After writing about the challenges of success last week, I've had a
handful of conversations about success and failure. The world of dance,
and beyond, idolizes a story of failure and adversity that opens up unknown doors, eventually leading to hard-won success. Who doesn't love a
good cinematic happy ending? Unfortunately, for students in training
and professionals with big goals, things don't always turn out that way.
For this reason, there are many former and current dancers living jaded
with emotional pain, regret, and without closure from the wounds that
often go along with such a challenging, strenuous, and personal effort.
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| Valeska Mosich-Miller in Clara Magazine |
While
out in Los Angeles prepping to perform for one of my many Nutcracker gigs, I
found myself in a conversation consoling a former dancer about her
training years. I was staying with my friend and the woman, who was
subletting her brother's room while he is out of town working on an FX
series, just happened to be a dancer that was in
Pacific Northwest Ballet's school during my first few years with the company.
Valeska Mosich-Miller and I knew each other from that time, but didn't really
interact much. In most schools attached to a company, there is a clear
delineation between company talking to school and school talking to
company (school students rarely approach company members). Although we
had little interaction during that time, I surely remembered her. The
reason being that I, and most other company members, recognized that she
had stunning looks and a beautiful, tall stature. Many dancers would
comment that she should find an agent and become a model. Apparently, we weren't the only ones that felt that way.
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| Valeska Mosich-Miller in Marie Claire |
Valeska
left PNB's school to train elsewhere for a short period of time. After a
handful of unsuccessful auditions, she stopped searching for a company
to call home because she started getting picked up by multiple modeling
agencies across the world in places like Brazil, South Africa, London,
and Los Angeles. While spending a week living with Valeska and catching
up on where we are in our lives, we went out to dinner and had a very
striking conversation. While Valeska has had great successes that most
people could only dream of having, she was still struggling with the
loss of her ballet career and her perception of wasted effort that was
put into so many years of training.
I could tell that nearly 5 years of time away from ballet had not healed the emotional trauma and wounds of rejection that the ballet world can place upon dancers. Being that I am very interested in teaching future generations of dance artists, I have put a lot of thought into the
whats and
whys of a ballet career and how training affects young dancers. And what I have determined is that ballet training is essentially
survival of the fittest.
Classical
ballet instruction is extremely harsh on the body. Aside from the physical
requirements of natural flexibility, accurate proportions, strength, and aesthetic; a dancer needs emotional fortitude to truly make it in
this career. How is a dancer going to cope with casting that isn't in
their favor? Will a dancer be able to continue with a performance after
receiving bad news? What does a dancer do if they mess up onstage? Each
one of these items can really challenge a dancer's ability to handle the
stresses of a dance career. The physical demands of training will
prepare one to execute the most difficult of feats with ease. While the
emotional aspects of training ensure that a dancer doesn't fall apart in
high stress situations. Unfortunately, the concept of emotional
training is rarely revealed to students throughout their studies.
Perhaps, because teachers aren't even aware that they are teaching it.
Very
few of my teachers really explained much about the emotional challenges
of dancing other than saying, "Ballet is hard," "People get injured,"
or, "You don't want to be stuck in the corps." That is until I started
training under
Jock Soto at the
School of American Ballet. One day I
particularly remember, Jock had stopped class after a student was having
a mini-breakdown over the failed execution of a partnering combination.
Trying to calm the student down and keep their head in the game, he
stated, "Your grandfather just passed away and you got a phone call
minutes before you step onstage to premiere the lead in
Theme and Variations.
That gray-haired lady seated in the orchestra paid $200 for her ticket
and has no idea about your troubles. No matter what happens you must
always perform to your best abilities because all the audience knows is
that they paid a lot of money to see a good show." This comment seemed
utterly heartless having never heard anything like it before. I remember
many conversations after class where we tried to validate that what he
had been saying was just downright heartless. But I can now tell you
from experience, I have watched this exact story happen. I've
experienced traumas and performed while reeling through an emotional
life experience. It is a part of the job and our training helps us deal
with this. Now, if only, as teenagers and young adults, we knew that a
handful of the comments and experiences we have on the road to success
are a part of the training, and not always teachers and directors playing mind games.
It
is very common for students who never become professionals and
professionals who never become principals to focus their anger and
bitterness towards the last organization or two that
they feel let them down
or kept them from achieving their dream. I don't think this is avoidable and,
sometimes, agree with these dancer's feelings. Unfortunately, though,
these dancers got weeded out by ballet's
survival of the fittest
training. If your body is too weak, it will break down often. If your
body doesn't fit the aesthetic, and dancers go to dangerous lengths to
fit the mold, they will not make it through the training. I am always
asked about anorexic and bulimic dancers, as is every professional in
the field. I typically respond that there were some sick dancers while I
was training. But for the most part, the career is too challenging to
maintain that lifestyle and those dancers with eating problems fall
apart before they finish their training or within a year of obtaining a
job. If a dancer's technique isn't strong enough and they audition for
years and years and eventually give up, they have been weeded out. If a
dancer had everything going for them and obtains a job, but quits a
year or two in because they didn't have a fairytale rise to the top,
they have again been weeded out. There are so many challenges that
ballet presents to dancers that make sure that the last dancers standing
are those onstage and selling tickets.
It is rare to
find a teacher or director that is so especially harsh that they seek to
destroy a dancer's love for ballet. There are exceptions to the rule,
but it isn't common. Most leaders want a dancer to succeed at what they
are doing. The misinterpretation of emotional training is often the
downfall of many potential dance careers. When one is involved in a
school or institution, that one place becomes the dancer's entire world.
My favorite example of this takes place at the dance academy where I was raised. Every year when Nutcracker casting
is posted, parents call the
director shouting, "WHY DIDN'T MY DAUGHTER GET CLARA." In a fair-sized
school in the suburbs of Philadelphia, like clockwork, parents freak out
because their
child wasn't handed a role just for showing up and paying their tuition. Within days, studio gossip ensues and one small performance becomes a big
ordeal, as if it is the
make it or break it moment of their child's
life. People forget that somebody is always going to be at the top and
somebody is always going to be at the bottom. It is like this in
school and it is like this in a company. It can become difficult to
remember that there are hundreds of schools and companies across the
country. And if a dancer is truly unhappy, they can always look
elsewhere for an improved situation. Rejection and disappointment tend
to be one of ballet's first emotional lessons.
If a dancer is truly
talented and being overlooked, it may be time to try somewhere new or to
understand that sometimes you are the best and sometimes you are the
worst. And sometimes it is all a matter of needs and timing. Dancers
often forget, like Valeska did, that ballet is based purely on opinion.
Casting decisions and class placement often upset people because there
is no formal basis to judge technique, artistry, and performance. Maybe a
director put a dancer onstage for a specific role because they thought
big eyes would look good in that role. Perhaps, she doesn't have
the best technique, but she is intriguing to look at and intrigue sells
more tickets than technique. And if the same group of dancers travel
from state to state, school to school, or company to company whilst
performing the same work, different opinions and choices may put
completely different dancers onstage at every institution. There is no best dancer. There is, instead,
I prefer this dancer.
What
it comes down to is that ballet is often full of political opinion. The
end goal of an institution is to put productions onstage as best
they can and to please its' patrons and donors. Dancers are just pieces
of a puzzle that need to be fit together. If a dancer doesn't fit in a
certain part of the puzzle, then they don't fit. A company can't be so
concerned about hurting a dancer's feelings that the quality of a
production becomes a secondary priority. While dancer's feelings may get
hurt, it is rarely personal. Ballet doesn't remember that dancers are
human beings with emotions. But people do (and should). For this reason,
it is the human side, or artistic staff, of an organization that is
responsible in ensuring that there is still humane treatment towards a
dancer who may be disappointed by casting or has been left out of a
performance during their integral final years of training. This is often
where emotional training fails. Instead of having a hard, potentially disappointing
conversation, many company and school directors prefer to keep quiet
about their reasoning. This leaves dancers to make assumptions that may be far from the truth. Maybe staff feels that they don't owe the dancer an explanation
for putting them in the second cast of the corps after giving them a
leading role in the last production. Or perhaps, that corps member isn't
being cast well to test and see if they can handle performing less,
which often occurs during the first years after promotion to soloist. Why can't a dancer just be told that they are being tested,
instead of creating circumstances and sitting back to watch their
reaction. Directors owe the human being, not the dancer, a reason for casting disappointments, frustrating circumstances, and mixed signals.
A
great amount of emotional training happens every day in dance. I have
found that, more often than not, the higher powers of dance
organizations don't even realize that they are taking part in this
important aspect of training. Since ballet is passed on by oral
tradition, there is no text book on the exact way to train a dancer. My
teachers taught me what their teachers taught them and so on and so on.
Every generation tries to take the best part of their training and pass
it on, while attempting to avoid passing on the worst parts of their
training. But, sometimes, the harshest parts of their training were to make
sure that they could survive in our stressful profession. Unfortunately,
there are often better ways to go about things and those with power aren't
even aware that they are doing more than just training the physicality
of a dancer. If students are more aware of the emotional tests that they
will be put through, they may have greater lasting power. It is really
confusing for a teenager to understand that there are tests in our
training, beyond how high one can developpe or how many pirouettes one
can execute, if they are not made aware of it. Emotional strength is just
as important a factor as technique in becoming a successful dancer.
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| Valeska Mosich-Miller (Photo: Patrick Fraser) |
I
felt for Valeska while we talked out her training trauma over tasty
pork bao at a trendy L.A. eatery. And at the end of our conversation,
she was shocked that she may have been ignored in school as a test to see if she
could handle being ignored in a company. Or maybe she just didn't fit into the intricate puzzle of the school that year. Years and years of resentment
didn't disappear, but she seemed more at ease with what was a very
disheartening and hurtful time of her life. Over the last decade there
has been a greater push to help preserve the bodies of dancers through
proper maintenance, cross training, and better body awareness. Today, I would
like to call upon the dance world to do the same thing with the
dancer's mind. We need to start treating dancers with respect, openness,
and honesty. There needs to be more support for teenagers who are
working as high-level adults, often living on their own, and dealing
with insane amounts of pressure. Bringing awareness and structure to the
emotional training that is necessary to have a successful career will
be the next step in extending the life of a dance career.
What do you think we can do to improve the emotional struggles that dancers experience in their training?
