO of Different Drummer Dance, a dance studio in upstate New York, and the creator behind your body image BFF on Instagram, where she encourages dancers and dance educators to think critically about dance culture and shares tips dedicated to integrating to dancer wellness into dance technique.
00:01:16
Speaker
Katrina, we're going get all into all of your work here, but I want to start from the very beginning of your dance journey today. And I'd love to hear why you took your very first dance class. Yeah, certainly.
00:01:27
Speaker
So I actually took my first dance class because I hated gymnastics. i I wanted to dance so from like a super young age. And for whatever reason, in the area that I was in the dance studios all wouldn't take a student until they were like six.
00:01:45
Speaker
even though my mom was trying to get me into a class. So the teachers at the time of the dance studio were like, well, have her do gymnastics. They take kids earlier. So I did gymnastics and that was not my jam at all. I have huge respect for it, but not my jam. So finally I like turned six and was allowed into a dance class.
00:02:05
Speaker
That's really what kind of started my journey was trying to get away from gymnastics. I still can't do a cartwheel to save my life. I could do it on one side. It's impressive. On a good day.
00:02:17
Speaker
Okay, so can you give us some background about your dance journey and what your training was like growing up? Sure, yeah. Pretty much right from the get-go, was enrolled in a studio that practiced the RAD.
00:02:29
Speaker
technique and syllabus. So I did RAD exams from like teeny tiny all the way up to advanced two. And then after high school, I went off to UC Santa Barbara to be a dance major. And it just wasn't really a good fit. There was also a lot going on with my family at the time. So I left UC Santa Barbara came back home to the Bay Area in California where I'm from. And at that time, i enrolled in the Lines Summer Dance Intensive.
00:03:01
Speaker
And then from there, I went to San Francisco Conservatory of Dance. And I danced with them for probably about four years. And around that same time, i also just kind of randomly started taking flamenco classes, which was super fun and a total like 180 from my button head origin story. Then funnily enough, I apprenticed to Brisas de España, which was a flamenco and Spanish dance company in the Bay Area. And then I became a company member and I danced with them for probably another three to four years.
00:03:33
Speaker
Then at that point, I kind of retired from flamenco life. I went back to the RAD and got my certificate in ballet teaching studies. And I started to teach more, got a full-time job teaching dance.
00:03:46
Speaker
And then after that, I went back to college and got my bachelor's edden
Body Image Challenges in Dance Culture
00:03:52
Speaker
dance in dance and theater. And that kind of mostly brings us up to speed. So I've i've really been teaching for a long time, basically, you know, since high school, just kind of started off slow, like many of us do when we're trying to help out around the studio.
00:04:07
Speaker
And then it just kind of naturally progressed into being a full-time gig after I was done dancing professionally. Did you but personal experiences in your training or in your professional career that made you want to focus on the topic of body image and dancers?
00:04:23
Speaker
It didn't start out that way. No, it wasn't until I really started teaching full time. And when I was teaching like the whole gamut of ages from like the littles to the teenagers and even, you know, somewhat to like adult students that I started realizing these kids, teens, adults are dealing with a lot of similar body image issues and like self-critical thoughts that i am still dealing with. And I'm, you know, further down my journey than like a lot of the kids and the teens were.
00:04:59
Speaker
And there was just some, some like red flag popped into my brain. Like that shouldn't really be the case. It seems weird that like a kid of six and a kid of 16 are dealing with the same really self-critical body image things that I'm dealing with at 26 or however old I was.
00:05:19
Speaker
So once I started teaching more and seeing that pattern, that was just kind of a red flag to me that something was amiss. Also, as you get older, I think you have a different perspective, right? You have this hindsight that kind of kicks in and you realize, ooh, thinking back on you know, the way that I was taught, I wish my director, my teacher hadn't said x Y, or Z or 10 years later, that still really stings. I still think about that and that hurt and not wanting to do that for my own students kind of
00:05:54
Speaker
Fitting all those puzzle pieces together was really what kind of got me started thinking about body image and dance and how we can do better. That's really shocking to me that you're seeing it with like six-year-olds and that young because I actually haven't really seen that with my young students or maybe I'm just not aware. Maybe i haven't heard conversations.
00:06:14
Speaker
But what kind of things are you seeing with like you're even really young students? You know, it can be little things like, I mean, little dancers usually love watching themselves in the mirror, which is wonderful. I think that's so precious and pure. But then sometimes i would see it turn into like body monitoring in kids as young as like five and six, where, you know, they're like looking at their body or maybe touching their stomach or their butt they'll say things about like having a big booty or even like innocently be talking with a friend and like some sort of lyrics of a song will come up that is kind of like body objectification. And not that any kid as young as six would know that, but I still feel like it plants the seeds pretty early. And there's also a few instances, actually more than a few instances I've had where, you know, when you're dealing with the parents of,
00:07:12
Speaker
the kids too. The parents will say things or I had a parent come to me and say once like, oh, we almost didn't get to class because, you know, we were getting on our tights and our leotard and she just had this total breakdown about how fat she looked and she didn't want to wear the tights and the leotard. and so it's things like that, that like you don't necessarily see, but the parents will hint to you that something like that is going on or they'll just full out you know, confess what happened and things like that just break my heart. And the statistics around body image for girls, even, you know, non dancers show that they're starting to pick up diet talk and body monitoring as young as like four and five. So but it's pretty heartbreaking.
00:07:59
Speaker
Wow. Where are they getting that from? like From home? From school? like Where is this all starting? you know I think a huge part of it and in the research that I've done around girls and body image, a lot of it is just our pop culture. There's some statistic, I don't know off the top of my head, but something to do with the representation of young girls in TV shows or Netflix shows or movies or not um not music videos because we don't really have those anymore. I just aged myself.
00:08:35
Speaker
I was just talking about MTV Cribs this morning at the bus stop with the other parents. Yes. And that's really funny. Yes. but Yeah. i are this Yeah, same page. yeah like snippets of that on like kids bop or whatever you know white that you're watching on spotify but research shows that the rates of girls being objectified or you know, having way less clothes on or being portrayed in a manner that is promiscuous or slutty or just objectified is way higher than it is for boys.
00:09:08
Speaker
So I think a lot of it just comes from being a woman, a girl in our culture. A really interesting thing to do the next time that you're at Target or or Walmart or whatever is just kind of look around the clothing in the young girls section and see how much of like the graphic tees or even the colors are quote unquote feminine or have graphics or captions on it about like cute and I know it or things that have to do with looks versus the boys clothing, which has like superheroes and, you know, is more about like being physically powerful versus who,
00:09:48
Speaker
looking a certain way. It's just kind of an interesting experiment. Yeah, no, you're so right. And my daughter, she loves wearing her brother's hand-me-downs because they have cool superheroes or stuff like that on them. And and she loves that. She wants to run fast. She wants to be like a hero. like There's nothing that says girls can't do that. But when you're in a store, you're totally right. You're not seeing options like that in the girl section. Yeah.
00:10:13
Speaker
Yeah. And it's sneaky, too, because I think we're all just so used to it. We don't necessarily stop and think about what the implications are around that further down the road. But, you know, if young girls grow up only seeing clothing options that...
Etoile Dance Competition: Fostering Artistic Growth
00:10:29
Speaker
reinforce what they look like, then that just plants seeds and, you know, they go to school and that's reinforced in you know, maybe the relationships that they have with other kids in school or other teachers.
00:10:44
Speaker
It's kind of everywhere when you really stop and get curious and start to think critically and dissect what you're seeing and then wear the glasses of being a four or five, six, seven-year-old girl and really think about the messages that they're getting.
00:11:00
Speaker
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00:11:14
Speaker
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00:11:26
Speaker
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00:11:40
Speaker
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00:11:54
Speaker
Plus, every event includes a group contemporary performance with a chance to hone audition skills and build community with other dancers. This competition is truly something special.
00:12:05
Speaker
And right now, podcast listeners can get 10% off the registration with code BRAINY10. If you want a competition that emphasizes artistry, provides real, actionable feedback, and celebrates dancers of all levels, head to atwalcomp.com or find the link in the show notes to register today.
Tools and Strategies for Positive Body Image in Dance
00:12:27
Speaker
So you have a new resource out with another friend of the pod, Nicole Sabella, called Love Your Body or Don't. So can you share more about this toolkit and just the title, how you came up with that? Yeah, for sure.
00:12:39
Speaker
It's kind of funny because i did a little story on Instagram, like a poll on what comes to mind when you hear the phrase, love your body. Do you feel like, oh yeah, totally. I love my body.
00:12:51
Speaker
Does it make you feel like a little awkward or insecure or do you hate it? um And I think the majority of people who responded in the poll said that they were just kind of like, ah, I don't really, and don't really get it. Like it's a nice sentiment, but okay. Like it's kind of vague. It's a little reductive. i don't really know what to do with it. So that was one of the things that kind of prompted me to want to put together a resource, but the materials that Nicole and I developed are meant to be really user-friendly for dance teachers because both Nicole and I are teachers.
00:13:28
Speaker
So it's a five-day toolkit that helps your dance students rewire how they think about how they participate in your dance classes so that body image isn't a barrier in your dance classes.
00:13:43
Speaker
It's not a barrier to your dancers engaging or focusing or feeling confident in their own skin, because both Nicole and I know that it can be such a fraught topic and it can be really difficult and tricky to kind of bring up in dance classes. And so many dance teachers, I think, don't want to say or do the wrong thing because it is such a fraught topic. So we were really hoping to kind of level the playing field and put dance teachers at ease
00:14:15
Speaker
and give them really simple, effective tools to use with their dance students that are also time efficient because we know all dance teachers are pressed for time. You've got like those precious 90 minutes or 60 minutes or whatever. And so often you feel like you have to hit the ground running, but these are like five minute, 10 minute max practices that you can use with your dancers to just set them up for success. It doesn't have to be, you know, this big overhaul to your teaching.
00:14:44
Speaker
You can start with little baby steps. Nicole talks a lot about tapping and EFT. That's her zone of genius. I talk a lot about mindset and journaling and ways that you can help your dancer reframe how they're thinking about themselves and their bodies in dance.
00:15:02
Speaker
And then hopefully that helps teachers as well so they're not running into extra challenges like a dancer not wanting to come because she had a meltdown before her class because she had to put on tights and all theotard.
00:15:15
Speaker
who Can you expand some more on why the message to love your body can feel so alienating for people in general and especially dancers? I think it comes from a really good place. Its intention is usually pure, but it's actually really vague. And I think a lot of dance teaching language is vague and unintentionally, I don't think that dance teachers ever are trying to give feedback that's vague, but you know, things like leave it at the dance floor or now do it with feeling like they just become so commonplace in our dance teaching language that sometimes I think we just say those things because
00:15:58
Speaker
Our teachers said them to us, but we don't really stop to think about, okay, well, what do I actually want my student to do right now? When I say love your body, what does that actually mean? What does that look like for them? And also when you say love your body, it doesn't really give dancers or dance teachers any room to explore the vast majority of other feelings a dancer is going to experience in their body. Just looking back on my own dance training, the qualities that I felt most often dance class were usually along the lines of like frustration or anger or disappointment that I couldn't do something that I wanted to do.
00:16:41
Speaker
And of course there's a lot of joy and fun wrapped up in there, but there's so many more feelings that a dancer is going to experience in their dance journey besides just loving their body. And for sure, loving your body can be a great goal, but we also need practical and realistic tools to use on the days and the seasons of life where we don't love our bodies. What are some of the practical tools we can use to shift from being in a place of body positivity only to also incorporating some body neutrality or some just general respect for our bodies?
00:17:20
Speaker
Yeah. Well, kind of like we already talked about, i think being mindful and being curious is a great place to start because that doesn't feel super overwhelming because body image is such a big topic.
00:17:33
Speaker
And like we said, such a fraught topic, just being curious and kind of approaching it like a fun kind of experiment can be a little bit more approachable. So just being curious about like the language that you find yourself using about your own body or other bodies, another kind of fun experiment, which might be a little shocking once you do it. But the next time you find yourself like scrolling on your phone, just as an experience experiment,
00:18:03
Speaker
Notice how many posts mention a woman's body and is the language positive? Is it negative? What kind of words are being used? Who is using those words?
00:18:14
Speaker
And maybe one of the most important things to think about is who's benefiting from the talk about this person's body? What's the point of critiquing this person's body? And I find that After we start to spend some time being curious and noticing those things, it'll just start to add up in your brain. You'll start to make connections and notice things.
00:18:39
Speaker
And if you're anything like me, then noticing those things is really what the impetus is to start changing your own language and just to continue to be more aware And I love that you mentioned respecting our bodies because that's a huge one.
00:18:57
Speaker
i mean, that's always my go-to advice for dance teachers or dancers is you don't have to actively love your body. I hope you don't actively hate your body.
00:19:07
Speaker
But so in the middle ground there, can you just cultivate a little bit of respect for your body? And one of my favorite ways to do this is to do an exercise called a day in your body with my dancers.
00:19:21
Speaker
So you can either do this like verbally as like a quick little chat or you can have them journal about it. There is a resource specifically about this in the Love Your Body materials.
00:19:32
Speaker
But a day in your body is kind of exactly what it sounds like. You just have the dancer either talk about or journal what their day was like. But instead of it being I went to school, you're thinking about the things that your body did.
00:19:47
Speaker
So I walked to school or I rode my bike or I sat on the bus, but I listened to music and I talked with a friend.
Impact of Pop Culture and Traditional Feedback on Body Image
00:19:56
Speaker
All of those things just kind of shift the focus back to like, you have this amazing vessel that we so often just take for granted because it does its job so well.
00:20:07
Speaker
It pumps air into our lungs and walks and takes us places. We listen to our friends or we listen to music. We talk with other people. So shifting the focus from just like, oh, I did these mundane things. I went to dance class, you know, shifting it to i went to dance class.
00:20:26
Speaker
And i used my quads. I used my butt. I jumped. i you know built muscles in my core. I could really feel my upper body moving. i listened and there was this beautiful music. It just gives a whole new kind of perspective and also appreciation and hopefully respect. After doing this, you should kind of have this moment of like, oh Yeah, like my body does do all of these amazing things without me asking it to. And that's really pretty amazing. Yeah. And I think for a lot of dancers, you know, you go through a period of injury or something like that. And that's when you realize like, wow, I would just give anything to be able to do a releve right now or something so simple that you take for granted and you start to appreciate that more.
00:21:10
Speaker
And you tell yourself like, it's like when you're sick and you're like, ah, my nose isn't stuffy anymore. I'm going to never take for granted being able to breathe again. And then you do, you know, it's like, it's normal. And I think for dancers, same thing. You think when you're injured, like I will always appreciate being able to do things. Then you get to a place where you kind of lose that. So I really like that daily practice of checking in and even going back to the social media.
00:21:33
Speaker
topic, I think it's really important for people when you're scrolling, like you said, to notice how much people are financially profiting off you hating your body and and realizing like the posts that are making you feel bad about yourself, it's because they want to sell you something. Once you realize that you can't unsee it and it makes all of it kind of shift in your brain to like, they want me to hate my body so they can make money off of me.
00:21:59
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's kind of sickening to say, but our culture and system is built around making money off of not feeling good about ourselves.
00:22:10
Speaker
And that's really sad, but also so empowering once you realize that. And then you can start redirecting your attention, redirecting your dollars,
00:22:23
Speaker
to the things that do make you feel better and do the same for others as well. Yeah, I'm really glad you brought that up because that's an important part of this conversation too. What are some of the common messages that you hear in the studio, either from teachers or from dancers that you wish we'd kind of re-examine? And can you maybe even give some examples of how you might rephrase things for teachers? Because like you said, we hear things in our training and it's hard to know Maybe if we should replace that with a different phrase or just leave it alone, like what would you say is a good way to communicate?
00:22:58
Speaker
oh i can I can for sure. i can for sure expound on a lot of topics and mindsets that I find are not helpful. One that is kind of indirectly about bodies that really gets my blood boiling pretty quick is When dance teachers or directors or choreographers will say things like, well, this is how it was back in my day. My teacher said X, Y, and Z to me, or I was weighed publicly you know every week in class and we just got on with it and accepted it. I really can't handle that mindset because saying this is the way that we've always done it impossible.
00:23:38
Speaker
quite literally the opposite of progress. I mean, just imagine for a second if like along the spectrum of human evolution, if we were just like, no, we've always done it this way. We don't, we're good.
00:23:51
Speaker
We've always just lit candles. We don't need electricity. Yeah, right. Like we don't need penicillin. We've he died this way forever. It's okay. It just is mind boggling to me that we don't apply that logic to dance sometimes.
00:24:07
Speaker
So yeah, I have no patience for the, we've always done it this way. This is the way that my teachers did it with me and I turned out fine. My follow-up argument to that would always be like, but did you turn out fine?
00:24:23
Speaker
So that's a big one for me. And I know it can be hard to let go of you know, some of those things that are so much a part of our dance identity.
00:24:33
Speaker
And there is a lot of gray area where, you know, maybe you do have really fond memories of your dance teacher. And they also engaged in practices that were not really all of that great or helpful.
00:24:47
Speaker
Those two things can be true at the same time. and you can also make space for today's generation of dancers or dance educators who are asking or demanding for things to be different. It can all be true all at the same time. And I know that's easier said than done, but hopefully that's something that we can all kind of work towards.
00:25:11
Speaker
And I think another... really sneaky thing that has more to do with dancers' bodies is focusing on what movement should look like rather than what it should feel like. You know, because we've all grown up in these dance studios where there's mirrors everywhere and we were wearing the pink tights and the leotards. So much of dance and ballet specifically does have to do with mirrors and what things should look like.
00:25:40
Speaker
But that also misses an opportunity to help a dancer get really curious about what movement should feel like. And it also disrupts that idea that movement only looks one way.
00:25:55
Speaker
So when we focus on trying to make a student live up to what a movement should look like, rather than what it should feel like, we're not taking into account that dancer's unique body. And it can be much more beneficial, not only from a body image standpoint, but from an artistry standpoint, to work with a dancer to figure out what the movement feels like for their body and what's functioning, what's firing, what muscles they're using. That's kind of a much deeper way of working that benefits that dancer personally. It benefits their body image, their resilience and their artistry. And I also think it kind of cuts down on comparison.
00:26:39
Speaker
which is another huge monster in the dance world. Just from a very practical standpoint of like wanting to train dancers, when you have dancers who are so focused on what it looks like, they can create really beautiful pictures, but the movement quality is often missing or the function is often missing or the transitions because there's what one moment looks like, but then the in-betweens don't always work the way, like you're saying, if you can talk about what is actually firing, how are we using our muscles, you're going to dance better. It's not just like, I feel like I hear so much from teachers. I've seen a lot of this rhetoric lately of like, oh, this generation is soft and like, we're coddling them. We're not pushing them hard enough. And I feel like you can do both, but I don't know quite how to express that sometimes.
00:27:23
Speaker
Maybe it's not an argument that I need to be having with people on the air internet, but It is one of the things I'm passionate about. And I want both for my dancers, right? I don't want them to have to go through some of the things that I went through. i don't think that they need to in order to be great dancers and great people.
00:27:39
Speaker
Yeah, 100%. You know, another thing that I thought of as I was listening to you was the implications of injury prevention are then like totally, I can just imagine how much we would cut down on injuries if this was really the way that we focused on teaching our dancers was from a more individual anatomy based science, which there is more and more of. And that's fantastic. But that rhetoric that you're talking about of like dancers these days, they're not made of the same stuff that we are. Like i have certainly noticed that I don't like it. I don't agree. And it's really tricky to know how to meet that conversation.
Evolving Dance Teaching Practices for Better Student Support
00:28:22
Speaker
from a place of wanting to understand, but also I'm not sure even exactly like what the right word is. I know. It's so interesting because I feel like as a parent and as a dance teacher, like I am approaching things differently than maybe, you know,
00:28:39
Speaker
my dance teachers did or even my parents did. And I think even conversation conversations I've had with my parents, like there's things they've said to me like, wow, I really like how you're doing this. Like, this is really great. We see your kids' emotional intelligence. Like they're always really amazed by how well our kids can communicate their feelings with words. And they're two and five and they can say to you,
00:29:00
Speaker
hey, I'm feeling really sad about something and tell us what it is. Like, that's pretty incredible. How can I be hating on this method of parenting when you know what? The other thing is too, like it is more work on the teacher and the parent to meet the kids where they are and to recognize that they are kids without fully developed brains. They're not tiny adults.
00:29:22
Speaker
They are kids. Historically, we've treated kids like tiny adults yeah without recognizing that they are still developing and that we have to treat them like they're children. And not that we need to like talk down to them or baby talk. Like I talk to my kids and my students very, you know i don't dumb it down for them, but i give them age appropriate tools.
00:29:41
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And I think that like instant resistance when we're talking about dance teachers or even just the mindset of like, oh, gentle parenting is stupid or, you know, gentle dance teaching, whatever, you know.
00:29:58
Speaker
yeah what whatever the case may be. i think that initial resistance has a lot to do with people feeling like attacked or, well, I turned out this way and I'm fine. And it's hard. It is hard not to feel attacked sometimes, but I think we all just have to kind of Take what works for us and like a little bit of this practice, a little bit of that practice. I'm with you. Like I am all about being clear and effective with my communication to my students. There is a piece of advice that I got for my personal life that I try and apply to my dance
00:30:38
Speaker
teaching practice, which is to be clear is to be kind. Probably earlier in my teaching career, yeah I maybe would have spoken more harshly or said things that my teacher would have said to me just because I didn't know any better. And then I probably also went through a phase where I wasn't super clear and I was trying to be overly cautious with what I was saying, again, because I didn't want to hurt a kid or give them a complex. So 20 years from now, I get an email saying, oh my God, you ruined my life because you said X, Y, and z So we're always going to be bouncing back and forth between these different practices, these different ideals and mindsets.
00:31:19
Speaker
And I think that's good and that's okay because it makes us continue to think and evolve or teaching practice, if a teaching practice is stagnant, it's bad, in my opinion.
00:31:31
Speaker
and don't think teaching practice should ever be stagnant. We need to keep learning. We need to keep considering other points of views and other ways of teaching and doing things and speaking, because that's what keeps us growing as humans. And that's what keeps us evolving as dancers. So I hope that it can be a little bit of all of the various different opinions and ways of teaching and figuring out what works best for us personally and what our students respond best to.
00:32:05
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And realizing that that's different every day, honestly. Like, personally, I need different things every day from people in my life, and that can be different for your students every day. And I think that something have to remind myself is that it's not just a one-size-fits-all per student, per class, per day, per year. It's always changing. Yeah.
00:32:23
Speaker
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00:32:36
Speaker
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00:32:49
Speaker
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00:33:03
Speaker
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00:33:19
Speaker
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00:33:32
Speaker
But I am curious, what are some of the practical ways that you in a daily class are integrating the wellness with the technique? We talked about, you know, talking about the feeling versus the look. Are there any other strategies that you use to really put these two together as opposed to having to like separate the two things?
00:33:51
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really great question, because i think I've been doing it for so so long now where I just kind of integrate everything that it just feels like second nature to me, which I hope is encouraging for other teachers out there. I think there's small ways that I do it and medium and big ways.
00:34:10
Speaker
Like one of the things that comes to mind for just a small way is to take five minutes at the beginning of class and hear how my students days were before we start class or letting that kid who came rushing into class, stuffing their mouth with a snack because they just got into class from school or someplace else is like giving them five minutes to eat the snack and nourish their body before like rushing them into class and making them get to work right away. It's medium sized things like the language that we talked about the
00:34:44
Speaker
kind of pausing before I give feedback and Instead of saying like, oh, that line was beautiful. you know, I might normally, or like was said to me. Slowing down and saying, i can see that you really worked to extend to that line and nice job. Like I appreciate your effort.
00:35:01
Speaker
So that shift in language shows a little bit more of me praising the dancer for their effort and their focus rather than for looking a certain way. It can be big things like telling a dancer to take a week off.
00:35:16
Speaker
because I know that they are struggling mentally or physically, even if it's during a performance week or if it's during dress rehearsal week. That would have never happened in my world, you know, like if I was really struggling mentally or physically.
00:35:30
Speaker
my dance teachers loved me for sure and wanted wanted me to be okay, but you just didn't do that. You showed up and you did the thing for dress rehearsal or performance. I have vivid memories of in my first professional company of dancers literally throwing up in the dressing room and then going to do snow because the flu was going around the company and dancers called in sick and they said, no, like you have to come.
00:35:54
Speaker
Like to that extent. And it is hard because I am like, I actually but have resistance when you said that to being like, oh, missing dress rehearsal, missing performance. Like, yeah. That's like, I had a lot of resistance to that.
00:36:05
Speaker
But I do have memories of also people like physically sick and having to run on stage or like having puke buckets in the wings that being normal, like that should not be normal. Right. And I get the resistance too, because there's things that like people will say to me or like having conversations with people and they'll be like, Oh, no, like you have to, you have to be at dress rehearsal. Yeah. But there is a fine line, I think, that we can find between like showing up and respecting the art form and what we committed to doing and also still honoring what our mental and physical health needs.
00:36:43
Speaker
And like we said before, I think that's going to change depending on the situation and what's going on. But I think we have to be open to it instead of just saying, ah no, it's dress rehearsal, like get your ass to class. Okay.
00:36:57
Speaker
Yeah, that's so interesting. Like, so if you had a student who you felt needed, they couldn't come to dress rehearsal, would you still be comfortable with them performing in the performance? Because that's always my thing. I'm like, if you misdress, I personally wouldn't want to go on stage yeah and perform. I didn't go to dress. I'd be really freaked out as a professional dancer.
00:37:15
Speaker
Right. Right. So I can't imagine what a student would feel like having not been on the stage before and not having done their tech rehearsal and their blocking and everything. and then all of a sudden just being on stage for a show.
00:37:26
Speaker
Like, how do you yeah manage that? It's tricky, I think. And this kind of goes to one thing in my teaching philosophy too, which is sometimes magical things happen when we let go of control.
00:37:42
Speaker
And even though dance culture and dance tradition dictate, like, you go to dress, you go to tech, you have to fulfill all these requirements before you get to the stage, you And there is good reason for that, for sure. Sometimes it just doesn't happen that way. Life happens, mental health happens, injuries happen. So while I am totally a supporter of the discipline and the showing up and the committing to your commitment or being held accountable for your role, whether you're a professional dancer or a student, sometimes it's also really fun and cool you're
00:38:20
Speaker
We don't follow the rules completely when it comes to teaching. And we say, okay, well, you missed tech, you missed dress, like, it's not ideal, but do you think you can do it? Or what's your plan for making this work? Like, it's okay to share some of that responsibility with the student too. and Sometimes really cool things happen and sometimes it can also be a disaster on stage, but maybe that's the learning experience that that student needs to be able to get them to the next level or the next stage in their training or to be able to overcome some sort of mindset block that was making it challenging for them to show up and do the things that we were asking of them. I don't know if that really answered your question. Yeah, no, I'm...
00:39:10
Speaker
I'm really struggling with this one. And I think when you said breaking the rules, was like, because I am type A, Enneagram one, like rule follower justice, you know, kind of person. So I'm like, well, that's not fair. If you missed that, you shouldn't get to perform. You know, I think it is like good to be clear. Like we're not saying, no.
00:39:29
Speaker
You just felt like going over to your friend's house to play yeah that day instead of going to dress rehearsal. So you get to be in the show. Like to be clear, like it's very circumstantial and it's not like anything goes. And that's the argument some teachers are having that they think that like if we're being mindful of dancers, physical, mental health, then we're just saying do whatever you want.
00:39:47
Speaker
Right. That's not the case. There's still boundaries. There's still accountability. It's not just like, oh, you didn't feel like it today. ok fine. Right. Things happen. And can we like take each situation individually and say, okay, in this situation, what has the dancer showed us up until now? Because i have a dancer who hasn't come to class for six weeks and then doesn't come to check and dress. I'm not going to put them on stage, right? Like I'm like, you don't know what you're doing. and That's not fair to you or to your classmates.
00:40:15
Speaker
Yeah. Like if they've been to every single class, I know they know their dance. Something crazy happens. They were in a car accident on the way to tech rehearsal. They had to miss, but they show up for the show. And I know that they know what they're doing. It's like, okay. Yeah. Having that mindset of things happen. Like you said, life happens.
00:40:31
Speaker
Right. No, it's definitely, I'm not coming at it from a place of like, we make all these excuses for the kids or the parents who just show up willy-nilly or you know don't think that there's any accountability or responsibility but i think it's also interesting if we take a situation like this which is yeah i mean all it at this point all theoretical but you to play it out right like you said okay there's a dancer who's been to rehearsal she's been to class she's doing all the things
00:41:02
Speaker
Something weird, some freak accident happened. She can't come to dress. She can't come to tech, whatever. So then let's follow that out with the idea that we are acting like all of the dance teachers traditionally before us and saying to this kid, nope, that was it. That was your one chance.
00:41:20
Speaker
You're done. So now in my mind, what plays out is that this kid now has a terrible experience with and You know, not only are they injured or potentially traumatized from this car accident or whatever it was that happened, but now this thing that they've been working towards, they suddenly can't do anymore because something out of their control happened.
00:41:44
Speaker
So now they walk away from dance. They hate dance. They never go back to another dance class. Maybe they have kids, they don't pass on that love or appreciation of dance. And that's just sad.
00:41:55
Speaker
Like what a missed opportunity, you know? Yeah. And I think that is a big part of remembering that so much of what is going on our students is out of their control a lot the times. Like when our students are late, my six-year-old students, they didn't drive themselves. Like maybe they were dilly-dally, but I also have little kids. I know how it goes sometimes. yeah We can start getting into the car an hour before we need to leave and we can still be late sometimes. So I feel like I've had a lot more compassion for students being late than I used to before having kids because I'm like, oh, I get it I it.
00:42:25
Speaker
Yeah. As dance educators, one thing that I've really learned is that I used to be, I think in general, my personality is very black or white. And that's something I've had to really work on in my life of like having some gray area. And as a dance teacher, especially life is never black or white. There's always...
00:42:44
Speaker
some shade of gray in between and I do agree that clear is kind and I am really passionate about having clear expectations and clear boundaries for my students. I know they rise to the occasion if they know what's expected of them and if I give them the support and the tools to be able to get there and I also can recognize that there are times when we have to assess each situation individually and come to an individual conclusion about how to proceed based on that specific situation.
00:43:18
Speaker
But this was an interesting conversation because i was surprised at how much resistance that I just had to that idea and to even talking through that. I immediately wanted to shut it down because it just felt so...
00:43:33
Speaker
backwards to what I know. And yeah I can get so frustrated when I think people in the dance world aren't being progressive and aren't moving dance into the 21st century. And then realizing that, you know, we all have our biases and we all have the way that we've been trained. And I just appreciate that we could talk about it and share our opinions in a really respectful and kind way.
00:43:57
Speaker
What I love about what we just did too was that it was a two-way conversation. And I totally understand coming from the place of like, nope, this is the way it is. These are the rules.
00:44:08
Speaker
Because I was that person and I was that dancer and dance teacher for so long. i just, you know, my experiences and all of that have kind of turned me into a dance teacher that is not that way anymore.
Final Thoughts: Promoting Peace and Respect for Dancers
00:44:24
Speaker
And that goes back to what we were saying about a teaching practice that is evolving and not stagnant and you're constantly learning and taking in new ideas and, you know, mulling them around and figuring out what works for you. Yeah, for sure.
00:44:40
Speaker
Okay, Katrina, last question for you. If you could give one message to young dancers who are struggling with body image, what would you tell them? Oh, I would tell them that they're not alone, that it's totally normal to be experiencing what they're experiencing. And that while it might not feel like it on the flip side of feeling really terrible about yourself and your body, the flip side of that is that you can find more peace and more respect for
00:45:13
Speaker
for your body and with your body and feel like you are um the same team as your body, as opposed to constantly fighting. with your body, even though that reality might feel really far away and impossible. It can happen.
00:45:28
Speaker
so hang in there and listen to yourself. I mean, to kind of call myself out here, I think one of the, you know, those pieces of advice, like listen to your body, which is well intentioned and well meaning is also still kind of vague.
00:45:45
Speaker
Like we can't expect dancers to listen to their bodies if we've never taught them. how to listen to their bodies. And if we are so busy telling them to come to class six times a week and do Pilates and strength training and eat 700 grams of protein and like, you know, if we're telling them to do all of these things without leaving space for them to calm down and settle and really figure out what it does mean to listen to their own body, then we're doing them a disservice.
00:46:19
Speaker
So we have to figure that out as dance teachers as well and be okay with that gray space of like, okay, what works for this student isn't going to work for this student.
00:46:31
Speaker
And being okay with that because like you said earlier, it's not a one size fits all. Exactly. This has been such a great conversation. if anyone listening wants to learn more about you or about your new resource, where can we find you?
00:46:46
Speaker
Yes, you can find me on Instagram at your body image BFF. Or you can also follow Nicole Sabella. She's at Nicole.e. Sabella. And either one of us can hook you up with it. You can learn more about the resource through Instagram posts.
00:47:05
Speaker
There's links and bio and all of that fun Instagram jargon, but that's the best way to find that stuff. Perfect. And I'll put all of that into the show notes as well. But thank you so so much for this conversation, Katrina. I really enjoyed chatting with you and I really appreciate your time today. Yes, I loved chatting with you. Thank you for taking the time and for everything that you're doing.
00:47:29
Speaker
Thank you for tuning into the Brainy Ballerina podcast. If you found this episode insightful, entertaining, or maybe a bit of both, I would so appreciate you taking a moment to leave a rating and hit subscribe.
00:47:41
Speaker
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00:47:54
Speaker
I'll be back with a new episode next week. In the meantime, be sure to follow along on Instagram at The Brainy Ballerina for your daily dose of dance career guidance.