0:03

You started your book in the classroom.

0:06

Why was that the

0:10

vast majority of people who have

0:13

ballet in their lives will

0:15

spend the vast majority of their time

0:18

in the classroom. You are

0:20

learning how to be a student, You're

0:22

learning how to communicate your ideas or

0:24

not, and you're

0:27

absorbing all kinds of lessons

0:30

about your place in the world and

0:33

how you are or are not valued

0:37

simply by who the teacher pays

0:39

attention to, how the classroom is structured.

0:47

When I think about what it felt like to go to ballet

0:49

class every day as a kid, it

0:51

feels routine. I spend

0:53

a lot of my childhood in the ballet classroom.

0:56

A big room with a high ceiling, old

0:59

crown molding, tall pillars,

1:01

big mirrors on one side, a

1:04

piano in the corner where the Russian pianist

1:06

played, the long wooden

1:08

bar that lined the wall. Our

1:11

point shoes clip clopped and echoed every

1:14

day. I'd pin up my hair and tape up my toes.

1:17

I'd walk in, put down my water bottle

1:20

to save my favorite spot at the bar. The

1:22

point shoes smelled like satin, sweat

1:25

and sweet glue. I

1:27

might chat with my friends while I stretched, but mostly

1:30

I was silent until a class began. I

1:33

liked the quiet, the focus,

1:35

the preparation, and

1:39

of course once class started, I didn't talk

1:41

at all. It

1:45

was a daily practice that I didn't give much

1:47

thought. That wasn't until I started

1:50

to read Chloe Angel's book Turning

1:52

Point, How a new generation of dancers

1:54

is saving ballet from itself. Chloe

1:57

interviewed a hundred people to analyze ballet

2:00

culture today. When

2:02

I read it, I got to this section about Ballet's

2:04

hidden curriculum, the thing's

2:06

children learned by accident, the unintended

2:09

lessons I pick up in the classroom. I

2:11

underlined line after line. Chloe

2:14

wrote, in this hidden curriculum, the ideal

2:16

ballet dancer is silent, observant,

2:19

and obedient. The ideal

2:22

dancer should also be pleasing and pleased,

2:25

her face never conveying how much pain

2:27

she's in. I

2:29

wrote in the margins, realizing

2:31

how this has affected me. When

2:35

I was reading that part of your book about

2:37

the hidden curriculum, It's like

2:40

this light bulb went

2:42

off, This realization like dawned

2:45

in my brain, and I just

2:48

thought, my gosh, like how much of my

2:51

personality and how much of my

2:54

life has been

2:57

molded by spending

2:59

every day in a

3:02

ballet class as a kid. It

3:05

just like really got me questioning

3:07

all kinds of things about myself. Did

3:10

you have that experience? I'm

3:13

not very good at ballet, Like,

3:16

I'm just not. About five

3:18

years ago, I was talking to

3:21

my therapist about why that

3:23

bothered me so much that

3:25

I wasn't good both

3:28

actually and fictionally at

3:30

ballet, and I

3:32

realized that it was because it felt

3:34

like failing at a very particular

3:37

kind of femininity that I had wanted to

3:39

succeed at since I was very, very

3:41

small. And

3:44

one of the things that you learn in

3:46

ballet is what a good woman

3:50

looks like, how

3:53

you're supposed to look, how you're supposed to move,

3:58

how you're supposed to be hay, how

4:01

you're supposed tolerate pain, how

4:03

you're supposed to conceal labor, who

4:07

you're supposed to obey, who you get

4:09

to have power over. You've

4:12

learned all that in the ballet studio. But

4:16

the reward for all that is

4:18

accomplishing this very particular kind of femininity.

4:28

I spent so much of my youth looking

4:31

up to the women who had done it and

4:33

wanting to be like them,

4:36

and I didn't do it, didn't achieve it,

4:39

and that disappointment

4:44

is really profound, not just because it feels

4:46

like failing at ballet, because it feels like failing

4:48

at womanhood. I

4:58

think it's so hard to get over ballet because

5:00

the lessons start early in the ballet

5:02

classroom and they're folded into

5:04

something otherworldly, something

5:07

deeply beautiful. It's

5:09

like Chloe once said to me, that

5:11

shit stays with you forever. From

5:23

my Heart, podcasts and Rococo Punch. This

5:26

is the turning room of mirrors. I'm

5:29

Erica Llance, Part

5:32

ten Reverence.

5:39

I think ballet in

5:41

a lot of ways benefits from the perception

5:44

that it is a world apart, that it's

5:46

separate from the real world, that it doesn't

5:48

have to play by the rules of the real world.

5:51

But it isn't, and it does. It's

5:53

just a workplace. It's the real

5:56

world. It's not separate from the real

5:58

world. In the

6:00

classroom, teachers drilled us on the same steps

6:03

over and over. They yelled above

6:05

the music while we danced, shouted corrections

6:07

things we had to change. They

6:10

reminded us to smile, something you need

6:12

to train yourself to be able to do when you perform.

6:15

I remember one time a girl in my class just couldn't

6:17

get the steps. The teacher had her do

6:19

them solo across the floor while we all watched

6:22

in the corner. She started to cry,

6:25

but the teacher kept having her comeback and

6:27

start again. We

6:29

were trained to make impossible things look easy,

6:32

and I became attached to the facade of perfection.

6:35

I think about the

6:38

suffering that we accept

6:40

and the innovation that we don't pursue because

6:44

we're so attached to ideas about

6:46

tradition and suffering. I

6:56

remember very distinctly sitting

6:59

in the audience of a New York City ballet

7:01

performance and thinking,

7:05

this is all just a really great metaphor

7:08

for womanhood. You're working

7:10

incredibly hard to make

7:12

this thing look beautiful, and

7:14

you're expected to conceal all of

7:17

the work that goes into

7:19

that. And in fact, if you show

7:21

the work, if people know how

7:23

hard you're working to make this

7:26

perfect, flawless, ethereal,

7:29

highly feminine thing, you've

7:31

failed. Contrast

7:40

that with a lot of the activities that

7:42

my men friends and peers

7:45

were either playing or watching.

7:49

You're allowed to show the work. You know,

7:51

if you get sacked. In football, you're

7:53

allowed to grimace. In fact, in European

7:56

football you're encouraged to let

7:58

people know how much it You actually

8:01

get rewarded for

8:03

flopping on the ground and making a scene

8:05

and showing the work. But in this hyper

8:07

feminine activity, you

8:09

have to conceal all the pain. You have to conceal

8:11

all the work. And in

8:14

fact, I think that

8:16

the gap between what

8:18

you see on stage as an audience member and

8:20

what you know the dancer is most likely

8:23

experiencing that duality and that contradiction

8:25

is part of the appeal of ballet. It's part of the mystique

8:28

of ballet, which is profoundly

8:31

messed up. Yeah,

8:34

that's such a good point too, Like people

8:37

do know that point shoes

8:39

are incredibly painful, and people

8:41

would ask me that when they learned I was dancing on point

8:44

and want to hear about my feet, and yeah,

8:47

what do your feet look like? Are they all messed up?

8:50

And something that I think people should really

8:53

sit with and think, should

8:56

we really be applauding people for being able

8:58

to conceal their pain as well as they do? Is

9:00

at really a skill that we

9:02

want young people, particularly young women

9:04

and girls, to be cultivating and

9:06

perfecting. And the other

9:09

place where it really felt like a metaphor for

9:11

womanhood was that you

9:14

know, you think of a ballot answer, you

9:16

think of a woman. But

9:19

in most of the professional

9:22

ballet world, at least men

9:24

are in charge. Meanwhile, girls

9:26

out number of boys in ballet classes twenty

9:28

to one. And you

9:31

know, the woman is the icon, and

9:34

she's the person you look at on stage,

9:37

but behind the scenes controlling

9:40

the loves of powers a women. Now,

9:43

boys in ballet do not have it easy.

9:46

They might deal with stigma, terrible

9:48

bullying or homophobia,

9:51

a pressure to be more quote unquote masculine,

9:54

But in the classroom boys

9:56

hold a special place. You know,

9:59

there are all these to try and get more boys

10:01

into ballet. There's a chronic shortage

10:03

of boys in ballet. For most

10:05

of them, they don't want to be there. They

10:08

have to be cajoled into going and

10:12

bribed into staying, either because

10:14

they're given scholarships or they're

10:17

held to a lower standard of behavior and talent

10:20

than girls are. Lots of men

10:22

that I interviewed said

10:24

that their teachers had put off the

10:26

transition from shorts to tights

10:29

for as long as they possibly can because

10:32

they didn't want to scare the boys out of ballet.

10:34

Meanwhile, the girls have been wearing heavily

10:37

circumscribed attire to

10:40

ballet since they were three, and there are

10:42

no exceptions. If you don't feel comfortable in

10:44

the leotard and the tights, doesn't matter. If

10:46

you don't want to do it, there are ten other girls who do.

10:49

And so ballet culture

10:51

in general bends over backwards to get boys into

10:53

ballet, to keep boys into ballet. One

11:01

artistic director told me that boys in ballet

11:03

are treated like golden princes or

11:05

like little princes. They

11:08

treated like they're special and better than girls,

11:10

and the girls see that and the boys internalize

11:13

it, and so I don't

11:15

think we should be surprised that when those boys

11:18

grow up, become professional dancers

11:20

and enter a company that is run by a

11:22

man with unquestioned

11:24

power, that they start looking around

11:26

and thinking, my behavior doesn't have any

11:28

negative consequences. These

11:37

women are disposable. I

11:39

am special and irreplaceable. And

11:43

a lot of girls and young women in ballet

11:45

are trained to be quiet and

11:47

obedient and compliant, and

11:49

to tolerate pain and discomfort

11:52

and things that cross boundaries. Chloe

12:15

Angel says She realized while she worked

12:17

on her book that sometimes she'd go back to this

12:19

old way of thinking of seeing

12:21

herself and the world. I

12:26

started calling it a ballet brain because

12:32

it would happen a lot. And I

12:34

really noticed when I started observing ballet

12:37

classes for field work and for reporting,

12:40

was that I could not take

12:43

my eyes off the teacher. I

12:47

was at a local dance studio

12:50

in my town of Carlville,

12:52

Iowa, and instead of

12:54

looking out at these young dances

12:56

in a pre point class, I

12:59

just kept watching the teacher when

13:01

I was supposed to be reporting on these girls

13:04

and their transition from flat to point.

13:07

And I just remember noticing that about

13:09

myself and thinking, oh boy,

13:11

it's really in me, because

13:15

that's the other point of reference, because you're

13:17

constantly checking the teacher, either because

13:20

they are demonstrating an exercise

13:23

or because you're checking you. Are

13:25

they watching me? Do they like what they see?

13:27

Do they not like what they see? Am I worthless?

13:29

Today? It's really in me

13:31

in ways that I am aware of and also ways

13:33

that I'm not aware of yet. And

13:37

I was very fortunate to be living

13:39

with someone and having my book edited by

13:41

someone who didn't grow up in

13:43

ballet and who didn't come to it with a lot

13:45

of their assumptions and sort

13:48

of taken for granted ideas that

13:50

I did. And so having

13:52

to explain some of these concepts, especially

13:56

the more egregious ones, to non ballet

13:58

people, was really easy to see,

14:00

like, oh, I got a

14:02

bad case of ballet brain on that one. Do

14:08

you remember some other instances like that moment

14:10

in the studio when you are like, wait a

14:12

minute, I'm doing X

14:15

or I'm assuming why.

14:18

An artistic director of an

14:20

American ballet company told

14:22

me about the

14:24

handful of times when he's decided to

14:28

not renew a contract of a

14:30

dancer who he didn't think was

14:34

in good enough shape it was too fat. And

14:37

he explained it to me that,

14:40

you know, they do everything they can to make sure

14:42

their dances are healthy, and they really trying

14:44

to support them in getting

14:47

into shape, which again is a euphemism

14:49

for skinny, but if

14:51

they're not, in his words, if the dance is not willing

14:54

to put in the work, and then he has to think about,

14:56

you know, the long term spinal health of

14:59

the men who are lifting them. And

15:01

he said something to me like, my back

15:03

remembers every dancer I ever lifted,

15:06

and I finished the interview

15:09

and I was like, yeah, I mean, look, that's not ideal,

15:11

but I get it. It makes sense to me. And

15:14

I walked out into my kitchen and

15:16

I recounted a lot of the interaction to

15:18

my then fiance, who did

15:20

not rob in Vallet and you basically nothing about Valley

15:23

until he started dating me, and

15:25

he was like, yeah, that sounds

15:28

pretty messed up. My

15:30

instinct was to defend it and to say, no,

15:32

this is why it has to be this way. That

15:35

was my reaction too. Of course,

15:37

you need to worry about men's backs. But

15:40

then I started to realize the health

15:42

of both the man and the woman is at stake

15:44

in the scenario, the man's back

15:47

and the woman's injuries and long term health

15:49

problems that come from eating disorders. Telling

15:52

the woman to lose weight is prioritizing

15:54

the man's health. Then

15:57

you realize, what if we did value

15:59

the health of the women as much as

16:01

we value the health of the men. The

16:04

short term mental health, the long term employment

16:06

prospects, the long term physical

16:08

health. Shit, what

16:11

if we said, okay, so don't

16:13

lift her, we'll choreograph something different,

16:15

and you won't lift her, and she'll get to

16:17

be the size and wait that she is and still

16:20

have a job. I mean when

16:22

you actually think about it, because it's not rocket science.

16:25

It's just a question of deciding, like what

16:27

are we value and what are we willing

16:30

to change in

16:32

order to actually act on those

16:34

values. I

16:36

was surprised reading your book about

16:39

some of the physical effects

16:44

of dancing on young

16:46

bodies. I mean, I really

16:48

it was like, Oh, what

16:51

what I learned researching the book

16:53

that I'd never learned is that once

16:56

you stretch a ligament, it never contracts

16:59

back. It's like a muscle. A muscle you can stretch

17:01

and it can return to its its

17:03

old shape. Ligaments

17:05

can't do that. And you

17:07

know, so many of the places

17:10

that we stretch as dances were

17:12

stretching ligaments, and you

17:14

know, you stretch that out at seven eight, it's

17:16

never going back. And

17:19

why does that matter? It

17:21

matters because you won't be a dancer forever, and

17:23

unless you maintain

17:25

the strength to match that flexibility,

17:28

you're going to have real instability and real problems

17:32

starting so young. As part of the problem, the

17:34

physical therapists Chloe interviewed said

17:36

young kids should be stretching less Young

17:39

dancers working on their turnout can change

17:41

the way their bones grow because of twisting

17:43

in their growth plates. There should be

17:45

much less of an emphasis on developing

17:48

an extreme flexibility. There's no reason for

17:50

an eight year old to be doing oversplits Beyond

17:53

injury. Young dancers can have malnutrition

17:55

because of their eating habits, even if

17:57

they don't have a diagnosable eating disorder.

18:00

Malnutrition might affect their brain development.

18:03

It can lead to hormonal changes and lower

18:05

bone density, and kids who are still developing

18:08

that can make them more vulnerable to broken bones

18:11

and ask your porosis later in life.

18:14

I also think that kids

18:16

have to be both

18:19

told and shown that

18:22

their pain and their discomfort will

18:24

be taken seriously. What they've learned

18:26

is that they will be rewarded for ignoring

18:30

their own instincts and their own

18:32

experience of their own body. Like

18:37

I'm not disregarding the traditions. I'm not saying

18:39

we should junk them. I'm saying that

18:42

we can do some things differently.

18:45

All we have to do is be a little bit

18:47

irreverent and being like, okay, so we

18:49

change it. So what one of the physical

18:51

therapists I talked to said, we should not be putting

18:54

goals on point until they're fifteen, to

18:56

which a lot of people in the valley will We're like, oh, that would

18:59

fundamentally change training, and when people

19:01

could stop their career isn't okay?

19:03

And so

19:07

like change it. See what happens. I mean, I

19:10

don't think it can be worse than what we have now, which

19:12

is like permanent skeletal

19:14

and ligament damage in twelve and thirteen

19:16

and fourteen year olds. Chloe

19:19

says maybe dancers could have longer careers

19:22

if they had fewer injuries as kids. And

19:24

I would say it requires a certain level

19:27

of irreverence, and ballet

19:29

breeds reverence, reverence

19:32

for tradition, reverence for authority.

19:34

It just breeds reverence. Let's

19:37

be a little lit irreverent and see what

19:39

happens. Literally,

19:41

at the end of every class, you have reverence.

19:44

You know, it's like literally reverence

19:47

is built into the class structure. That's

19:49

such a good point. I'm annoyed that I didn't notice that it's

19:52

like right there, bowing

19:55

and the curtaining. It's right there at

20:00

the end of every class. It's tradition for students

20:03

to do a final slow dance. I

20:05

always loved this part of class. How

20:07

it ends beautiful and slow, just

20:09

simple expression. The

20:12

center of the dance is a bow to the mirror

20:15

where the audience would be. Then

20:18

everyone curtsies to the teacher. It's

20:21

called reverence. And

20:26

it's also a reinforcement of authority

20:29

and of the hierarchy, bowing

20:32

and curtsying to the teacher. And

20:34

it's just a to me, it feels like a

20:36

reminder that this

20:39

odd form has some very strange rules.

20:43

Ballet has some strange rules, but

20:46

it seems hard for teachers to break free from them.

20:49

Maybe it's because we look to our predecessors,

20:51

to the figures we admire, we mimic

20:53

what they did, and in the case

20:55

of Americans in ballet, we often

20:58

looked at balancing. What

21:13

are some of the main effects of balancing

21:15

that you see in

21:17

the world of ballet? What comes to mind?

21:21

The first thing I'll say is that he left us some truly

21:23

fantastic choreography, really

21:25

and truly against

21:27

my best, strongest

21:29

desires. Some of my favorite ballets still

21:31

balancing ballets. Jules

21:34

is spectacular, Saranad is

21:37

beautiful, which

21:41

is why when people asked me after the book

21:43

came out, are you trying to cancel balancing, and

21:45

I was like, even if I wanted to, how

21:48

would I do that? How

21:50

does one even? How do you? You can't?

21:59

He's you know, in the a, in the

22:01

water, in the soil. He's like, he's

22:04

the ecosystem of

22:06

ballet is sort of suffused

22:08

with this and shaped by this, And even

22:12

if I wanted to, I wouldn't know where to begin. No

22:16

God, but balancing. A

22:25

lot of people call balanchean a genius. To

22:28

me, that word is charged. It's hard for

22:30

me to hear it without bristling. Teresa

22:33

Ruth Howard says, we need to think about who we give that

22:35

label too. It's

22:38

always been interesting to me how

22:41

we assigned

22:43

the moniker of genius to balancing,

22:46

which I think he is, But I find

22:49

it interesting that the same title

22:52

is not applied to Arthur Mitchell. Arthur

22:55

Mitchell the founder of Dance Theater of Harlem.

22:58

After Mitchell danced in Balancing Company,

23:01

he went back to his community in Harlem to teach

23:03

ballet. Then he started a ballet

23:05

company. Arthur Mitchell may

23:07

not be a choreographic genius, but I think

23:10

that where his genius lay is

23:12

in the idea that he created an

23:14

organization that really challenged

23:17

the field of ballet itself, who it

23:20

belonged to. He created

23:22

a new idea of

23:24

what American ballet was

23:27

and what it looked like. Teresa

23:29

has noticed that Arthur Mitchell often gets criticized

23:32

for a leadership style she thinks he learned from

23:34

balancing. He was cut from the fabric

23:36

of balancing that was his model.

23:39

He was very demanding, he demanded

23:41

respect. But he's a black man, he

23:45

oftentimes gets dare I say, vilified

23:48

for those same characteristics.

23:52

So Arthur Mitchell is creating

23:54

the same culture as a balancing

23:57

in his own context, but it's

23:59

perceived much differently than

24:02

balancing. We don't call him

24:04

a genius. There

24:06

are so many people who do great things who

24:09

aren't called geniuses, and

24:11

people who never get to develop their genius

24:13

because of norms, expectations, barriers,

24:15

who's given opportunities and resources.

24:18

I also hardly ever hear the term applied to women.

24:22

I'd be happy to throw out the labeled genius

24:24

altogether precisely because of who

24:26

it leaves out. People use

24:28

the word genius like it's a fact, when

24:30

really, when you're talking about art, it's an opinion.

24:34

In a way, it's so weird genius

24:36

is discussed. Is this inherent trait? You

24:39

are a genius or you're not. We

24:41

like to bestow it upon people. Maybe

24:44

it's a comfort. It feels good

24:46

to think somebody knows better, someone

24:49

can lead me. Once you've

24:51

been dubbed a genius, I think there are

24:53

a fewer checks on the choices you make. Even

24:55

your art is viewed with less scrutiny.

24:58

You can damage others in the name of your art

25:00

without as much critique. It's seen

25:02

as worth it. Those sacrifices

25:04

are worth it for the output. When

25:07

you hear someone as a genius, you

25:10

feel this magic. You

25:12

fall in line. I

25:15

think if you think about, you know, what

25:18

kind of role model do you want Balanching to be for

25:20

people who are gonna be the future

25:22

of ballet? Do you want

25:24

him to be this godlike

25:27

figure who had everything figured out

25:29

and had all the answers, and you

25:31

had to obey and

25:34

believe him and do what he said, and if

25:36

you did that, everything would be all right. Jim

25:39

Steigen's the author who studied Balanching's

25:41

early years in the US, and

25:43

like Chloe, he sees how Balanching

25:45

is viewed in an almost religious way.

25:48

I don't think we want those kind of leaders anymore,

25:51

you know. I think those kind of leaders

25:54

are what we are discovering create

25:57

these toxic environments in ballet.

26:00

And So if we can think of

26:03

balancing in a

26:05

more down to earth humane

26:08

way and not have this

26:12

myth of the lone male

26:14

white genius, right, if

26:16

we can think about art as this collaborative

26:20

enterprise that takes all these

26:22

people, I think that's where it really makes a difference.

26:25

This reminded me of something I noticed among

26:28

dancers trained in Balanchine's lineage.

26:30

Even the dancers who never worked directly with balancing

26:33

know all these beautiful little stories about

26:35

him, anecdotes that once helped

26:37

them learn the choreography or that

26:39

emphasize his genius, but

26:42

other than that, they felt like they knew hardly

26:44

anything about him. When you're

26:46

in the balancing system,

26:48

he's like the unspoken

26:51

for lack of far better charm of God. It

26:54

was ingrained in our brains to respect

26:57

and idolize him. Catherine Morgan

26:59

says that I'm like with a lot of choreographers,

27:01

Balancing is never called George.

27:04

Everyone calls him by his last name, Balancing

27:07

or mister balancing, or mister

27:10

b he was amazing, he's a genius,

27:12

blah blah blah, and you don't think about

27:14

it because it's not talked about it being

27:17

like the extreme body

27:19

expectations, or the

27:22

darker sides of him, any of that. It's

27:24

just it's not talked about, so I don't

27:26

actually know. So a

27:28

lot never gets excavated. Dancers

27:31

don't get to see the source of their own culture,

27:34

the culture they swim in every day.

27:37

In conversations with dancers, I've also sometimes

27:39

noticed this pressure never to speak ill

27:41

of balancing. Some of

27:43

that pressure comes from love gratitude.

27:47

One former dancer said, he

27:49

gave me my life. It

27:52

feels like airing dirty laundry when you're talking

27:54

about someone you see as your father, your

27:56

mother, you're everything. But

27:59

I think some pressure also stems from fear.

28:03

There's a strong perception that if you speak

28:05

ill of balancing, even now,

28:07

it will harm your career. And

28:10

then there's this fear that admitting to flaws in the

28:12

past will tarnish an art form that

28:14

already feels fragile. They

28:16

want the art form to survive, and

28:19

I do too, but in

28:21

my mind, not confronting the darker sides

28:24

is what could make ballet cave in on itself.

28:27

We're mythologizing trauma

28:33

for the art. Teresa

28:35

Ruth Howard sometimes gets frustrated

28:37

by how dancers remember balancing. It's

28:40

like his memory gets mingled with these romanticized

28:43

clouds of perfume. They're

28:45

not really digging underneath

28:48

what that did to them,

28:51

what that culture did to them. When

28:54

you hear the dancers speak what they

28:56

sacrifice, the human sacrifice

29:00

that they actually, like French, press

29:02

down to not feel or

29:05

think about what

29:07

we make okay in our minds,

29:10

so that we can dance, so

29:12

we can just dance, so we can be seen

29:16

as a dancer. That is generational

29:18

trauma, and it is something that is folded

29:21

into the legacy and lifted

29:23

up in a way. When

29:26

you say generational trauma, do you feel

29:28

like that's affecting ballet students today like

29:31

children today. Absolutely.

29:34

I think that the way that it shows up, the

29:36

way that it presents is in the

29:38

way that we talk about and lionize

29:41

Balanchine because he

29:43

held women in a very particular

29:46

space. They are the flowers and

29:49

the men are the gardeners that pick the

29:51

flowers. This is problematic

29:53

and so I'm not saying that they're

29:56

using that language, but it

29:58

is a behaved sort

30:00

of way of being. There's

30:02

can be values around the body, there

30:05

can be values around behavior.

30:08

What is the appropriate way to behave as

30:10

a dancer, And so you don't

30:12

have to speak it. We behave these

30:14

things, We behave our values. Imagine

30:30

that ballet is an old English manor

30:32

house. It's full of rooms,

30:35

and in every room people are dancing.

30:40

That's how choreographer and scholar Addashola

30:42

Ackinlay talks about ballet, and

30:44

I can't stop thinking about it. They

30:49

say, one room in the manor house is

30:51

the Grand Hall. Everyone

30:53

looks at the Grand Hall. It's full of

30:55

an audience. It's where the attention is, the

30:58

buzz and the lights. The

31:00

Grand Hall is where people like balancing live,

31:03

or people who've been permitted to enter balancing's

31:05

world. But

31:07

ballet is vast. There

31:10

are many rooms in the manor house. There

31:12

are many rooms of ballet. So

31:14

many people are dancing it in their own companies,

31:17

their own choreography, their own

31:19

way. We've

31:24

been looking at just this one room.

31:27

It's privilege and its restrictions,

31:29

because this room is still allowed to dictate how dancers

31:32

should be. If

31:37

you're in that grand hall, that

31:40

one room can feel like your whole world. The

31:43

thing is that someday you're going

31:45

to have to leave it. There's

31:51

this saying that a dancer dies twice. As

31:54

a ballerina, from day one, you're always counting

31:56

down to your first death, the

31:58

day you have to retire from stage, leave

32:01

the ground hall behind. Oh

32:06

my god, I can't even begin to touch

32:09

how rich that culture is

32:11

and was. Stephanize

32:14

Land says her ballet self was hard

32:16

to shed, and there is an addiction

32:18

to being on stage,

32:21

to having certain rhythms of

32:23

what it takes to be on stage and to be

32:25

an elite athlete. There was a

32:28

ritual from six o'clock to eight o'clock

32:30

of getting ready, of getting primed of

32:33

self talk and self preparation

32:36

to be a performer. I

32:38

remember when I stopped, it

32:41

did take me about two years

32:43

to come down from that

32:45

pitch, that energetic pitch of

32:48

preparation physiologically

32:51

literally physiological chemical.

32:55

When you finally do move

32:57

on, there's a recovery

33:00

period, and I think the

33:03

recovery period into

33:06

the quote unquote real world

33:09

takes about ten years on

33:12

average to

33:16

function in the normal

33:19

world. Wilhelmina Frankfurt

33:22

says, part of the adjustment is realizing

33:24

how abnormal your life has been. For

33:26

decades, people have been

33:28

making decisions for you

33:31

about you, and your

33:33

life has been determined by a

33:36

daily schedule. It's

33:38

almost military in a

33:40

way. You know, the bugle blows,

33:42

that's class. There's

33:48

this weird thing about the elite professional ballet

33:50

world. It's like time and age

33:52

move differently than they do for other people. On

33:55

one hand, you have to grow up fast. You're

33:57

treated like an adult when you're just a kid, and

34:00

then you might become a professional dancer at

34:02

sixteen or seventeen. On

34:08

the other hand, even years after you enter

34:10

the company, you aren't treated like

34:12

an adult. So many of your life

34:14

decisions are in the hands of the company. Members

34:17

of the quarterballet are often called kids.

34:20

Coaches yell out to dancers in rehearsal. Good

34:22

girl, good girl, your

34:29

responses are somewhat

34:33

thwarted and childlike, and

34:35

you got to catch up. How

34:38

do you get a job? And who

34:40

are you? I

34:57

like catched myself doing a thing that

34:59

I to do in the ballet that I have to like check and

35:02

recalibrate that I'm not actually in

35:04

the theater, and that's not how people do things here

35:07

on the outside. You

35:16

may remember Sophie Flack danced with New

35:18

York City Ballet, and then in the

35:20

economic downturn in two thousand and nine, she

35:22

was let go. To

35:25

Sophie, it felt like being discarded, like

35:28

her body just filled a hole that could be filled

35:30

by someone else. She

35:32

didn't want to keep dancing after that, but

35:35

the loss overwhelmed her. Without

35:45

Ballet to determine her every step in the world,

35:48

she hardly knew where to begin. Eventually,

35:50

she decided the first step would be education,

35:53

to go to college. She picked

35:55

Columbia. When

35:57

I went to Columbia, I felt like I had just exited

36:00

a bunker. At first,

36:02

she felt superior. After all,

36:04

most people in her classes were teenagers. She

36:06

was in her mid twenties, and she'd been working this

36:08

intense job at one of the most elite

36:11

art institutions in the world. I

36:13

kind of walked onto campus feeling

36:16

like hot shit. I came

36:18

from City Ballet, like you

36:20

just moved out of your parents house, you know, Like

36:22

I had a life, Like I'd had certain experiences.

36:25

I felt worldly, had traveled.

36:28

So I went in being kind of snooty

36:32

and like day one,

36:35

I was very humbled. I

36:40

was like, Oh, you're actually like crazy

36:43

smart and I know nothing. I

36:45

was like, oh, okay,

36:48

there is a whole world outside of the theater. I

36:50

didn't know. My mind was

36:52

freaking blown, how little I knew,

36:55

how much there was to learn. And

36:57

I was an expert at everything that happened in the Leader,

37:00

and I knew it really well, and I understood the ballet

37:02

world, but I didn't understand what happened outside

37:04

of the ballet world. I

37:09

don't know how to talk to people really,

37:13

or people of authority even had to talk to them,

37:15

because we didn't talk to our superiors

37:18

at all. I mean, it's

37:20

literally like growing

37:23

up in a terrarium, like

37:25

a glass enclosing that

37:28

is self sustaining and

37:30

you don't need anything else but like the

37:32

stuff within the terrarium.

37:37

Sophie started to realize this terrarium

37:39

had grown around her for years, starting

37:42

way back when she was ten, eleven, twelve,

37:45

when she felt herself pulling away from the outside

37:47

world to focus on ballet. I

37:50

couldn't participate in a

37:52

lot of social things after school things, norm

37:54

multichildhood things and

37:56

I would sort of reframe them in

37:58

my head, like, oh, that's stupid, Like I

38:00

would put them down because I

38:02

couldn't partake. I'd

38:04

tell myself, what I'm going to do

38:07

is more important. And that was like a

38:09

coping technique that I developed in my

38:11

own head, Like even these

38:13

friendships, these bonds don't matter because

38:16

who cares about children. No

38:18

one's even going to remember this. And I would just like

38:20

really sort of tear down all the

38:22

things that I was missing out on. But

38:25

looking back and now that I have my own

38:27

children, the things that I

38:29

missed out on were extremely formative.

38:32

And I'm

38:34

kind of weird and screwed up because I missed them.

38:38

What makes you say that? I

38:42

mean, I imagine a child

38:45

separated from her peer group

38:49

to join a cult, and

38:51

it's taught a

38:56

different culture, a different way of looking

38:58

at things, things like if

39:01

it's not uncomfortable, you're not doing it right. Being

39:04

uncomfortable is normal. Do

39:06

you bury your feelings

39:10

and you're never good enough? I

39:14

mean, these things are different than the

39:17

things that you're normally taught. I

39:19

hope. I

39:23

have two kids, and a

39:26

person's childhood is extremely

39:29

important, important

39:33

the whole rest of your life. Your

39:35

personality out us you the world. I

39:39

spent so much time trying to learn

39:41

everything I

39:44

was wrong. Those

39:47

dumb things really matter, They're

39:50

really important. Even

39:54

if the activity seems dumb, You're

39:57

missing out on experiences and memory

40:00

that sheep who people are.

40:03

And I feel like

40:05

I'm doing a lot of ketchup now and

40:10

after I left the ballet world at

40:12

twenty five, which for me felt

40:14

very young at the time, but now that

40:17

I'm on the outside, that

40:19

was a long time. That was twenty

40:21

years in the ballet world that

40:24

shaped me a lot. Sophie

40:28

Flack says she had to unlearned ballet.

40:31

She'd been told that the skills she gained in the ballet

40:33

classroom would serve her for the rest of her life,

40:36

but she found they did the opposite. Sophie

40:38

says she had to learn that her well being mattered.

40:42

The biggest lesson post

40:45

ballet was actually

40:47

recovering from postpartum depression because

40:52

I approached motherhood like

40:54

I approached ballet,

40:57

with a lot of self sacrifice and

41:00

for the betterment of the cause of

41:02

the art form,

41:05

you know, abandoning the self and

41:08

it completely. As a new mom,

41:11

I mean, I might have had horrible postpartum anyway.

41:14

But with that approach and

41:16

my hyper perfectionism, I

41:19

really lost my mind. I started to become

41:21

a psychotic. This was

41:23

like real next level and

41:26

I was having whatever suicidal

41:28

ideation and there's

41:34

more that I don't really want to share right now, but it

41:36

was very scary. And

41:39

after I had a breakdown,

41:42

I started taking my mental

41:44

health more seriously. I

41:47

was like, Okay, I need to

41:52

relearn how to think. If

41:55

I'm hungry, I eat. If

41:57

I'm tired, I rest. I mean like literally

41:59

listening to my body and articulating

42:03

my knees. I'm still learning how to do that better,

42:07

because there is life after dance. Oh

42:14

no, no, ye

42:23

have oh ouch sounded

42:27

like a well. Sophie

42:29

sits on the floor of her living room. Her

42:32

daughter Eleanor climbs onto her back. Eleanor

42:35

nestles her head into her mother's neck with a

42:37

mischievous smile. Mom,

42:40

yes, tid me dance sticking what

42:44

gifts to get?

42:47

I think mostly I'm just gonna talk and not

42:49

dance. But if you wanted to dance, you could could

42:52

do that. Oh wow,

42:54

because I'm not really in dancing mood right now.

42:57

More in a talking mood, I

43:00

go it, I know with

43:02

for me, Eleanor

43:05

started a creative ballet class this year,

43:07

a room of three and four year olds. When

43:11

you're thinking back to your childhood being

43:13

in something that you now sometimes compare

43:15

to entering a cult at a young age, how

43:18

do you feel about your daughter

43:20

potentially starting to dance

43:22

herself. I

43:25

am very conflicted. I mean, I'm

43:27

conflicted about all the things. Like you

43:29

know, I'm

43:31

trying to recount as truthfully as I hand about

43:34

all these things, but pretty much

43:36

everything I say has like another side to it.

43:38

Really, it's really hard to record

43:40

a podcast about it because I don't

43:42

have enough time to like really say it

43:44

fully. Actually, yeah,

43:47

I always have this like flip side

43:49

of like love for this

43:51

art form, and it

43:53

was a really great way

43:56

for me to live. It

44:03

gave me something to live for. I

44:08

don't really talk very much about ballet. I

44:11

don't have photos around me. It's

44:14

the past life. It's a past life

44:16

and it's woven into the cells. But I don't

44:18

wear it. It's not a badge. But

44:20

Stephanie's the land still feels ballet

44:23

in her. There are times it comes

44:25

out in full force, like just a couple

44:27

of years after she'd retired from the stage, she

44:30

was guest teaching at a local school of the arts,

44:32

and I passed a room where somebody was rehearsing

44:35

some Chopin and

44:37

a lot of the Robins ballets at Chopin

44:39

on stage, and something happened

44:41

to Stephanie, something that would happen

44:44

many times over the coming decades. The

44:46

music took her back, like a flashback,

44:49

a sudden whiff of her past life that reminded

44:51

her how real it had been. It's

44:54

so disceral, and

44:57

I was so jarred because I didn't

45:00

know about this, but it was

45:02

literally like being flooded

45:05

and shifted back in time. It

45:09

was quite jarring. Actually, then

45:12

it was for me sad because I was still very close

45:14

to having finished, and there

45:16

were still the parts of me that were like kind

45:18

of like the loose tooth before it falls out.

45:22

I hear music and it's instantly a ballet.

45:24

I see the steps, I see people doing it. I

45:26

can actually feel the heat of the stage lights

45:29

and the warmth of the wings. This

45:36

morning, I was driving and the music for

45:39

Diamonds from Jewels came on and

45:42

I started welling up. Driving in the

45:44

car, listening to that, seeing

45:47

Susan and Farrell and Peter Martin's in front

45:49

of the screen of

45:51

my mind and

45:54

thanking them. Be so grateful for

45:57

having witnessed that and

46:02

having that part of a life. Every

46:05

time I hear a piece of music, something

46:10

is evoked and provoked and

46:13

the relationship to it is so deep,

46:18

and what what

46:21

gratitude for that. We've

46:39

been talking a lot about these dark sides

46:42

of ballet. Is

46:45

it worth it? Why ballet?

46:48

The feeling that you get as an

46:50

audience member, which is like

46:54

complete or at what

46:57

humans can do when they work together

46:59

in its best form, in its purest

47:01

form. You feel

47:03

at home in your body when you

47:05

dance, and it's it's

47:08

transcendent, like when everything

47:10

goes right, when everything lines

47:12

up and you're like

47:15

spinning perfectly in a pirouette

47:18

and you know you're going to land it cleanly, and

47:20

then you do. There's

47:23

nothing like it, right, nothing

47:25

like it. You feel so at home

47:27

in your body and like that's not

47:29

nothing, it's really precious, it's really

47:32

valuable. My

47:38

most recurring dream is

47:41

a pirouette on point

47:43

on point, and I

47:45

spin and I spin, and I spin,

47:47

and I spin and I spin and I spin and I don't stop

47:50

spinning for a long time. It's something

47:52

I could never do in the real world, or

47:54

maybe anyone could do, but just rotating,

47:57

rotating, and then at the end of the pirouette,

47:59

I just stay balanced

48:01

on point. I don't come down. I

48:04

just hover. And it is

48:06

that feeling in your body that you

48:08

don't get anywhere else. I don't know how to describe

48:10

it. If it's like flying,

48:13

but it's the most beautiful feeling. I

48:16

still remember what that feels like. And so

48:18

those dreams are so vivid. Those

48:21

are the types of dreams that I one hundred percent

48:23

think they're real. While I'm in the dream,

48:27

I feel that dream in

48:29

my body more than any other dream that

48:31

I have. Yeah, and then

48:33

I wake up and I realize it's not it's

48:36

not reality, but it's

48:38

so glorious that it is stuck with me

48:40

all these years and it

48:42

keeps coming back to me even though I haven't

48:45

done it in so long. And

48:47

that is why ballet matters, Because

48:50

you haven't done it in over a

48:52

decade, but it's still in you, and

48:54

so it matters that we get this right. If

48:56

it is going to stick with us forever, it

48:59

matters that we get it right. It

49:06

matters that we get this right. This

49:09

is something all ballet teachers know. You

49:12

need a strong foundation, you

49:14

need good technique. It's

49:16

another lesson the classroom teaches us,

49:19

and it's one I think we shouldn't discard

49:38

when it comes to ballet. With bad

49:40

technique, you can't keep up with complicated

49:42

steps. You're in trouble, a

49:45

couple of flaws or placement issues, and you're

49:47

dancing isn't safe. Even

49:49

if it looks beautiful years

49:51

later, it'll lead to injury. The

49:55

thing is, it's really hard to retrain.

49:58

It's hard to get rid of bad habits dance. That's

50:02

why when you learn ballet, you

50:04

start with the basics and you repeat

50:06

those basics every day

50:08

for the rest of your dancing life.

50:14

First a plea, a knee

50:16

bend, then the port

50:18

de bra, move your arms, and

50:21

then TANDU you

50:23

slide your leg out so it's stretched and pointed.

50:29

Once you do, you realize

50:31

it's the base of most steps. Almost

50:33

all ballet steps are modified tandus

50:36

tandus in different forms balancing

50:41

understood this, and he loved

50:43

his tandus. He

50:46

had his dancers drill them, not just

50:48

eight tan dus, not sixteen,

50:51

not thirty two, not sixty

50:53

four. They did hundreds

50:55

at all speeds, front side

50:57

back. He'd prod them, I

51:00

saying, what are you saving it for? A deer?

51:03

Then he'd say faster. You

51:12

drill until it's automatic, until

51:15

it's etched neurologically in your brain.

51:19

When culture is drilled, culture

51:22

becomes automatic too. We

51:27

need to look at the TANDU of ballet, culture,

51:30

the foundation. If we don't

51:33

address the problems there, we'll have

51:35

injuries later on. And

51:37

that's what's happened. There are people

51:39

now being injured, being harmed

51:42

by dancing ballet, and

51:44

that's why we have to confront the past. It

51:47

all builds on itself. Balancine

51:53

is considered a genius because he changed ballet.

51:56

He pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable

51:58

on stage to

52:01

make ballet beautiful. We need change to We

52:03

need to take a risk. That's

52:06

how we make it better, That's how we keep

52:08

it alive. And we can't

52:10

wait to make this change. What

52:14

are you saving for? Dear? The

52:34

Turning is a production of Our Coco Punch

52:36

and iHeart podcasts. It's written

52:39

and produced by Alan Lance Lesser

52:41

and me Our story editor is

52:43

Emily Foreman. Mixing and sound

52:45

designed by James Trout. Jessica

52:48

Carrissa is our assistant producer. Andrea

52:50

Aswahe is our digital producer. Fact

52:53

checking by Andrea Lopez Crusado.

52:58

So many thanks to all of the people who

53:00

helped and supported us with this project, including

53:03

Gretchen Gavitt, Jacob Nicola and

53:05

Theo Silber, Margaret Lambert,

53:08

Kayla Reid Stella Grizzant, Lisa

53:10

Zagarmi, John Frishcoff, Zach

53:13

Smith, Jacob Smith, Courtney Smith,

53:15

Weasmore, Erica Berger, Paul

53:17

English, Betsy McMillan, Holly Palandro,

53:20

Matt Silverman, and Andrew Lesser. Special

53:27

thanks to Bethan Macaluso, Kate Osborne,

53:29

Christine Rigassa, Travis Dunlap,

53:32

Elizabeth Wachtel, Brianna Hill, Simon

53:34

Pullman, Nancy Wolf, Alison Cantor,

53:37

and the wonderful teams at Rococo Punch

53:39

and iHeart Podcasts for their support. Our

53:50

executive producers are John Parratti and

53:52

Jessica Alpert at Rococo Punch, and

53:54

Katrina Norvelle and Nicky Etour at

53:56

iHeart Podcasts. For

53:58

photos and more details on the series, follow

54:01

us on Instagram at Prococo Punch,

54:03

and you can reach out via email The

54:06

Turning at Prococo punch dot com.

54:10

I'm Erica Lanz. Thanks for

54:12

listening.