A Take on Ballet Crises (And Whether to Quit)
A few months ago, my whole ballet world toppled.
In short, I went from “ballet forever, every day” and “it’s never too late to start and you can get really good at it!” to: It’s not working for me any more, and I maybe I even hate it.
This crash built over quite a while, but the trigger were really three things:
1) After that incredible accomplishment of getting accepted into the Teacher Training Program at Canada’s National Ballet School, AND managing to crowdfund the high tuition - my study permit didn’t get approved in time and I wasn’t able to enroll this school year. I struggled with that significant change of plans and the hole that it tore into them.
2) From one day to the next, I left my ballet home of five years. And when I say “home”, it was more than just a studio. It was a place that had significantly shaped my identity and skill as a dancer. It was a safe space, a refuge, the first (and maybe only) place where I really felt taken seriously with my ballet aspirations. But I clearly felt it was time to leave that nest if I wanted to continue to grow.
3) I didn’t really feel at home in my body any more. Ever since developing a fibroid, and then getting it successfully removed surgically, my body never really recovered to a sustainable ballet shape. My physical form felt fragile and unpredictable and all the movement things that had been fun suddenly became a source of discomfort.
So in essence, I lost three homes at the same time: One with a real past and deep history (my old studio). One that was the promised land of my future (Canada’s National Ballet School). And the one that was supposed to get me from one to the other, and really was the foundation for everything and all (my body).
* * *
This sudden homelessness in ballet and my body - areas that had such a deep and important meaning to me - felt debilitating. I’d say it was traumatizing in the sense that I wasn’t able to process it while it was happening.
My first instinct was to keep moving. The show must go on:
I didn’t have a ballet home? Ok fine, then I’d find three new ones to replace it.
My body wasn’t feeling it? No problem, movement is medicine, right?, so just keep on trucking.
I searched for suitable classes all around the city and feverishly rode my bike every day to get to them. I was desperately trying to settle into this new routine, and kept my fingers crossed that my body would bounce back once it got used to this freshly-built regularity.
It didn’t happen.
* * *
Rather, more homelessness ensued:
The threat to lose our actual home - the owner of our house had started an eviction process against us, on quite sketchy grounds. As a single parent with a disabled child, in a crazy rental market, this terrified me.
Shortly after, my son lost his grounds and toppled into a serious mental health episode (he had to be hospitalized).
Topple-di-topple.
From this compounded stress, my body shut down even more. I had tightness everywhere, and my usual releases and meditations didn’t make it through what felt like an armor of tension. I felt like a shadow of myself in class: Moving awkwardly, unable to enjoy what used to feel so delicious. I lost a lot of range of motion, stretching started feeling like punishment rather than like the usual delightful challenge. I had the feeling that even my skill level was regressing. I was falling out of love with ballet. I wasn’t sure if there was a point to it any more. I was embarrassed to enter my Teacher Training Program in such a subpar physical state.
And also mentally, I was cracked. My attempts to help my son with his issues, and to resolve the eviction issue, felt like running at full speed but not getting anywhere. I started procrastinating, and my mental health quickly deteriorated. I was seriously worried of breaking down so much that I wouldn’t be able to take care of my son and everyday chores any more.
* * *
One day, as I was fevereshly biking through fresh-fallen snow to get to class, my bike chain broke, just like that. I had just very recently bought that bike! It was clear that I wouldn’t make it to class in time walking or Ubering.
In this moment, I finally gave up.
I gave up on attempting to continue business as usual while all my homes were falling apart. I finally let myself topple down as low as needed.
It suddenly hit me that the remedy to my struggles was not in ‘keeping it moving’ and forcing myself to push through.
I needed to give myself time and space to feel, contemplate, and process without pressures and high expectations.
* * *
The first thing I did was to significantly cut my class schedule. I limited myself to 2-3 per week - if possible at all. Sometimes I wouldn’t go to class for weeks. I also didn’t go back to teaching my regular classes and only took on occasional subbings. Because while my son was out of the hospital, he did struggle every morning to get going, which often meant that I couldn’t make it to class on time or commit to teaching in the mornings. I stopped worrying about such days, reminded myself that this phase would pass one day, too, and just went with the flow.
I gave myself time to work through and recover from the disappointment of the deferred Teacher Training Program and the somewhat dark hole that that delay had thrown me into.
I started looking for community and support: I joined a new co-working space (for my office work and writing) where all members have some sort of let’s-make-the-world-better agenda; it is a work home unlike any other I have ever been in. I reached out to my neighborhood community for help. I found more support for my son to help him deal with his academic and mental health challenges.
Through the co-working community, I also found a lawyer who specialized on housing matters. His calm, knowledgeable and grounded approach finally moved the needle on dealing with the difficult eviction situation. Not that it is resolved yet, but I now have clarity about what’s going on, what to expect, and what to do. In a way I already reclaimed my home, no matter what will happen.
Next, I found dance studio space to rent in close proximity to my CSI location, at a very affordable rate. So I started booking it a few times per week, doing my own class and practice, and giving myself time to reconnect with my body and rediscover my love for ballet.
And last, I gave myself wholehearted permission to question EVERYTHING. I allowed myself to contemplate quitting ballet and not doing the Teacher Training Program. I gave myself time and space to wonder whether I should find a new apartment for my son and myself, or whether it would even be better to move back to Germany. And get some regular 9-5 job in an office. I spent a lot of time in nature reconnecting with my “inner home” to really figure out what mattered and what didn’t.
Part of this was to let myself sit through the grief over resenting my “dream ballet life”, when I had worked so bravely to give up the safety of “normal adult life” for it. Through the pain of feeling trapped in a life plan that suddenly didn’t seem that great any more. Through the fear that the commitment to a spectacular Teacher Training Program, with tuition provided by a couple hundred crowd funders, had raised the stakes so high that I felt I couldn’t possibly deliver.
I went back and forth between the solitude of complete withdrawal and the love of close friends and like-minded truth seekers. I didn’t write/post/blog anything for months, but words formed in quiet conversations and silent meditations.
* * *
And so the healing begins.
My first tender realization: Struggling with something, even hating it at times, doesn’t mean I have to quit it. I mean yeah, in my 20s and 30s, that was fine, that’s the time of trying and experimenting a lot, and some things stick and some I let go. But when you get to your 40s and beyond, I think that selection process has largely happened. You are left with what has really meaning to you, and you add new things very deliberately. The feeling of wanting to quit then warrants a more detailed examination: Do I really want to quit, or do I rather need to find a new, innovative, envelope-pushing angle at it? A way of doing it that incorporates my way of being, instead of constantly pushing against traditional ways and my inner resistance against them? At this stage of life, I know that I don’t have to take things as they are and how they have always been, I am allowed to put my unique spin on it. It’s not easy, and not everyone will like that, and that’s ok.
And the crucial realization: I am NOT done with ballet. In fact, I may only be getting into the deep end of it! I am reconnecting with it at a more informed level that is more concerned with how it feels and works on the inside rather than with how it looks on the outside. And I love sharing those insights in the classes that I teach. And while going through the Teacher Training Program will be challenging, I want it badly, for the depth and quality that I truly crave.
In the meantime, I will continue to give myself the time and studio space (and often a slow pace!) for exploring my unique take on learning and teaching ballet. I am working on finding practices that honor my body’s signals and struggles, and see how I can work with them instead of pushing against them (or pretend that everything is fine). And sometimes that may include “quitting” ballet for a while and come back to it with fresh eyes.
* * *
All that is constantly evolving, but I guess home is where you make it. A topple can build a whole new world after all.