Transcript
Speaker: we have all these ideas of what it's supposed to look like. And what I found is when you get too stuck into the shoulds, what you think you should be doing or what it's supposed to look like, it can cause you to miss out on so many other opportunities, not just in your dance career, but in your life and amazing things that you might want to explore outside of dance.
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. I'm peeling back the curtain of professional dance world with open and honest conversations about the realities of becoming a professional dancer.
Speaker: Come along to gain the knowledge and inspiration you need to succeed in a dance career on your terms.
Speaker: Hello and welcome to the Brainy Ballerina podcast. Caitlin here today with a solo episode and what I wanted to share with you today are all the quote unquote unconventional things I did as a pre-pro dance student that still led me to a professional ballet career.
Speaker: One of the main messages that i hope to share with dancers who are pursuing their career through the Brainy Ballerina is that there are many, many truly infinite ways to pursue a ballet career or a dance career in general.
Speaker: And when we're young, we often think that there is a very linear path we have to take. We have to start dancing really young. We have to move away from home to train. We have to win all these competitions. We have to get a traineeship right out of high school. We have all these ideas of what it's supposed to look like. And what I found is when you get too stuck into the shoulds, what you think you should be doing or what it's supposed to look like, it can cause you to miss out on so many other opportunities, not just in your dance career, but in your life and amazing things that you might want to explore outside of dance.
Speaker: And so today I'm going to share with you the things that I did that may have been seen as unconventional when I was training at this high level, but that ended up still working for me and still led me to the career that I dreamed of and really allowed me to have longevity in my career and be able to sustain it because Another thing I talk about a lot is wanting to have a sustainable dance career. i I didn't want to burn so bright and fast that I burnt out. I wanted this to be more of a slow burn, a simmer. I wanted to be able to maintain this career, and I still am.
Speaker: Even though I'm not dancing professionally, I'm in this other facet of the dance career and I'm still passionate about it and I still care about it. And I really do think I owe that a lot to some of the choices I made along the way that allowed me to stay in love with ballet and not completely burn out super early.
Speaker: One of the first, I suppose, unconventional things that I did as a young dancer was I stayed at my home studio all the way through high school. I was offered the opportunity to leave home and study at a prestigious university year-round company-affiliated program when I was about 15 years old, and I turned it down. And at the time, my teacher was really pushing me to go. And she was incredible in that sense where she never tried to hold her students back or keep her students at her school.
Speaker: Her goal was to get her students ready to go off into the professional world at whatever age they were ready. So when I got this offer and I was kind of unsure about it, she was like, you have to take this. This is an incredible offer.
Speaker: You're ready for this. You should do it. And I just didn't really feel ready to leave my family. And honestly, another credit to my teacher, i was so lucky to have incredible training at my local studio.
Speaker: I knew that I was still going to be getting great training and great opportunities if I stayed home. So I was really lucky in that respect that I didn't feel the absolute need to leave home in order to get that training.
Speaker: But I really just wanted to be a regular kid. you know i wanted – go to driver's ed and get my a driver's license. I wanted to go to homecoming and prom. I wanted to do all the regular kid things that my peers were doing.
Speaker: And that works for me because I wasn't ready. Some dancers of that age are completely ready to go away from home. And that's great too. But I'm glad I listened to my intuition and what I really needed at the time and trusted that I finished my education at my high school, stayed with my family. So many priceless memories and moments that I would have been sad to miss out on.
Speaker: The next unconventional thing that I did was I did not go to a summer intensive my junior or senior year. I honestly, again, just wanted to experience a summer as a regular kid.
Speaker: I didn't want to be gone the entire summer. At this point, I was starting to feel a bit of burnout. And between school and dancing and all the demands that come with being a really high-level pre-pro student, I needed a break.
Speaker: I needed to not keep pushing over the summer. So my parents made a deal with me. They said, if you're not going to go to a summer intensive, you have to get a job. So I got a job at Abercrombie. I also worked for my neighbor's landscaping business. I babysat.
Speaker: And I kept taking ballet classes at my studio. It wasn't like I didn't dance at all. I was still taking classes. But I just chose to not go away for the summer and have those summers, again, just enjoying being a regular kid.
Speaker: And this was kind of a theme that I felt throughout my childhood was this pull between wanting to pursue ballet at this high level and seeing what it took and also never wanting to fully sacrifice my childhood and life outside of dance.
Speaker: And I'm really glad that I did that. I hear from so many dancers on this podcast who talk about the importance of having a life outside of dance and how they sort of learn that later in their career. That was one thing that I just always knew growing up was that I needed both those things. I wanted to pursue ballet at a high level and I was super committed and worked very, very hard, but I wasn't willing to give everything up for it. and I kind of made that deal with myself. like If you don't make this into a career because of these choices, that's okay.
Speaker: I wasn't willing to put every single egg in that basket. I wanted both. And if it happened, it happened. If it didn't, I knew I would be okay with that too. But I had to be really honest about that with myself.
Speaker: I also scaled way back on my dance classes during my senior year. So as I mentioned before, I was starting to feel a lot of burnout. I was always the student that went above and beyond. I was taking every class and every style of dance possible.
Speaker: top of all my ballet classes, i was taking – jazz, lyrical. I was in the pre-professional ballet company at my school where it really operated much like a professional ballet company where we had to audition.
Speaker: There was ranks. There was trainee apprentice company member. We had company class. We put on full-length ballets. We did outreach performances too. We did some mixed rep kind of things.
Speaker: So I was part of that, which I loved. It was such an incredible experience being part of this pre-pro company and getting to do all of these full-length ballets and just feeling like i had all this experience going into a pro career. And I was also on the competition team for my school, which was very small. i think there was four of us, but we did – like your classic jazz and lyrical numbers at competitions like Star Power and Showstopper. We were doing that stuff too.
Speaker: And so I was in all these classes. I was doing everything that was available to me. But by senior year, I was so burnt out and I needed a break. You know, in addition to all the dance classes, school was really demanding.
Speaker: I was in AP classes. I was applying to colleges. It just got to be way too much. And plus, I had some injuries that just wouldn't heal. In my junior year, i was out of school for an entire month with mono. I could not even step foot in my school because the doctors were so worried about my health. I had to do everything from home.
Speaker: But I literally couldn't go to school for entire month, let alone dance. That was even longer. So that happened. Plus, I had a couple of sprained ankles that just wouldn't really heal. I had Achilles tendonitis. I had all of these injuries that just would not resolve.
Speaker: No matter how much PT I did or different things I did, my body literally needed more rest than I was giving it. And so I scaled back to the required number of classes I had to take for my ballet company, which I think was six classes a week.
Speaker: And that included ballet in point. So if I took an hour and a half ballet class and then an hour long point class, that was two classes plus company class and our rehearsals. So still a lot. So I scaled back to my required ballet classes and I really stopped taking most of my jazz classes. and lyrical classes. I think I kept one jazz class.
Speaker: But I let myself just take a breath and just do what I needed to do to maintain. But I didn't keep pushing above and beyond. And I needed that to let my body heal and to allow myself to continue dancing, honestly, because I think if I had kept pushing past my capacity, again, I would have probably completely burned out.
Speaker: And so I was able to sort of come back and refine my love for dance and have a really beautiful senior year. And when I look back, just the memories I have, but also like just watching videos, when I see myself, I'm the strongest I danced my senior year.
Speaker: which makes sense. You're constantly improving. So it makes sense that like when I did Clara my freshman year versus doing it my senior year, I was a lot stronger. And our Clara was very difficult at our school. We did a Clara and Prince Pa instead of the Snow King Queen pas de deux. So we had a whole pas de deux.
Speaker: Clara does a whole basically like Grand Allegro, the entire Waltz the Flowers, in addition to all the party scene kind of stuff. So it was a really big part. And I saw myself in the videos and I was like, wow, even though I took a step back from dancing, I'm dancing so much better. And sometimes that's what your body needs to be able to actually execute the steps is that rest in between that I wasn't giving myself.
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Speaker: I also decided to go to college for dance, which I think is more conventional these days, but in 2006 when I was graduating High school, that was pretty unconventional. Again, my teacher was really encouraging me to audition for companies.
Speaker: But at that point, I still was not even sure if I wanted to keep dancing professionally. I loved dance, obviously. i wanted to keep it in my life, but I wasn't sure if it was my path. And I wasn't sure, again, if I wanted to go into a career that I didn't know would be secure. i didn't know if I wanted to take that risk.
Speaker: But I did want to keep dancing. and so instead of trying to go the pro route and say, i'm putting all my eggs in this basket right now, I said, I'm going to go to college. I'm going to be a dance major. I don't know what else I would want to do. i still want to keep dancing. So I'm going to go to college as a dance major.
Speaker: And if I decide i don't want to dance anymore, I'm already in college. I can switch majors. I can do something different. I have options available. I've always loved learning of any kind. I loved being on a college campus.
Speaker: And I really just felt called to be there. I wanted to be in a classroom and be learning other things besides dance. And I also loved getting to have dance as most of my school instead of having to go to high school all day long and then dance at night and sleep for like four hours and do it all over again.
Speaker: Now I got to have dance classes all day long as part of my school and then a handful of academics here and there. And that schedule was amazing. I just felt so at home in that atmosphere.
Speaker: and again, that was a good choice for me. The last sort of unconventional thing I did was I joined my college dance team. I mentioned before that I was on my high school competition team, which was not the focus of my school.
Speaker: It was just sort of a side thing that some of us did with one of our jazz teachers. She was a dancer for the Detroit Pistons dance team. And so we kind of said we want to do this. And she gave us the opportunity.
Speaker: So when I was in college, I had some friends who are dance majors who are still some of my best friends to this day who were on the Grand Valley Laker dance team. And they encouraged me to audition. And when I auditioned, I had no what was going on.
Speaker: I could do jazz, but there was pom, which I had never done. There was hip hop, which I had no experience in And so the audition, I didn't think I was even going to make it because I was just so inexperienced. But I had the technique. I think they knew that I was trainable.
Speaker: So I got on the dance team and it was definitely outside of my comfort zone, but it pushed me and it led me to cultivating some of my greatest friendships and It was one of the highlights of my college experience.
Speaker: And it also helped me as a pro dancer because we had to dance in some crazy weather. we we were performing at the football games and at the basketball games, so football games especially. Grand Valley was a D2 school, but we were really strong in football, and we would typically make it to finals. So we'd be out there dancing in snow by the time the football team was playing in the finals on grass. We were wearing our jazz sneakers, which ballet dancers probably know as like teacher shoes.
Speaker: But it taught me how to perform in all kinds of conditions, which definitely came in handy in my career when I had to perform on not ideal stages. So it just pushed me to see what else I could achieve as a dancer and just sort of gave me the courage to know that I could pursue really anything I wanted to in a dance career.
Speaker: At this point, I was still really focused on being in a classical ballet company, and that was my dream. But I felt like I've gathered all these skills over the years. I felt way more confident that I was going to be able to pursue a dance career in some capacity, even if the ballet world didn't work out for me.
Speaker: So what I want you to take away from this episode is not to follow my path and do everything that I did exactly, but to take away the permission to do what works for you. Ballet career is never going to be linear. And if I had stayed on the path I was supposed to take, I probably would have ended up walking away from dance much sooner because it just wasn't for me. And it was causing so much burnout. And I needed to find a career that allowed me to have a life and interests outside of ballet while still working my butt off in the studio and performing at a high level. I needed both those things and I found it.
Speaker: I want you to have the courage to forge your own path. You don't have to figure it all out now. I didn't know what was going to come. I just looked at the decision in front of me and made that decision. You just do the next right thing for you.
Speaker: Stay open to possibilities. Stay open to things that you didn't think were possible for you, to opportunities that arise. Don't get so closed off. that you shut out every other thing in the world because there's some amazing opportunities that you might not even know about yet.
Speaker: Every dancer's career is going to look completely different, and that's an amazing thing. We can't all be in American ballet theater, right? There's so many amazing companies out there and places to dance, and there's a place for you. And if you stay true to yourself, you will set yourself up for success in the way that is right for you.
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.
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.
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.
