Shortcomings
Having danced professionally for close to two decades, I naturally found myself teaching at the tender age of nineteen. At that stage of my teaching career, it was more of a necessity than a strong desire to teach others. Although my only passion was to increase my livable wage, I found myself enjoying the process of shining a light to the weaker areas of one's technique. As the promotions started to pour in, my desire to teach began to lessen. Eventually, I left the ballet company I danced with to create a new double-dutch journey with ballet in general. In late Spring 2019, I took a leap of faith and left my corporate job to dedicate myself back to the world of ballet.
As I taught my first ballet class, I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. I felt like a fraud, like who let this guy in the front of the room. Since I am known to have "retired" from ballet at least 4-5 times, it was only natural for me to think that I wasn't enough to be passing on my knowledge and love for ballet. As the school year started to unfold, I saw so many similarities of my younger self in my students' likeness. It became apparent that I was carrying the baggage from my own ballet teachers, and that I had been taking it with me throughout my career.
As a young student, I very early learned that I had to navigate through a teacher's idea of me being a "successful" dancer. At times I questioned why I was putting myself through this. After all, I needed to prove to those in the front that I was capable of more, right!? I heard that I couldn't do all the things that eventually, I started to believe it. In fact, in my senior year of high school, I had mentally given up on a future in ballet. Luckily, that chapter of my life took a different turn when a contract with a professional ballet company was offered to me before college applications were due.
How would it look if we took a look at our shortcomings as dancers before we stood in front of the new dance generation? Can we freely give to our students if we haven't sorted out our own studio traumas? I consider myself lucky to have been taught by some of the most excellent teachers and coaches in the industry. These teachers also worked with the best of their day. Despite their prestigious training and stellar careers, I have seen firsthand how these big names will dim their light in front of a room of massive egos. Why is that? Why does it seem that the ballet studio can reduce the brightest stars to the dull street lights?
Now that I am in the front of the room, I find myself navigating a dancer's fears, joy, complexes, pain, and sometimes arrogance to reach the potential that I think they can achieve. With that said, it ultimately comes down to that dancer to rise to the challenge, but if the atmosphere of a ballet class isn't conducive to helping an artist (new or established) reach their fullest potential, what's the point.
Reflecting and acknowledging my career, I started to see that it was special and unique simply because it was my own. As I began to release the idea that I had to have the picture-perfect ballet career to be an ideal ballet teacher, I started to see a tremendous change in my students. I began to see them as individual artists and not carbon copies of the "perfect" ballet dancer. Right now, the classical art world is facing some challenging times. Right now, the world is seeing how classical ballet doesn't reflect today's society. How would it look if this new generation of ballet educators took a look at our shortcomings as dancers before we stood in front of this new ballet generation? In short, much better than the ballet world than I grew up in.
