Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
95. Infinite Steps: Preserving a Dancer’s Legacy with Gavin Larsen and Gene Schiavone
35 Plays2 hours ago
In this episode of The Brainy Ballerina Podcast, I’m joined by former professional dancer and writer Gavin Larsen and renowned dance photographer Gene Schiavone to discuss their collaborative book Infinite Steps: Thirty-Three Dancers and Their Lives in Ballet, a powerful collection that pairs intimate essays with striking photography.
Together we explore how storytelling and imagery reveal the humanity behind ballet, the diverse paths dancers take, and the deeper purpose that sustains a life in dance.
Key Points in this Episode:
- How Gene’s original book idea evolved into a collaboration with Gavin to bring deeper storytelling to his photographs
- The beauty of preserving a dancer’s fleeting career in photographs and essays
- The importance of showing the humanity behind the dancers
- The commonalities they saw between the dancers interviewed: a strong sense of purpose drives dancers more than external success, the daily work matters more than performance highs, and every career path is unique
Connect with Gavin:
WEBSITE: www.gavinlarsen.com
INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/gavinalarsen
Connect with Gene:
WEBSITE: www.geneschiavone.com
INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/geneschiavoneofficial
Links and Resources:
Join the Brainy Ballerina Book Club
Connect with Chronicle Studio
APP: https://chroniclestudio.passion.io/
INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/chronicle_cdt_studio/
FACEBOOK: facebook.com/chronicleCDTstudio
MORE INFO: allongefilms.com/chroniclestudio
1-1 Career Mentoring: book your complimentary career call
Let’s connect!
My WEBSITE: thebrainyballerina.com
INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/thebrainyballerina
Questions/comments? Email me at caitlin@thebrainyballerina.com
Recommended
Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
all of the different types of viewpoints and perspectives and insights that they have to offer, taken in together as a collection, would give anybody reading the book, whether they're an aspiring professional dancer or not, a really colorful and informative and, yeah, quite inspiring and motivating views of their own options and choices that they might make for themselves, and it might help them move forward in their own lives and careers, Yeah, with that comfort of knowing that there are so many different ways to do it.
00:00:33
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.
00:00:49
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.
00:01:07
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Brainy Ballerina podcast. I'm your host, Caitlin Sloan, and I am joined today by Gavin Larson and Jean Ciavone. Gavin is a former professional dancer who is now a dance writer, teacher, and author.
00:01:22
Speaker
Jean was a staff photographer for American Ballet Theater for two decades, in addition to providing performance and studio photography for major companies and dancers all around the world.
00:01:33
Speaker
Gavin and Jean have collaborated on a book of photographs and essays titled Infinite Steps, 33 Dancers and Their Lives of Ballet, featuring several notable dancers that Jean worked with throughout his career.
00:01:47
Speaker
Thank you so much, Gavin and Jean, for joining me today to talk about this book. I loved reading it. I loved looking at the photographs. I loved everything about it. I am curious, how did the two of you first meet? And at what point did you realize that this might become a creative partnership?
00:02:02
Speaker
Do you want to kick that off, Gene? We met through our publisher. I had this concept for the book and realized at some point that I was just a photographer. I was not ah i was not a writer.
00:02:14
Speaker
So I needed to find a way to put the stories with the photographs. yeah Originally, I thought that I'd be able to do it myself. Then I thought, well, I work with the dancers. Ultimately, I wasn't going to work with them spending their time trying to write their own stories. didn't think that would come out right. I talked to to the publisher and I said, you know, i probably need to collaborate with somebody to do this.
00:02:36
Speaker
And I had read Gavin's book somewhere along the line. I said, this is pretty amazing in the sense that she really conveyed what it was like to be a dancer. That kind of prompted me to you look closely at it. But then Our publisher met with Gavin and said, you know I have this fellow who's thinking about a project that you might be good for and suggested that we get together. That's kind of how it came about.
00:02:59
Speaker
Yeah, someone from our publisher, University Press of Florida, we had coffee actually one day and and she said, know, this dance photographer, have you ever heard of Jean Chivone? And actually the name Jean, I don't think I've told you this, but I was like, no, I'm not sure I have. And then I was like, that name sort of sounds familiar. And then I realized later it' because I've seen your name in captions of photographs all over And she described the project and I was immediately like, oh yeah, sign me up. I mean, this is so cool. I would love to do this. It sounds great. And so then Gene and I talked not long after and and that was it. We just got started right away.
00:03:34
Speaker
We didn't get started right away. We started talking a lot. Yes, that's true. We had a lot of conversations just to kind of understand where each other was coming from and to get to know each other. I mean it was important that we had some knowledge of what we were thinking before we started.
00:03:48
Speaker
So that was kind of the first step, I think. Yeah, it's true. As we had more and more conversations and we batted around different ideas about how the book could take shape and what it could look like. i mean, lots of different iterations of format and just design and what it would include and what it would mean, really. I think a lot of our conversations are trying to distill down what is this book going to really mean? What's it going to really be about?
00:04:14
Speaker
And through that process, yeah, we sort of chiseled away at this general concept and honed down in on what it actually did become. Jean suggested that we start just by doing like a test dancer interview. And so that was Olivia Yoke. He suggested Olivia as a good person to be the first dancer as just sort of an experiment almost to see what it would be like when I talked to her and then tried to write down her story. And i think after we did that one, we both looked at it and we thought about it. And that helped us even further kind of shape the way the rest of the book was going to go.
00:04:49
Speaker
How do you feel that your different backgrounds, Gavin as a dancer and G as a photographer, helped shape the way the project took forward? Did you each have specific insight that the other one maybe hadn't thought of based on your particular backgrounds?
00:05:02
Speaker
We're coming from really different perspectives here. i mean, I was just an observer, kind of on the outside of the dance world looking in. And Gavin had the inside knowledge. I mean, she had gone through it. So, you know, it's always, always to have a photograph.
00:05:18
Speaker
But you need some depth to the photograph. I mean, a photograph is just two-dimensional. It's just a flat piece of paper. We wanted to tell the story of the dancer in the photograph because we thought that was the important part. yeah You can look at the picture, but you know my concept has always been, i want to tell stories. To put the words with the photograph really gave it depth. I thought that was an important aspect of it.
00:05:37
Speaker
And when I was looking at the different photographs that Gene sent me, which was a big part of our process, was Gene just sent me so many of his photos, you know, like all these different dancers. And each time he would send me a picture, a group of pictures that were accompanied by his his stories about them, like his remembrances of what it was like working with them, what he knew about them, what the dancer had shared with him. And that alone really colored the way I looked at the photographs. And I thought, this is what I want to do for readers of the book.
00:06:08
Speaker
you know I want to deepen their understanding, their insight of that photograph through some revelations about what's going on in their mind, what was going on in their mind, what's their motivation, what's their perspective.
00:06:22
Speaker
All of these amazing individuals that Jean has worked with from like such diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and types of experiences they had, age range, types of careers, geographical locations.
00:06:36
Speaker
It was like so colorful and just rich, lots and lots of really rich material. So, you know, I brought to it my insider knowledge of having been a professional dancer myself. And so I have an understanding, like a built-in understanding of all of these dancers lives, even if the specifics of their lives differed a lot from mine, you still understand kind of their reason for being. That enabled me, i think, to like jump in even further right off the bat into getting to know them and help reveal their stories with that same kind of richness.
00:07:12
Speaker
And Jean, just reading your bio and reading this book, it became very apparent that the background stories and the lives of the dancers really was really important to you as a photographer. And I thought your story of getting started as a photographer was very interesting. Could you share that for us?
00:07:30
Speaker
From an early age, and i've I have pictures I'd taken when I was 10 years old. I was always into photography as a hobby, probably more than a hobby, but just as a particular interest to me when I was young.
00:07:41
Speaker
And I always wanted the pictures to tell a story. mean, I traveled cross-country a number of times, and people would say, show me the photographs. I'm saying, well, I could have taken a picture of a mountain, but it would just be a picture of a mountain you could see any place.
00:07:54
Speaker
But if you put a person in that picture, then you have a story. So I always wanted to tell stories. At one point, my wife was involved with American Ballet Theater. And we had the studio company performing in Hartford, Connecticut, not far from our house.
00:08:08
Speaker
So this was in 2002, maybe. And we had them over our home. And I had a studio at the house. So I started taking some photographs of them. And I knew nothing about ballet. I had no interest in ballet.
00:08:20
Speaker
It was something my wife was interested in. But I got to meet some of these dancers. was very interesting speaking with them. And then I went to a rehearsal. And I watched them perform. And it intrigued me a little bit.
00:08:32
Speaker
So at some point, John Meehan, who ran the studio company at that point, ABT Studio Company, he asked me or I i asked him if I could take some photos at rehearsal. He said, sure, because he knew my wife. So I did that.
00:08:45
Speaker
And i thought, boy, this is really an interesting thing to photograph. And I went back and I shot the performance. The photos were terrible. I mean, didn't know what I was doing with the lighting. with yeah who Who could figure this stuff out right away?
00:08:58
Speaker
But they invited me to work with them. so i spent some time with them. Actually, i toured with them for two years because there was never any money in the budget for the studio company. you know Everything went to the main company. and you In the arts, there's never a budget. There's never any money available. So I was retired at that point, and I worked with them for a couple of years, and I kind of developed...
00:09:18
Speaker
a knowledge of ballet a little bit, and a knowledge of advancing photography and how to do that, these specific lighting conditions. And that's kind of how it started. From there, I went to the main company after a couple of years of kind of learning the craft.
00:09:34
Speaker
From ABT, after a couple of years, I was invited to Boston Ballet, and I photographed them for 15 years. And then I started working with other companies, and that's kind of how I got into it. you have such a huge number of photos from all of your years when you were trying to choose 33 dancers to make it into the book. How did you go about that task?
00:09:55
Speaker
It began with what I saw as the purpose of the book. I mean, my original concept was that I would work in the studio with a lot of students. It was always the mothers that brought them in.
00:10:06
Speaker
it was mostly in mothers that brought their daughters in for audition photos, you know, the usual stuff you need to get started. And they came to me because the thinking was, well, you're photographing all these famous ballet dancers,
00:10:21
Speaker
that my daughter or my West would be with the sons because guys don't care much about photos. The mothers seem to be um more interested in in their daughters.
00:10:33
Speaker
So I had a studio and people would make appointments and they'd come and we'd do studio sessions. But there's always this underlying question, what do you think I should do next? Should she go take coaching? Should she go to summer intensive? Should she do competitions?
00:10:47
Speaker
And I never had the answers. I was just the guy that pictures. But there was always this underlying need for where, what do we do? i mean, if you're in the Russian system, it's pretty simple. You go to school eight years old and your hat is laid out for you and you just follow that and everybody goes the same way.
00:11:04
Speaker
But here you have all these choices to make. So the thought was that from years ago, that if there could be one source or some source that people would go to,
00:11:16
Speaker
Now, when I was working with the studio company, I found this book, Dance is Life by Stephen Franklin. was written in the 70s, and it was about a year in the American Ballet Theater.
00:11:27
Speaker
And I read that book, and I thought, this is a good guide for students coming in. because it'll tell you what to expect in some ways going into professional ballet. And there was an out-of-point book, but I would find those books online, and I'd order them when I could, and I would give them to the dancers I work with.
00:11:45
Speaker
And when these kids came in the studio to work, I would always give them a copy of the book. I said, this is something to give you some basis of what you're in for or what to look forward to. So when we can see this book, I thought the purpose should be the same.
00:11:58
Speaker
This is something that that can give you a kind of a roadmap in terms where you might want to go with choices that have been made by other people. And maybe this will help you in your path in terms of progressing through the the ballet industry, I guess you call it, because it really is an industry.
00:12:14
Speaker
want the central repository for ballet guidance. And in order to provide that in an encompassing way, we decided early on that the group of dancers needed to be broad spectrum and not just famous people or, you know, just current professionals, but dancers who are at very different points all throughout the whole range of a career or a life in dance as a dancer, because some of them are not dancing professionally. Some did or have stopped. Some are Some are just getting started.
00:12:48
Speaker
And so all of the different types of viewpoints and perspectives and insights that they have to offer, taken together as a collection, would give anybody reading the book, whether they're an aspiring professional dancer or not, a really colorful and informative and, yeah, quite inspiring and motivating views artists.
00:13:09
Speaker
their own options and choices that they might make for themselves and it might help them move forward in their own lives and careers. Yeah, with that comfort of knowing that there are so many different ways to do it and that all these other people have faced all of their same questions and problems and felt their same joys and triumphs and, you know, made unorthodox, unexpected choices and pathways.
00:13:33
Speaker
Yeah, reading about all these huge stars in the ballet world and all of the things they went through and realizing that we all have rejection and struggles was really powerful.
00:13:44
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I think so too. I mean, when I was, you know, when we finally did finish it and i was like looking through all of them and all of the ones that we collected, our collection of dancers, so to speak, and i was really struck by how just incredibly beautiful it is. It's really just like a distillation of life For myself, I think of it as like a collection of 33 ways to live an examined life, but through the lens of dance. Because of the things that these dancers face throughout their careers and lives and continue to face are really the same things that you face outside of dance. But the ways that they have encountered them with their toolkit of the dancer's mentality could be really illustrative and informative for anybody. i mean, it really has been for me personally, honestly.
00:14:30
Speaker
The other thing that was interesting to me over the years, I photographed a lot of dances over an extended period of time. One of the girls in the book, I mean, I photographed it it for the first time at 10 years old, which is strange because when I got calls from parents about children that young, I would say, no um you know, they really need to be a little further along.
00:14:49
Speaker
But for some reason, I was convinced that or her mother convinced me that I should take the time to work with this girl. So I photographed her at 10, I think I photographed her at 12, and then i photographed her a little later.
00:15:01
Speaker
So when I look at the dancers in the book, even on a professional level, I mean, I photographed them over a number of years. You know, it was interesting to see the progression where they achieved, where they had failures or not failures, but not so great moments or had things that they had to really work through.
00:15:18
Speaker
For me, it was interesting to see this whole these stories ah that took place over some period of time and not just once and done kind of thing. Olivia Gabin was speaking about it. I mean, only photographed her once and we've never met.
00:15:30
Speaker
It was just strange that I happened to notice her photograph one of her pictures and I sent it to her, not knowing if it was really her. And turned out it was. And it turned out that I had purchased a pair of her shoes You know, by coincidence, and the obvious at the theater that day, and that kind of came together.
00:15:50
Speaker
But, you know, we've never met. But it was kind of strange that came together. Yeah, that was a cool story. Let's pause this episode so I can tell you about one of my favorite new resources for dancers, the Chronicle Studio app.
00:16:04
Speaker
Chronicle Studio is designed to strengthen dancers from the inside out with classical ballet classes you can take from anywhere, technique tutorials, and deep dives into allegro vocabulary and execution.
00:16:17
Speaker
The app also includes a tips and tricks section, plus a comprehensive list of resources to help you grow as a dancer. One of my favorite elements of the app is the community section, where you can connect with other dancers with the same drive and passion for ballet.
00:16:32
Speaker
Right now, founder Elizabeth Troxler is inviting you to become a founding member of the Chronicle Studio app. If you're a dancer or teacher willing to share honest feedback to help grow the app with the content you love, now is the time to get involved.
00:16:48
Speaker
Head to the link in my show notes to download the Chronicle Studio app and have everything you need to build stronger, smarter dancers right at your fingertips. Gavin, how do you feel that your career as a professional dancer influences the way that you approach writing about other dancers' lives? You wrote your incredible memoir, but you've also written for many different publications, magazines, and now this book and writing about other dancers' journeys. How do you approach that?
00:17:15
Speaker
I mean, I think it's impossible to kind of shed my own experience, my own lens completely. So when I was talking to each of these dancers and interviewing them, having conversations with them, I mean, I did filter it through like my own understanding, my own memories and experiences of being a dancer.
00:17:33
Speaker
Even so, I feel like that enables me to, like I said before, like already connect with them. Like we just immediately have a connection, every single one of them. All dancers do. I mean, you know that as a dancer yourself, you just immediately have this bond because no matter if you've never met before or not,
00:17:52
Speaker
You just understand what you're doing and what you've been through and what you're doing and why you're doing it and kind of like what makes you tick. So that enabled us to click right away. And I think it also made them trust me.
00:18:05
Speaker
They all opened up really, really wide and were very vulnerable and very forthright. I wasn't prepared for that. I mean, i don't want to say I was expecting people to be you know reserved, but I was really humbled and excited, too, at how open everybody was and how willing they were to let me know all sorts of things. I mean, I didn't even have to do much questioning.
00:18:30
Speaker
Honestly, like I would start out by showing them the pictures that Jean had taken of them Jean had usually sent them in advance. And we say, let's let's talk about that one. So take me back. You know, what were you dancing that day? Where were you in your career? Where were your life? Do you remember that specific moment? Like what was going on in your head? How were you feeling? How did you feel afterwards? And that usually just opened up the gates.
00:18:51
Speaker
And they just got rolling. I just am so curious about other people and other people's lives. So I love interviewing people because I just I always have endless questions. And I'd much rather talk to other people about themselves than about myself. So listening to them talk and then I have more questions about this and that. And and yeah, I mean, I think they trusted me and they understood where I was coming from. They knew we of the same world. They knew I understood them. So I was able to, when I went to write up their stories, able to do it with a real sort of feeling of simpatico and understanding of how they wanted the world to understand them. Yeah, it was just so interesting. My gosh, this process, so fascinating. Because each of these dancers is obviously so many similarities, but everyone is an individual and...
00:19:40
Speaker
their unique, very specific, unique perspective and ideas, opinions, really, really interesting. Jean, what would you say after be a photographer for so many years, what do you feel photography can capture about dancers that sometimes the words can't? Because I feel like this book was so special pairing both together to give us this complete picture. But what do you feel like the photographs bring specifically? Yeah.
00:20:07
Speaker
Well, the photographs bring one moment in time, meaning that it appears and then it's gone. So when you look deep into a photograph, you can kind of sense in many ways how that dancer is feeling by the expression and the tension in the body.
00:20:21
Speaker
As an audience member, you never get to see that because you're just going through it. you know You're just passing through that moment. But when you stop and you analyze it, you see the stress and you see the commitment within the dancer.
00:20:34
Speaker
i mean, I think that's a really important aspect of it that goes unseen. You can actually study it and understand what's going on or try to understand. You never really understand, but you had some sense of what this person is feeling and what they're trying to convey to the audience, which is really, you know, the important aspect of dance is what you're communicating to the audience.
00:20:54
Speaker
yeah I think you can see that the photograph where... You watch the performance, it's all one motion and you can't pull out those aspects of it. Yeah, I completely agree with that. just think dance photography is such an important and really, really unique art form in itself. Just a gorgeous subset of the photography profession and, you know, the art of photography in particular. Because of exactly what Jean has said, you know, ballet and, you know, dance is like continual motion and the ability to capture split seconds, you know, snapshots like that, fragments of the motion. They just tell you so much as you look at those pictures. There's many different things that you can't get from a performance or you miss in a live performance. It's almost like you can see their thoughts. And, you know, the tension the body, of course, and the ease. And you really see the portrait of the person in addition to the movement that they're doing when they perform. And I think that might be also why these essays with the photographs, they seem to jive so well, because the essays are providing the flow in a way for these still captured moments. It's just really interesting kind of pairing.
00:22:05
Speaker
And ballet performance, live performance can be so fleeting. Right. You're there and you experience the moment and then it's over. Written and word photography endures, can last forever.
00:22:16
Speaker
So preserving these memories for the dancers you've worked with and for us as readers to enjoy is so special. h Yeah, I think that, you know, someone's going to see performances to then have the chance to look at the photographs and read these essays will only make them love the performances more and appreciate them more and understand them better. And yeah, I want to see even more of it for exactly that reason. It's just a way to like sort of say, wait, stop, hold on. Let me let me hang on to this for a second and study it. And the more you can study something, the more you know about it, and then the more you're interested in it. I just, yeah, I love doing this.
00:22:56
Speaker
If you're enjoying this episode, then you're going to love the Brainy Ballerina Book Club. I have been an avid reader for as long as I can remember. i am fascinated by other stories, and I am always applying the lessons I learn in books to my own life, both personally and professionally.
00:23:13
Speaker
What started out as sharing my currently reading list on Instagram stories has since grown into a full-fledged book club with hundreds of members. Each month, we dive into a new story thoughtfully chosen to inspire and challenge us with original ideas and experiences.
00:23:29
Speaker
Whether you are an avid reader or looking to get into the habit, the Brainy Ballerina Book Club welcomes you with open arms. It's free to join and there is no catch. just a community of dance lovers who are eager to expand our knowledge, feed our souls, and make meaningful connections.
00:23:45
Speaker
Head on over to the show notes to join the book club today. The title only emphasizes the dancers' lives in ballet. What do you want the readers to this book to understand about the dancers as people?
00:23:58
Speaker
I have so many, so many things, so many things. I mean, there are so many themes that emerged or across these 33 individuals through their narratives that they relayed to me.
00:24:11
Speaker
Of course, understandably and expectedly, their intense passion for what they do was prominent, of course. What was beautifully revealed to me was that it's not just that they're passionate about what they do, but that sense of purpose.
00:24:28
Speaker
is what fuels that passion and that ironclad commitment to dance. It's that sense of purpose that propels them through life and enables them to weather all of the storms and also to not succumb to kind of the giddiness of the highs, you know, to not only be seeking the high of a performance over and over and over again. It's that sense of purpose and that dance is what they are meant to do that makes them love the process. Well, I don't even want to say love the process. Makes them revel and relish the process and continue doing it. That makes them go through the grunt work and the difficulty and the challenges and all of that. It really is like kind of the moderating force
00:25:19
Speaker
It's such a healthy mentality, you know, to have that sense of purpose and intention. And that was what really clearly emerged to me across all 33 of them. In addition to, of course, you know, talent and ambition and intellect to and creativity, they all are fueled by just this this is what I was meant to do. I mean, and several of them said very similar things in their interviews. What got you started dancing and then what kept you? That was one question I asked almost everybody in a different sort of in different forms and almost all of them answered in a similar way, you know, different words, of course, but they would say, well, I just felt right. It just felt like this is what I needed to do. It's just me. That's, I don't know. I can't really explain why I'm like, yeah, I mean, I love moving to music and I love the physicality of it and I love the community of it. I love being on stage and I love performing, but the bottom line, the common denominator well,
00:26:12
Speaker
I don't know. It just is me. This is just who I am. i mean, some of the dancers, like I even pulled out some of the quotes here. Karine Seneca, who is the dancer who she's French and Jean photographed her when she was in Boston Ballet and She said, you know, looking back on her career later on, she realized that, you know, the ego in her was like seeking more roles and more recognition and a promotion and ah a rank and a status. But she realized, like, if you're always focused on that, on the feedback, you're not present enough to actually take it You just have to do it for yourself and not for the recognition.
00:26:50
Speaker
And that is also something that every single one of these dancers said to me in a different way. I love that because it really dispels one of the myths that the outside world has about dancers, which is that you're vain. It's all about your ego. It's all about the applause. It's all about being on stage. You just love being in front of people and being clapped for. And that is so not it. As you know, it's really not it at all. That's not a motivation. And Kareem summed that up really well. So that's something I would like people to know about these dancers as people, that they are just people. And yet the way they have approached life with their dancer mindset toolkit is what enables them to move through life with this real kind of spiritual grace. What would you say, Gene? That's too deep for me
00:27:32
Speaker
yeah wanted people who see the the humanity of these people, these dancers. I just wanted them to get across that these are committed people they just want to bring some joy to the world and to themselves through their dance.
00:27:46
Speaker
Yeah. There's a lot of like ballet world stereotypes that these stories really debunk. I love that because that's sort of, I guess that's one of my missions in life now is to refute the myths, you know, like the myth of dancers kind of being slaves or martyrs to their art or it's all about sacrifice and pain and or the flip side the other extreme that it's just all about pure joy and you just get to your your heart is filled with joy when you go to the studio every day and you want nothing else but to put on your pointe shoes and dance and dance and dance and dance it's all happy happy happy and of course we know neither extreme is true everything exists kind of in the middle ground and these stories just really show that these dancers have autonomy they feel self-empowered so many of them just took their lives in their own hands and
00:28:30
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, there's always going to be like audition processes and you kind of have to go where the where you get a job. But at the same time, a lot of these dancers like made choices for themselves. They decided, well, no, I want to do this. And so I'm going to go this direction instead of that direction. But again, that sense of self-assuredness and self-purpose and worth that comes from having invested your life into yourself.
00:28:54
Speaker
pursuing dance is what gave them that inner strength and gives them that inner strength. And I mean, that's something that's really important for the non-dancing public to think about. That could also help others navigate their own ways through their own lives.
00:29:08
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you nailed it when you said that the performance and the applause and all that can't be the only thing keeping you going because that's so fleeting. It's the tip of the iceberg, right? 90% of your life as a dancer is the rehearsals, is the classes, all the other things you have to put into it that can also be really joyful, but can also be really hard. So having that joy for the work.
00:29:31
Speaker
Yeah. You know, one of the dancers who really illustrated that well is Marge. She's a dancer who's in a company in South Carolina and she's a prodigy. you know, she's still young. I think she's probably in her mid-20s now. And Jean photographed her when she was a teenager.
00:29:46
Speaker
And she struggled really young with burnout because she went to competitions and she won. Like she did really well and everyone got really excited about her. And strangely, unexpectedly to someone reading about that, that really did a number for her self-esteem and her confidence because suddenly she felt like she was expected to dance and perform at an extraordinarily high level for everybody else.
00:30:12
Speaker
And she said she totally lost her own sense of purpose. And so she took a step back and she stopped for a little bit and she did a lot of talking it through with some of her mentors and their family and then came back and decided, no, i mean, I'm not doing this to win competitions. You know, she had that realization young, thank goodness.
00:30:33
Speaker
and has re-approached her life and her career. She's very successful. She's a wonderful dancer, of course. And we're having that realization as a youngster, as a teenager, that's really amazing. And that's really cool. and that's something a lot of people don't figure out till later in life, if ever. But again, it was being in the dance world that first caused her to go through that, but then helped her have that realization and re-tap into her worth and her purpose and her inner motivation and enables her to thrive.
00:31:02
Speaker
The other person that talks about that a little bit is Craig Salstein. Craig basically says for him, it's about the work. It's about working his body. yeah The performance aspect is very small compared to the everyday process that he goes through, which is to him, the most important part is keeping himself active and, you know, attacking the work.
00:31:25
Speaker
Yeah, that's true. Craig was really interesting story because think I spoke with him twice. I think we did two interviews. And at one point during one of them, i was like, wow, this is getting pretty negative. I mean, he was talking about how like, You know, he just pushes himself through slog in the work. And he said, it's like Sisyphus, you know, you're always pushing uphill. The rocket is pushing you down. have to keep pushing it uphill again and again again. But he's so funny.
00:31:51
Speaker
He's just hilarious. And his way of delivering that sentiment and that concept also just makes you laugh and relate. i mean, any dancer reading that is going to totally relate to It's like, oh, we go in the studio every day. And like, no, I mean, four days out of five, you don't want to go take class, right? But you do it.
00:32:10
Speaker
And it's not because you like dread it, you hate it, but you also don't love it. And I think Craig really hit that nail on the head in the way he explained his feelings about it.
00:32:21
Speaker
Yeah, that really spoke to me for sure. What do you hope that pre-professional dancers or early career dancers, that's really who this podcast is aimed toward, is helping dancers who are trying to pursue their career. What do you hope they're going to take away from these stories?
00:32:38
Speaker
I hope they come away with the idea that there are a lot of ways to become a dancer. I mean, there are a lot paths that you can take. It's not clearly defined and you have to find your way, but this might be some help, you know, give you some direction in terms of what choices you can make and what choices people have made to reach their goals. I mean, I almost look at it a textbook in a way. yeah This should be required reading for everyone thinking of professional dance as a career.
00:33:08
Speaker
So we'll see. be determined.
00:33:13
Speaker
I agree. I feel like having access to these stories from all of these dancers, many that I have watched their careers and some that I hadn't heard of yet, but really loved learning about, was very powerful, even for me as a dancer on the other side of my career. I'd like younger, you know, pre-professional or early career dancers to take away from this that there is no way to go wrong.
00:33:36
Speaker
If you really just follow your heart, you really cannot try to map your own route based on somebody else's. You just cannot because it's definitely going to make you disappointed, probably. Definitely, probably make you disappointed. But you just have to listen to your heart and see the doors that are opening for you and then go towards them. I just really feel like a lot of these dancers did at some point make a really unorthodox choice or ended up going in an unexpected direction to great personal satisfaction.
00:34:10
Speaker
And the unexpected happens and you can't fight it too hard. And there are two examples I want to give from the book. Number one was Viola Hajati. She was a ballet dancer in Europe. And she ended up in the Moulin Rouge as a can-can performer in the cabaret. You know, she'd been a successful ballet dancer, but that door opened for her and she didn't think it was for her at first. Like, I'm a ballet dancer. It's what I do.
00:34:35
Speaker
But she tried it and she discovered that she loved it and was excellent at it. And she had this stellar career in the Moulin Rouge. and You know, when I asked her about like, how did it feel to go that completely different way?
00:34:49
Speaker
She said, you know what? I wouldn't make any changes now. If you listen to your heart, you will never go wrong. You just have to listen to your soul and your heart. And I thought that was just amazing. Then the other person I wanted to point out as an example of this, our anonymous dancer, who we call Marie in the book. I'm not going to give away her story or why she's anonymous because I want everyone to go and read it for themselves. But I spoke with her at length a few times to get her whole story. And at the end, in conclusion, she said, you know what? I don't regret anything.
00:35:19
Speaker
But what I do wish is that I had earlier on been able to hold my dream lightly in the palm of my hand instead of in a like ironclad fist, instead of clenching it so tightly that I almost killed it.
00:35:33
Speaker
I wish I'd been able to just hold that dance dream very lightly and preciously. And that was such a beautiful image that made me do a lot of thinking myself, man. I think dancers can learn a lot and it'll provoke a lot of thoughts.
00:35:50
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much, Gavin and Jean. This was so amazing to hear more about the makings of this book. Can you share with our listeners where they can get a copy?
00:36:02
Speaker
Yes, lots and lots of places you can get a copy. Any bookseller, any online book retailer will have it. If you go to your local bookstore and ask for it, if they don't have it, that would be great too. You can order it direct from our publisher, the University Press of Florida.
00:36:16
Speaker
You can get an Amazon, of course. You can follow Jeans and my social media accounts for updates on things. But yeah, it's widely available. Perfect. I will link all of that information in the show notes for anyone listening who wants to grab a copy. I highly recommend it. And this book is our Brady Ballerina Book Club pick for March and April. So if you haven't joined the book club yet, I will also link that in and the show notes. It's free to join and it's just a fun way to join a community of book lovers who also love ballet.
00:36:47
Speaker
So we'd love to have you there. Thank you so much to both of you for taking the time today. I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you, Caitlin. It's been really fun. Thank you.
00:36:59
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.
00:37:12
Speaker
By subscribing, you'll never miss an episode. And you'll join our community of dancers passionate about building a smart and sustainable career in the dance industry. Plus your reigns help others discover the show too.
00:37:25
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.