But, unfortunately, four days before my scheduled surgery date, I got a call from the surgeon’s assistant. An echo cardiogram that another doctor had ordered for me months ago, but that I wasn’t able to get an appointment for until September, had caught the eye of the anesthesiology team. They wouldn’t clear me for surgery until that echo had been done. Despite my frantic efforts to get an earlier appointment, I had no luck. So the ankle surgery has been (temporarily) canceled, and now I’m waiting to see when I can get it rescheduled. Likely sometime in late September.

So… I continue gimping around and working on my ankle-brace tan line.

I got more sad news two weeks ago. My high school English teacher, Shellie Sclan, passed away at age 72. She’d had a massive stroke in May and left us on August 7.

Shellie (she’ll always be Ms. Sclan in my mind, though) taught my English courses at the Professional Children’s School from tenth through twelfth grades. At PCS, lots of students take courses through what’s called “guided study.” When I was there, in pre-internet days, online education was not an option. In order to fit in all the requirements for graduation, students who couldn’t be in school all day were assigned a teacher who’d meet with them outside of normal school hours, guiding them through the course work individually. I took several classes that way— not only English with Ms. Sclan, but also constitutional history with Mr. Savage and French with Mme. Edlich.

My early-morning tutoring sessions with Ms. Sclan, in an empty classroom on an upper floor of PCS’s building on W. 60th Street are indelible in my memory. Being at school before most anyone else had arrived, sitting in a room full of the evidence of life and energy and activity but devoid of bodies, suited my introverted nature. I felt at ease in a way I never did in regular school classes— even though those at PCS were relatively small and controlled, I’ve always been uncomfortable in crowded or noisy settings. I loved my alone time with Ms. Sclan. She’d usually come in a little late, showing signs that getting to school that early was a stretch for her, just like it was for most of her adolescent students. Her dark, curly hair would be damp and a little frizzy from a morning shower (I imagined her toweling off and dashing right out the door) and she’d be clutching a paper bag in one hand and a paper cup of coffee from a deli in the other. She’d set her tote bag (with either The New Yorker or a public radio logo, probably) behind her desk, carefully pull open the sip-tab on her coffee cup, and extract a muffin, wrapped in wax paper, from the paper bag. We’d sit there across the desk from each other, without the usual teacher/student gulf of regular classes. Ms. Sclan would pick at her muffin and take audible, grateful sips of coffee while we talked about books, writing, and reading. She took me through The Canterbury Tales, The Woman in White, and The Picture of Dorian Gray — the required texts for high school English— and then, when I told her I’d been reading and loving Agatha Christie, Ms. Sclan took me on a journey through other classic mysteries. She sensed how to use my fascination with the psychology of the characters in those stories to take me deeper into analyzing them. We talked about why trains make such a powerful setting for a mystery story. About the symbolism of mystery in literary forms. We teased apart the threads of the murder mysteries I’d already read, and she introduced me to others, from authors like Ngaio Marsh and Sue Grafton, even though they weren’t actually part of my English class. Ms. Sclan encouraged me to really think about those books, why they gripped the imagination so much, to articulate those feelings and consider them in a frame larger than just a fun, escapist read.

When I graduated, Ms. Sclan gave me a gift: a paperback copy of The Brothers Karamazov, inscribed with little notes from both her and Mr. Savage. I am guiltily admitting here that, daunted by its length, I have still not read it. But it still sits on a bookshelf in my bedroom and I will never part with it. Now, it’s like Ms. Sclan is still there, ready and waiting to take me through Dostoyevsky’s drama, analyze his passionate characters, and help me see why a classic work of fiction is a timeless mirror for the human experience.

It seemed like a sign from Ms. Sclan when I saw this piece in the New York Times earlier this week about The Brothers Karamozov. Or, really, about a literature professor’s experience teaching it to his college students. My guilt was eased a bit to hear that Matt Dinan, the director of the great books program at St. Thomas University, hadn’t read it, either, before his teaching assistant suggested they assign it to their class. As Dinan and his students simultaneously read and discussed the book, they went on a collective journey, so sucked into the story that, as he writes, he had the “pleasure of becoming a student myself.” His students, contrary to the current assumption that electronic devices hold overwhelming power over our attention, not only kept up with the lengthy reading assignments but drove the conversations in each class with passion, excitement, questions, and purely original revelations.

Dinan’s willingness— and humility— to go on this adventure with his students was a big part of why it was a moving, collectively bonding and fundamentally human experience for them all. Showing his own unabashed passion and excitement for the story, the characters, and their meanings, and eliminating the usual teacher/student divide was the key to not losing them to the unsatisfying, empty, soulless shortcuts of A.I. that are so readily available. “If you want students to be passionately engaged, not worried about the future, grasping, careerist or disengaged, you must transmit the spark of passion in your deeds, your mien — let’s face it, in your own soul,” Dinan writes. Passions are non-conformist, he adds. “To be moved is to be a little bit weird.”

Ms. Sclan was like that. She was a little “weird,” I guess, but in a way that subtly showed me how fabulous it is to just love what you love and, in so doing, bring others along for the ride. Sitting there together on those early mornings, I never felt I was being taught. She colored my world and opened up corners of my mind with her presence and knowledge and ability to draw me out.

“We forget, at our peril, how life-changing it can be for young people to have an unrelated adult treat them with seriousness and respect,” Dinan says. Ms. Sclan did that for me. I didn’t follow her footsteps into academia, but I think I’m carrying a bit of her forward when I teach dance. I don’t munch a muffin during class, but I do keep a mug of tea off to the side for little sips of comforting energy while I take my students on the sometimes novel-esque journey through the world of ballet. Ms. Sclan lived in my neighborhood on the Upper West Side, and very occasionally, when I was home visiting, we’d cross paths along Broadway or at the Indian restaurant across the street. After I published my first book, we met for lunch at the Metro diner. She brought her own containers to take her leftovers home.

My current read is, in a way, quite opposite from The Brothers Karamozov. I’m paging my way through Seneca’s On the Shortness of Life, which embodies its title in length but not in depth. Seneca gets right to the point: life isn’t short, if you know how to use it. Fools, he says, forget the past, ignore the present, and fear the future. But wise people don’t waste their time bemoaning how little time they have. They remember the past, use the present, and anticipate the future.

I would love to have read this book with Ms. Sclan. Her life was too short, but Seneca could have used it as a beautiful example of purpose, thought, presence and meaning. Thank you for sharing some of it with me, Ms. Sclan.

A teacher lives on through her students

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But eventually, I became a semi-regular myself. I’d taken Willy’s class often enough that while I was not one of the dancers he paid attention to, I sort of knew what was going on, more of the time than I had at first, at least. Willy didn’t completely ignore me anymore— I even got a correction now and then, which was a sign that I’d advanced from invisible to a tiny blip on his radar. But while that gave me a tad more confidence in his class, it did not make the combinations themselves any easier. So on this particular day, I hovered in the back of the room, scanning for a sliver of space where I could slide in and attempt Willy’s pirouette exercise. It’s polite (though not everyone does it) to be alert to the intentions of those around you, to read their body language, and refrain from jumping into a spot that someone else seems positioned to take. Standing next to me in the back of the studio was a dancer I’d been classmates with at SAB and who was by then in a dancer with New York City Ballet. She was more of a Willy-regular than I was, and her status as an established class-taker gave her a sort of seniority in the pecking order of studio traffic (learning to navigate “studio traffic” is an art and science of its own, and yet another transferable balletic skill.) As the moment approached for another group of dancers to begin the exercise, before I stepped forward to seize the opportunity, I asked if she was going to jump in. “As soon as I summon up some courage,” she answered, gazing out at the scene in front of us.

I’ll never forget my initial surprise at her words, nor the slow wave of relief that came just after. Other dancers felt as daunted by basic— while challenging, they were not extraordinarily complex— class combinations as I did? Other professional dancers? I wasn’t the only one silently praying for divine assistance or pep-talking myself into bravery several times a day?

Apparently, I was not.

That day, I started to realize that life as a ballet dancer was like performing a mini-version of the hero’s journey on repeat: from the departure from the ordinary world (entering the dance studio, leaving street clothes and the problems of non-balletic life outside), to feeling the call to adventure but resisting it (the call of the coffee shop fights to win over the call of ballet class), to meeting the mentor (teacher, coach, choreographer enters the space and we feel compelled to follow their lead). Then the tests begin: we test of our bodies in class, and then again in the even more demanding but also more amorphous tests of choreography. We test of our minds to recall, learn and re-learn, and to keep going under self-imposed pressure and perceived expectations. The ordeal portion of the journey is divided up into tiny chunks throughout the day: class alone holds a couple dozen ordeals, rehearsals hold several more, and the performance is the final push to the summit. And the day itself— eventually, the entire career— is a sort of container for them all. The reward… that comes in many forms, too. It might be end of the day, or the curtain call post-performance, or moments of revelation, transcendence, satisfaction, gratification that pop up unexpectedly at any point.

To project a meta concept onto the shape of a dancer’s day, I see the return home part of the hero’s journey as also happening in different ways and to differing degrees, over and over. The drive home after a show. The walk home after a rehearsal. The slow, dragging, satisfying fatigue in my legs. Or the quiet decision to come back tomorrow and go through it all again, since by now, dance itself has become home.

Several years after that day in Willy’s class at Steps, I took my last class as a professional dancer. It was Sunday, May 2, 2010. After barre, I put on my pointe shoes, did my usual relevés off to the side of the stage to warm up my shoes and solidify my balance before attempting the first center combination, which was usually adagio or tendus. I wasn’t sad, wasn’t nervous, wasn’t jittery. I felt peaceful and prepared. And excited, because as whoever was teaching class that day set the pirouette combination and I readied myself to do it, I realized that it was the last time I’d ever have to scrounge up that kind of courage. I’d never have to compel myself to do a pirouette combination ever, ever again.

Sometimes I miss dancing, but I don’t miss the enormity of effort needed to reach so deep down for the physical and emotional energy and the courage to step onto the high wire without looking down, day after day. Ballet is a subtle kind of hard, different from pushing yourself to run faster or lift more, or from aiming to hit or throw a ball just right. It’s an effort that comes from such a fundamental place inside the center of your body, a literal twisting of your core muscles like a rope, so tight that outwardly, your balance looks effortless, your jumps light, your footwork fleet and precise, your movement silky or sharp. It’s pulling yourself up to the sky, as if being sucked up through a giant milkshake straw, turning from pedestrian mode to ballerina stance. No wonder I felt spent at the end of each day, wrung out like a washcloth and just as limp.

But as hard as all that was, the compulsion to keep doing it was stronger. I think the beauty of ballet lies in the way its minutia magically, incrementally but then suddenly, blooms into grand effect. The daily tendus, to me, are like a scientist’s studying slide samples under the microscope, thinking and analyzing and tweaking formulas, peeling away layers, looking for larger understanding or discovery. It’s sometimes hard to get students to see the connection between the banality of barre work and the explosive freedom of grand allegro. But the revelations happen in that banality— when the legs understand how to exert that much stretch, they automatically default to it without being asked. When I faced those daunting moments of ballet every single day, I never backed down.

I've made a mess of choreography, both in the studio and onstage, and been subsequently both infuriated with myself and thoroughly embarrassed. But it feels way worse to have avoided a challenge than to have made a valiant attempt— or even just an attempt— and yes, maybe failed to a degree. Giving it a go is never a total loss. You did something, and something is better than nothing.

As I aged in ballet, I learned how to finesse choreography when I didn’t have raw power. That’s a sensibility one learns in real life, too, but not usually so young. It’s not faking it to know when and how to sing with your own voice.

You’ve heard me say that the dancer’s mindset equips them to face the world, and the rest of their lives, with a special sense of purpose, a self-trust and self-worth uniquely born of encountering and taking on tough things over and over, day after day. But even though I’m equating the daily routine to a hero’s journey, dancers aren’t heroes, and certainly not super-heroes. The kind of elegant toughness that dancers exude is the effect of being very intimate with the reality of facing fear every day. And of doing so in front of others’ eyes, since the life of a performer means a life of scrutiny.

That spiritual grit does fade, like an entre chat six that gets rusty without practice. But, now that I don’t have to face those critical eyes and terrifying combinations anymore, maybe the residue from years of doing so helps strengthen my resolve to get over the big and small hurdles of modern life outside the ballet studio.

And that is why it’s worth it to take a big, deep breath, engage your core harder than feels natural, pull yourself up by your internal bootstraps, summon up your courage and do the pirouettes.

In Other News…

Eagle-eyed folks have noticed my unfashionable choice of footwear over the past few months:

Well, turns out that the “tendonitis” I thought I had was actually a ruptured peroneal tendon. I’ve been limping around for months, graduating from bulky boot to flexible brace, wanting to get through my summer teaching gigs. But now I’m finally getting it repaired. In a little over a week, I’ll have surgery to fix that tendon and also tighten up some severely loose ankle ligaments (which probably contributed to the tendon rupture.) It’ll be a long slog post-op, but I’m optimistic that once I can ditch the crutches and cast, I’ll be able to walk normally again.

This will be my sixth orthopedic surgery: three hips and three ankles. If anyone had seen in the forecast that I’d have this many injuries— half of them after I stopped dancing— I wonder how I might have felt. What I do know is that the knowledge absolutely would not have changed a thing about how I led my life. Living as a dancer was— and is— much, much more than worth the literal and figurative price of all this. (Plus, I have no direct evidence that ballet caused any of my hip issues or this latest ankle injury.) The next six weeks will be just another installment in my own epic little journey, a departure, a trial, and a return. I have no choice but to find my spot, summon up my courage, and do it.

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Sometime in early spring or late winter of 2010, Martha invited me over to her stately house in southeast Portland. She’d been assigned (or volunteered? I’ll never know) to write my “exit story” for Dance Magazine, as I was about to retire from Oregon Ballet Theatre. Martha and I’d already known each other for several years, since the first time she interviewed me when I was brand new in town and had just joined OBT. We’d been friendly over the years, but I was still a bit surprised when she suggested I come over to her house to chat over cocktails instead of setting up a phone call or meeting at the OBT studios. But I was certainly taking my cues from her, so I readily agreed. When I arrived at her large, classically SE Portland home with a lovely porch and leafy front yard, Martha ushered me in, told me she was having Ketel One on the rocks and asked what I wanted— wine, a cocktail, seltzer (we’re both New Yorkers)? Her eyes, when I asked for bourbon, widened a bit in surprise but also glinted with approval.

We settled into her living room. Instead of a set of questions, Martha seemed to just want to talk— about life, dancing, not dancing, growing up in New York (we bonded over our shared hometown), ballet history (she took me upstairs to see an old video of Lew Christensen’s ballet Filling Station), and who knows what else. At one point, trying to make sense of why I had no husband, mate, or children and couldn’t even come up with a colorful description of how I spent my weekends, she asked, “Well, Gavin, are you a nun?” “No— I’m not even Catholic!” I replied, getting a laugh out of her for the first time and, I think, solidifying our friendship.

Martha was— and will always be— legendary. As a devoted Dance Magazine reader, I knew of her and had read her work long before we first met in person, which was not long after I’d joined Oregon Ballet Theatre in 2003. Christopher Stowell was OBT’s new artistic director, and I assumed that when I was asked to come in early one morning to for an interview, it would be about the transitional era that OBT and I were entering.

But when we sat down at the round table in OBT’s lobby, the first thing Martha asked was, “How does it feel to be entrusted with carrying on Balanchine’s legacy?” Gulp! I was caught off guard, but also excited— now this was going to be an interesting interview.

I can’t remember the piece Martha wrote from that interview, but the fact that instead of writing what could have been another boilerplate story on a ballet company’s change of directorship, she led with the issue of choreographic lineage and the dancer’s unique role as a creative interpreter was classic Martha-style. Over decades of watching, thinking, questioning and writing about dance, she had a way of bringing the big picture into focus by drawing our attention to the details that defined it. Also classic Martha was her emphasis on the significance of history, the un-severable lines linking dancers and the things they dance from yesterday through today and into tomorrow. She wanted us all to remember that the past lives forever, in choreography, teaching, and performance. And in the people who carefully pass it along, hand to hand.

Martha and I hit it off. At some point after our cocktail interview (and once I was no longer the subject of her reviews), we started occasionally getting together for cocktail hour, where she’d amaze me with stories about her life, her childhood in Greenwich Village, the multitudes of artists and intellectuals she’d met and hobnobbed with and written about (she was Margaret Mead’s goddaughter) and also lots of chitchat and, yes, gossip, about the ballet world today— and yesterday, and forecasting tomorrow. As incredibly wise about and steeped in dance as she was, Martha wasn’t above asking questions to deepen her understanding of an art form she’d never practiced herself. She genuinely wanted to hear my thoughts and ideas about what it’s all about from the dancer’s point of view. Like many of our exchanges, one particularly memorable conversation happened over email (lots and lots and lots of emails went back and forth between us, as I know they did between her and her many close friends around the country). She was writing about the concept of the “Balanchine ballerina” and wanted to know what I thought made someone qualify. I was in the Portland airport waiting for a flight while we exchanged near-simultaneous messages, which unfortunately I can’t find now, but I do remember telling her that I thought “ballerina” was a slippery, overused and misunderstood term, but in any case, I thought that a Balanchine one was more attuned to the music than anything else. She called me “Ms. Smarty-Tights” after that, which I took as a very high compliment.

As anyone who ever met her knows (and as a critic has to be) Martha was opinionated and very un-shy and blunt— but elegant— when sharing those opinions. As both her friend and the subject of some of her reviews, I wondered how she managed to separate her critical eye and her understanding of a dancer’s offstage persona. But I came to see that her knowledge of who a dancer was made her critiques extra astute. I had learned not to overly interpret reviews of my performances, especially during a run, but I did read one of Martha’s reviews of me the afternoon before a show of Balanchine’s Emeralds. It was less than glowing, and I knew she was right.

To me, Martha was a friend, a mentor, a mom-figure. After I retired from performing and started teaching and writing, we got together more and more often and exchanged more and more email. She offered me loads of advice, words to the wise, cautions, reminiscences from her own life and from history, but was always, always encouraging, dryly hilarious, realistic and warm, even when the state of the world seemed bleak (the National Guard presence in Portland rattled her deeply, since by then she’d moved to an apartment downtown and heard every helicopter flying low over her building). She was writing her joint biography of Janet Reed and Todd Bolender, “Todd Bolender and Janet Reed, and the Making of American Ballet,” for many years before I even started working on my first book, and eventually we were both under contract with University Press of Florida (which includes her book in its lineup of significant titles in the country’s 250th year.) I watched Martha dedicate years to researching and writing her book, listened to her frustrations, learned from her process, and absorbed her immense passion and love for a subject she felt was underappreciated and overlooked in the complex story of American ballet. Our book-writing timelines eventually aligned, and we shared pub dates in 2021. I know she was relieved, gratified, proud and satisfied to have completed such a major, important contribution to the dance world. My regret is that I’d already moved away from Portland by then, so my copy of her book remains unsigned.

When my mother was sick with cancer, Martha fielded my unorganized, probably often incoherent and rambling, messages with a tone that made me feel I was getting a hug dosed with courage and realism and spiritual strength. She knew how it felt to face sickness and loss, and had spoken often about her late husband, Frank, who’d died many years earlier. When I confided to Martha about being confused and at sea, she always replied with that same blend of tenderness and kick-in-the-pants: Don’t settle, keep moving, keep going, keep thinking and keep writing. Our emails would be near-daily for a while, then peter off, then restart. Three months after my mom died, I got this: “Gavin, you are not too old to learn to improvise, and I don’t mean on stage, I mean in life. Because life itself is unpredictable, we can’t control it, so we need to deal with it in other ways.  Preach preach.  I’ll stop now, because I’m not only preaching to you, I’m preaching to the choir that is me.  Tra la la la la.  much love, hang in there, Martha.”

Martha was, like my mother had been, either outright convinced or wanted me to believe that writing was a life’s work that could be, perhaps, more important than dancing had ever been. When I started this Substack, I could count on a reply email from her after every Sunday’s post. Here is the last one I got.

Knock ‘em dead, kid! What’s your next writing project?

xo

m

I miss you, Martha. Thank you for everything.

love,

Gavin

The 25-minute film follows three years in the life of Jenn Green, a dancer, teacher, mom, and the survivor of domestic sexual abuse.

But in Tiny Movements, we only see a sliver of Jenn’s days during the period after she escaped from her abuser. The documentary gives us just enough information to know what happened to Jenn, and that’s enough— because the film is really about what she did afterwards.

What she did was dance. By herself, in her kitchen, every night for three years. She just moved, letting whatever mood, emotion, and style she felt that day come out in improvisational dance (I was as interested in what Jenn wore in each clip as how she moved— she seemed to have a clown-car-closet full of vivid outfits, accented by her long, wavy red hair, sometimes loose, in braids, half up, half down…). She documented her dances with her iPhone, balanced precariously atop a stack of spice jars, and then posted them on Instagram under the account Tinykitchendances. The movements were tiny because so was her kitchen, but what they came out of was huge, and what they meant was even huger.

I’ve also danced my way out of rage and frustration, and through exhilaration, joy, and awe. When you dance for a living, especially in classical ballet, you can lose sight and sense of how personally expressive an art it is. Learning choreography, repeating it, adjusting to a choreographer’s taste, aligning yourself with the ensemble or your partner, fixating on technical precision can all take your attention away from the person with voice— you, the dancer. But in those times of intense emotion, dance overrides the dancer. As it was for Jenn, the impulse to move, with spontaneous structure, is the obvious— and only— one to follow.

After the screening, there was a panel discussion with Tiny Dance’s filmmaker Laura Sweeney, Wake Forest University dance professor Christina Soriano, HelpMate outreach coordinator Caitrin Doyle and Jenn herself. Each spoke about why they think Jenn’s story, her intensely personal and profound way of recovering from it, and this film carry truths that need to be spoken, spread, and remembered.

When the mic was passed to Christina, the first thing she said was, “Dance was Jenn’s superpower.” Those words hung in the air for a beat, and then she continued, explaining the neuroscience behind coordinated physical movement, rhythm, music, brain activity, emotional processing, and physical and mental health. Jenn is lucky, in a way, for already loving to move and having structured training helping her leap from technique to release. I know I’m lucky for having had that channel for the times I wanted to scream and break things, but instead threw myself into the devastating, menacing, stabbing, intense choreography of The Four Temperaments. There’s more and more scientific research and evidence that dance, whether guided loosely or strictly, changes our brains, emotions, and of course, our bodies. Neurological diseases and just plain aging meet their match when a person starts to dance. Classes abound (someday I’ll get back to working with the Dance For PD program…), and I could not believe more strongly in the work of Dance To Be Free, an organization bringing dance to incarcerated women, helping them use it as a vehicle to reduce the anxiety, depression, fear and anger of imprisonment— and whatever came before it. And as someone who’s never been well able to let loose and groove without choreography, I find that terribly fabulous. But with or without a teacher or guide, everyone’s got a kitchen. Everyone should dance. Everyone should feel their soul sing and the freedom of expanding past the boundary of their skin.

The Body Keeps the Score is a book about trauma’s effects on the body. Tiny Dances is a film about a body’s effects on trauma.

Music, emotion, and movement are meant to go together. Why resist? In the 21st century, we receive music— classical, at least— much differently than people did a few hundred years ago. They weren’t shy or reserved in describing what music actually felt like, according to a researcher from the University of Cambridge, who dreams of relaxing norms around concert-going so that people can move, react to, and fully experience the music instead of simply sitting still. In the 17th and 18th centuries, listeners described what they heard in concerts in vividly physical ways, says University of Cambridge professor Bettina Varwig. “When you read about how music affected listeners in Bach’s time, their testimonies are striking in their bodily intensity,” she says. “Music contracted their innards and made their hearts leap. It could taste like vinegar in your throat. It could melt your earwax. It could draw your soul out of your body.”

Can you imagine feeling those things and not moving? Or can you imagine going to a “promenade concert” in 1895 in London’s Queens Hall, where people roamed and strolled while listening? Varwig and two musicians from the Royal Academy of Music decided to find out how other musicians would react when they weren’t given any instructions other than listening and following music’s cues, whatever and however they struck each person. When given free rein to not just play music, but follow their instinctive physical impulses to it, the musicians started moving, gesticulating, engaging with each other, embodying the emotional intensity as it came into their brains and back out through motion.

I think what makes dance such a stunning “superpower” is that it’s a multi-use jackknife: it has an infinitely customizable palate and goes everywhere with you, always handy no matter where it’s needed. Dancing can comfort, embolden, thrill, stir up muddiness and part the clouds. Moving to music unites us like nothing else. One of the musicians in Varwig’s experiment said so: “We were incredibly attuned to our fellow performers and listeners in the room. We were free to inhabit the intensity of Bach’s music, free to move, to breathe together and to respond to the power of the story through our shared humanity … [It felt] intensely immediate, connected and transformative.”

Dancing alone, in your kitchen, can do that, too.

I, like Jenn, became acquainted with dance via a ballet studio when I was very young. Also like her, dance was always a source— a resource, actually, an endlessly renewable resource for my spirit and my physical self. Even as I’ve moved away from performing (“evolved away,” as Serena Williams once said of her tennis career), and I don’t dance in my kitchen as often as I want to, I still think of dance— ballet, for me personally— as a constant, an entity living inside me that’s a language, a voice, a guide, a friend, and yes, a power.

Someone tried to commandeer Jenn’s body, but she danced.

“Dancing is . . . A reparative experience that directly contradicts the terror, helplessness and visibility of trauma to enable survivors to reclaim ownership of their bodies and their lives.”

–Bessel A. van der Kolk, MD, Professor of Psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine, and President of the Trauma Research Foundation.

The screening I saw, plus another the previous evening and a workshop on dance as a healing art the following day, were sponsored by Trillium Arts, a residency center and arts incubator in nearby Mars Hill, NC. Their support and promotion of Tiny Dances is just one example of the amazing work they do, and of the beauty and necessity of people helping people help other people, especially in the arts. And the side-alley gallery where the screening took place was Little Animals, which calls itself a gathering space with the “professionalism of a gallery with the community of a social club.” Another resource this world needs.

Newsy Stuff!

Our B&H Photo panel was a huge success! Many, many thanks to everyone who came, to B&H for hosting us, to my sister Flynn (who has her own version of kitchen dances!) for being my unwavering emotional and logistical supporter (and documentarian), to Derek Fahsbender for being a great, interesting and interested moderator, and to Kylie Edwards and Gene Schiavone for sharing their insights on the art of ballet photography.

My old buddy from Pacific Northwest Ballet, Matthew Powell, visited Asheville last week to guest teach in our summer intensive at the Ballet Conservatory of Asheville. Matt’s the artistic director at BalletNova Center for Dance these days, but we always have fun reminiscing about old times: trekking around London on tour, watching Fred and Ginger movies while eating box-mix brownies, and Christmas tree shopping on Queen Anne hill back in our baby-faced dancing days.

And lastly, this sign on the bathroom door at Little Animals has its priorities straight, I’d say.

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Photo shoots were, to me, revealing and also revelatory. Revealing in that the good and bad were so starkly obvious in the pictures (my technique flaws embarrassingly obvious when caught mid-air, right along with the unique characteristics that many photographers noticed and urged me to play up), and revelatory because looking at the photos gave me a strange sense of remove from myself, somewhat like a dream in which you are watching yourself from afar. I felt a bit like a character in my own life, almost startled to see that dancer in the photo who looked just like me. Who is she? What is she thinking and feeling, how does she make her body do those things?

That’s what photographs do for us— they let us look at ourselves, see ourselves as others do, and perhaps understand ourselves in ways near-impossible when we’re literally wrapped up inside our own bodies. We can step out of our own world for a minute and ponder.

That’s what happened to Kylie Edwards, the dancer on the cover of Infinite Steps. Kylie started out heading straight for a purely ballet career, so sure that’s what she wanted that the wee itches she kept feeling for a different kind of theatricality were easily drowned out. But when she did a photo shoot with Gene Schiavone while on the cusp of getting her first ballet company job, the actress inside her came rushing out. Her best friend had sent her boxes full of costumes to wear at the shoot, which she giddily tried on, one after another. And when Gene asked what music she wanted to have on while they worked, she replied that she’d always loved Broadway, so how about some show tunes? “I think I’d always known that I was destined for Broadway,” she told me during our interview for Infinite Steps. “During that photo shoot, I felt like I was allowed to be the fullest version of myself, separate from the environment of the dance studio and the student ecosystem. I felt like I could find and define myself.”

Kylie did embark on a ballet career, but not long after her first season with a company, she switched gears. Today, she’s fabulously successful as an actor— and dancer— in film, TV, and stage. In fact, she’s finishing up a stint in Brigadoon at the Pasadena Playhouse right now.

Photography and dance might seem to have little in common, and until I started working on this book with Gene, I never thought about or looked for parallels. After all, ballet is about continual movement (though I argue that stillness in dance is under-rated, under-utilized, and, unfortunately, when it is most artfully used, under-appreciated), but photography’s point is to freeze time. And photography relies heavily on equipment and gear, but the only equipment a dancer needs is folded into the everyday carrying case of their own body.

But, as I’ve learned from having just collaborated with Gene on our book of dance photographs and essays, and also from having a sister who is both a professional photographer and a natural mover, the commonalities between the art of capturing and framing motion and that of creating it are really strong. Photographers and dancers share an eye for line and symmetry, an ability to notice (and care about) the subtle details of a composition that can define (or wreck) the overall picture, and a stubborn refusal to let something go until it’s just right. While photographers are happiest hiding behind a camera and dancers live to perform in public view, they bond over a compulsion to create shapes that suspend time.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that what dance photography does that makes it so arresting is not that it captures dance itself— that’s impossible, anyway. A dance photograph captures the dancer, not the dance.

This week, I’ll be happily sitting down with Kylie and Gene to talk about all of the above, plus the ins and outs of being a dancer, a photographer, and how collaboration can change an artist’s own technique and perception. We’ll be at B&H Photo’s Event Space on Wednesday, June 17 from 3-5pm. Please join us!

Odds ‘n’ Ends

• I’m a big advocate for failing— so long as it’s preceded by sincere effort. I teach my students that arriving at something— succeeding at it— is just a place to pause and catch your breath before taking more steps forward. With that in mind, achievement is actually a collage of mess-ups and adjustments. So imagine how cool it would be to take this class at Stanford University, called Dance 123: Hot Mess and Deliberate Failure as Practice. Taught by my former School of American Ballet classmate, Alex Ketley, the course guides students to rise above the self-consciousness of looking silly, “bad,” or unpolished while doing dance exercises. The idea is to carry that acceptance— that ease— into other walks of life. “What happens if we accept failure as a creative virtue?” he said. I think it’s also about shedding our cultural need to always be right, to be first, to be the best, to have the most. Ketley’s seen what happens when artists relax into messiness, softening their fierce grip on the proverbial steering wheel of life. “I noticed a type of brilliance when people relinquish control,” he said. I’m going to hold that in my own hand, gently.

• Another former colleague, Brian Simcoe, is retiring from Oregon Ballet Theatre today. Brian, who was just a student in the School of Oregon Ballet Theatre when I joined the company and eventually rose to principal, is one of the most sensitive, empathetic and graceful partners, dancers, and people I’ve ever known. I wish him a glorious final performance full of joy, and I know that he’ll carry his brilliance far beyond the stage.

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If you have read and enjoyed one or both of my books, would you please take a moment (if you haven’t already done so) to post a rating and review? Every reader testimonial helps bring more visibility and longevity to my work. THANK YOU!

(Best places to do this are Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Goodreads. And of course, simply by telling anyone you know who might enjoy the books is immensely appreciated!)

Until next time,

Gavin

But the idea is a strong one: you’re the star of Life, The Musical (or the multi-act drama), and the curtain is already up. There were no studio, tech or dress rehearsals to prepare you for this moment. There are supporting cast members but no understudies. This single performance runs for an unknown number of acts, but has no intermissions. Sometimes the audience is clearly visible, but sometimes you’re not really sure exactly who you’re performing for— or if you’re being watched at all. Applause, when you hear it, is nice, but that’s not what makes you stay on stage.

Oh— by the way, there is no script or choreography, either. Sometimes you instinctively know what to say or how to move— or an invisible prompter whispers in your ear— but mostly it’s pure improv.

The other thing about this production is that even though you’re the main character/principal dancer, the way you perform each scene determines how the next one will play out— or if you’ll even move on to it. You could stay in one set and keep repeating the same lines and steps, but that would feel like a depressing remake of Groundhog Day. You are— we all are— auditioning and performing at the same time, again and again throughout this one wild and precious show.

I did a lot of auditions when I was a dancer. My very first was when I was 11, for a place in the School of American Ballet. The second was a few weeks later, when I tagged along with my new classmates to the annual audition for children’s roles in New York City Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker. After that came auditions for summer intensives, then for companies. Even after I became a professional dancer, I still auditioned— for different jobs, for roles, for choreographers (I actually auditioned for a Broadway show once, too. I was cut right after bravely but unsuccessfully attempting the dance combination that included a backwards grand jeté.)

Auditions are a plain fact of a dancer’s (or an actor’s, or any performer’s) life, so the topic is evergreen for us in the business. In my post-performance life, I’ve written about them for Pointe magazine a lot. There are (ahem) infinite issues to tease out: mindset and expectation framing, planning an audition tour, auditioning “on the sly,” and overcoming intimidation. I even did an article on the directors’ perspective and another on a very specific scenario that recurs throughout a professional dancer’s career: auditioning for a choreographer or répéiteur when you’re already in a company.

When I was dancing— and auditioning— I didn’t usually feel the kind of nerves that are assumed to automatically accompany pinning a number on your leotard and doing a class while people sit behind a table at the front of the room, scribbling notes and whispering to each other. Instead, I remember a sense of heightened… not quite anxiety, but maybe anticipation. Butterflies. Any jitters I felt were more about uncertainty— an audition is full of unknowns, and that’s what made me uneasy (I’m a Virgo, and I like having a plan.) Variables like what I might be asked to do (steps or combinations that were not my forte, for example, or choreography in an unclassical style), who’d be there (introverts like me get stressed out by meeting new people), or if I’d inadvertently make a bad judgement call or miss a proverbial or actual beat (you can read all about my real-life audition adventures, from discouraging to successful to just plain bizarre, here.)

I’m currently working on an article about another variation on the audition theme: when a company’s summer intensive serves as a pre-professional dancer’s extended audition for a spot in the organization’s trainee program or junior company. These young dancers are, essentially, under the microscope for several weeks instead of just a few hours. Surely this drawn-out audition scenario brings an exponentially higher amount of pressure and stress, like trying to run your best time day after day, instead of going all-out in a single race. Right?

But as I interviewed my sources, I noticed them echoing each other in a way I hadn’t expected. The two dancers and two directors I talked to all brushed aside the notion of the extended tryout being an extreme pressure-cooker situation— instead, they said, it should be taken as a chance to show yourself off rather than pin your sense of self-worth on a decision, opinion, or an offer. In effect, the longer the audition, the more you can demonstrate what you know and what you can do. And your future forecast— what your next scenes might look like— can start to be imagined.

In fact, one source (he’s the director of a junior company) pointed out that dancers should think of themselves as always auditioning— from day to day, year to year, for others and, more importantly, for themselves. “Every day is an audition,” he said. “My teachers imparted on me that everything you do is going to inform others who you are, what you’re about, and where you’re at.”

Auditioning for yourself?

But as I thought about it, I realized that a dancer does audition for themself every day. One of my very first teachers, Francis Patrelle, often said (bellowed) at beginning of class, “Re-evaluate your tendu every day!” (To a non-dancer, it may seem odd or inefficient to go back to the drawing board every day, but I think of it more like daily check-ins to make sure the machinery is still working smoothly, repair cracks, and refine the technology.) What he meant was a reminder to do a bit of self-assessment for ourselves, every morning at the barre, without waiting for a teacher to do it for us.

So in that way, we are always auditioning ourselves— by literally and figuratively stretching our tendus.

But in a world where we’re conditioned to believe that everything is a competition of some sort— and that judges are everywhere— it’s easy to go from a bit of self-evaluation to “Do they like me?” or “Am I good enough?” instead of “Here I am!”. Dancer-turned-actor Kylie Edwards had some real revelations about that subtle shift when I interviewed her for Infinite Steps: Thirty-Three Dancers and Their Lives in Ballet. As a dancer, she’d gotten caught up in the notion that the only possible outcomes of an audition were “winning” or “losing,” but in theater, auditions are such an ongoing, routine part of daily life that each one really is part of the actor’s training— their continual tendu re-evaluation.

Here’s an excerpt from Kylie’s chapter in Infinite Steps:

Even though I didn’t struggle with audition anxiety as a dancer, I do wish I’d had Kylie’s wisdom back then. I think it would have helped me face all aspects of my profession with less insecurity and more bravery. So, now that I’m the one in the front of the studio delivering instructions (and trying to contribute value to the world from in front of my laptop), I’m keeping her words in mind.

“There’s no moment when you’re off the hook,” the second company director said. “Everything you do matters. We’re always re-inventing ourselves and we’re always auditioning.”

There’s no script to proverbially flip, but maybe if we treat the performance of our lives as an audition with no judges except ourselves, we wouldn’t need to pin our self-worth and happiness on the next job, promotion, role, gig, or how much applause (real or virtual) we hear.

Odds ‘n’ Ends

• Save the date! Kylie, Gene and I will be discussing the symbiotic relationship between dancer and photographer and how their trust, collaboration and melding of perspectives produce transformative results. Join us at B&H Photo on June 17 from 3-5pm.

• Dance and sports clearly have many parallels: teamwork, physical achievement, a performance component, and avid fan bases. The competitive aspect is somewhat controversial in the dance world (more so for ballet than other forms) because of the assumption that a scoring system can’t account for nuance and that artistic interpretation is so subjective it can’t be graded. Margaret Fuhrer wrote in the New York Times about a new development in dance competing: The International Dance League could put dance— albeit not ballet, at this point— in a way that seems to captivate American audiences, with teams going head-to-head in arena-like settings. I admire how Margaret always manages to present the topics she writes about with the right balance of background, context and intrigue, drawing in the reader to start constructing their own perspective on the issue. Playing to the tribal, competitive human instinct isn’t something I love, but I do like seeing amazing dancers do phenomenal things with their bodies.

• I feel very out of it that I didn’t know about the Furry Community until I saw this article about the Seattle Opera’s first Furry Night. We live such siloed lives, rarely thinking about how vastly different someone else’s is from our own.

• Speaking of silos… dance is a big, broad world and I primarily live in a very small slice of it. But as I move further and further away from my time in pointe shoes, I’m more and more interested in why, exactly, dance feeds us. BAM’s DanceAfrica Festival shows that in brilliant color.

• Are you (or is someone you know) an adult recreational ballet dancer? I’ll be teaching my third Star City Adult Dance Camp from July 18-26 in Roanoke, VA, and I’d love to have you join us!

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I can understand why someone would wonder. From the hundreds of dancers Gene (my collaborator, the photographer Gene Schiavone) photographed— and the hundreds of thousands of dancers out there— what did each of these thirty-three have that made them extra special or, at least, merit a chapter in this particular book? Did we have criteria? Were we, in a way, “auditioning” these dancers?

The answer is that the dancers of Infinite Steps share certain common denominators— but also, importantly, they have many things NOT in common. For starters, we had to work with the photos Gene had— he insisted he was not coming out of retirement just for this book— and from those, we narrowed it down to the dancers of whom he had enough photos that met his own standards (photographers are as nit-picky as dancers, I’ve learned.) Every dancer he’d photographed had a story that was worth telling, so then we had to do some hard thinking about what exactly we wanted this book to portray. It could simply be a collection of lovely pictures and interesting facts, or it could be much more. We had the chance to go beneath the surface, to examine the many facets of the artistic life.

We both felt strongly that we needed to show a wide variety of “types”: not just famous names or those who followed well-traveled routes to and through a career, but people from as far around both the geographical and balletic worlds as we could. We wanted to take readers on thirty-three distinct but equally fascinating, thought-provoking, and meaningful walks through the adventures of these dancers’ lives. And, as Gene and I wholeheartedly agreed, we would not avoid showing, with frankness and as much transparency as the dancers themselves gave us, both the “dark and the light” of those lives. Without exaggeration, but also without sugarcoating.

We cringe at the melodrama of pop-culture ballet, but we’ve both been in and around the business ourselves enough to know that there is drama— and risk, with no guarantee of payout. Every day is a gamble, every performance a giant “maybe.” The routine of our classwork, the consistency of our tendus, is as emotionally stabilizing as it is foundational for our technique.

In fact, in ballet, as opposed to a real game of chance, there’s not even clarity on what the “prize” is. Dancers often start wandering down the roads of the ballet-world forest imagining where they want to end up, only to find themselves, again and again, at junctures and forks that were not on the map. Because there wasn’t a map to begin with. In this book, we could show that everyone who braves it will end up charting their very own course.

One dancer that Gene told me he thought should have a place in Infinite Steps was, I came to see, an example of what happens when the uncertainty, the fog, the fear of losing one’s way makes us cling so hard to what we think is the steering wheel of life that we skid off the road all together.

This dancer is “Marie,” the only dancer in a book full of icons, unknowns, and up-and-comers who is unnamed.

“Ballet… it’s like a flower that only blooms for a day. It’s so exquisite; you see it and then it’s gone. There are other places to find it in the world, but it’s going to take me some time.”

Gene showed me the few photos he had of Marie, a sweet-looking young woman with a beautiful smile. But in this case, what was more important than her images was her story: Gene had learned that during the years he’d been photographing her, this outgoing, cheerful, personable, friendly person had been, unbelievably, hiding something huge and frightening: the strong, invisible demons that were wrestling for control of her mind and body. Who can say who won? Eventually, Marie left her ballet career with a severe case of bulimia.

Marie’s story, as dark and upsetting as it is, could help a lot of people— whether or not their lives were touched by disorders such as hers. Gene found an email address and sent Marie a note, musing on the passage of time and describing our project. He asked if she would be willing to participate. Time passed, no response. Finally she did reply, with the same warmth and sincerity that Gene had described to me, but saying that the past was too painful to relive. She didn’t want to be part of the book. I was disappointed— I’d already begun to think of Marie as a sort of grounding force, a spine for the entire project. Gene proposed we offer Marie anonymity— and to that, she did agree.

Marie and I had two phone conversations, a couple of months apart, each nearly two hours long. From our very first “hello,” I felt like I’d reconnected with an old friend— conversation with Marie was that easy. She must have felt the same way, because as we settled in, Marie told me to get ready. “I’m going to tell you everything,” she said. And she did.

At nine pages, Marie’s is the longest chapter in Infinite Steps. But there was even more I could have written, and more that I wanted to write. Bulimia was only part of her story— that’s the part the made-for-TV movie would have focused on— but behind and beyond that was a person assaulted by other people’s needs, desires, false beliefs and some maybe good but very misguided and ill-considered intentions. Marie could have become a victim, but she didn’t. The disease almost took her life, but Marie took it back. She’s smarter than it is, and wiser, despite the chaos it created in her brain and body. When people around her ignored or denied the severity of her distress, she had the ability to see herself from afar, almost as if she put herself in the future and looked back at the now— a kind of present-moment hindsight we all wistfully wish for.

Ultimately, Marie found therapy and treatment. While she says there is no “cure,” she is in a sort of remission. She lives far removed from ballet now, but like all the dancers I know who’ve moved on, it remains part of her inner life. She has children and a happy marriage, although she’s estranged from her parents, who to this day have never met their grandchildren (Marie’s family dynamic was the root of her eating disorder, prolonged her recovery, and contributed to relapses.) She still loves to move— needs to move— and wanted to do our interviews on the phone instead of video conference so that she could walk around her house and yard while we talked (I can relate.)

Marie told me that her creative outlet these days is interior design. Not professionally, but she regularly looks around her home and sees new ways to arrange things, and when her kids are at school and her husband at work, she’ll move furniture and change the decor. I jokingly asked if she’d come over and redo my apartment someday, but seriously, I see symbolism: maybe Marie’s impulse to keep reassessing and rearranging her physical surroundings reflects her continual inner re-balancing. Or, perhaps, a slight fear of getting stuck again— of being trapped in the rut of the familiar.

At the end of our second conversation, I asked Marie about blame. Does she peg ballet as the culprit for all this, even though she’d already explained to me that the roots of her sickness were in place long before dance entered the scene (she also told me about her siblings, who did not dance but were also afflicted with eating disorders)? No, but there are ways she thinks ballet students could be trained that would arm them against the demons that assaulted her. The emphasis on excellence, she said, was needed but over-valued. If she could run an imaginary ballet school someday, how would she set it up? First of all, there’d be no mirrors, so students wouldn’t associate the sense of movement with their silhouette, nor would they learn to categorize themselves by body type. Without mirrors, they’d also learn to focus on those around them instead of only on their own image— both literally, in class, and in their relationships. “I’d teach children to take pride in the lowly jobs, not just the lead roles,” Marie explained. “I’ll take what’s given to me and I’ll do it well, with my head help up high. Train children to not see others as a barrier to their own ascent. In my twelve-step program for people with eating disorders, one of the slogans is, ‘Just for today.’ I think that’s helpful for all humans. Can you get through today with what’s in front of you? Can you get your eyes off yourself and help other people?” Ballet dancers need to be able to focus as keenly on their outer world as on themselves, she continued. “I would have been greatly helped by that myself,” she said. “I am somebody, I have worth whether my director notices me and gives me a thumbs-up or not. It’s important to create art not just for your sake or for its own sake. What is art for, if it’s only to become a better dancer than the person next to you? It should be about lighting up someone’s eyes.”

Nearing the end of our second conversation, when I was wondering how on earth I would distill Marie’s lifetime of psychological, physical, mental and emotional roiling into a single chapter, she said something that brought everything into focus. Marie did my work for me, handing me the through-line with the grace and generosity I hoped to extend to her.

“I had a thought the other day,” she said. “You’ve caused me to think about this in a kind of story-like way. From the beginning to the not-end, because it’s an arc, like a bird’s-eye view. It made me think of Apollo 13, which they called a ‘successful failure.’ Well, I got out alive and I’m doing really well. And looking back, I do have gratitude for some of the experiences I had. It almost killed me, but I made it out and I’m really glad to be alive.”

“I wish I’d known to accept what I had and to say, ‘it’s enough,’” Marie said. “Today, I know I am useful. I can do so much good for the world and those around me. I can have light in my eyes, have joy and pride and feel, ‘I belong here.’”

Odds and ends

• Last weekend was a big one for me. May 2 marked the sixteenth anniversary of my farewell performance (can someone please tell me where those years have gone??) and on May 3, we had an absolutely wonderful, beyond-my-expectations Infinite Steps book signing and meet-and-greet at the Bloch store in Manhattan with two of the book’s dancers, Irina Dvorovenko and Maxim Beloserkovsky (read my last post about them here.) A huge, huge thank you to Bloch for so enthusiastically hosting us, to Max and Irina for speaking so expressively about legacy, education, and their appreciation of our book, to my dad and Deb for spreading the word throughout the Upper West Side and beyond, and to everyone who came out for a beautiful two hours of celebrating the collaborative arts of dance, photography, and writing.

• My latest article for Pointe is now live! “When Auditioning For Choreographers or Repetiteurs, Bravery Beats Perfection,” despite the specificity of its title, applies to so many situations beyond a professional dancer’s casting call. For the article, I talked to BalletMet dancer Grace-Anne Powers, choreographer Trey McIntyre, and NYCB repertory director Craig Hall about why auditions— both generally and this particular type— are so inherently stressful, but why fear is, as Trey put it, “an unhelpful instinct that can be overridden.” The trick is acknowledging when you feel panic under pressure. “Identify the moment, know that you are not wrong for feeling it, but it’s a thing that can be worked out like a knot in a muscle. Nobody expects you to be a superhero in the studio,” he said. Words I will take to heart myself.

• Last week was Teacher Appreciation Week. Did you know that? I didn’t. But thanks to one of my students, now I do!

  

• At the Met Gala, evidence that balletcore is still a thing.

Thanks, as always, for reading and following along! I do have an ask: If you have read either Infinite Steps or my first book, Being a Ballerina: The Power and Perfection of a Dancing Life, and felt positive about either one, would you mind taking a moment to leave a very brief (or not brief, if you’re so compelled!) review and rating on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any other online book site? (Goodreads is another good one, if you’re active on that platform.) Reader reviews and ratings are, in this day and age, the number one way an author can get their work in front of more people’s eyes. My personal network is only so wide, so after I’ve reached as far as I can, I’m relying on you to keep the ripple effect going. THANK YOU!

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Although the plan had been for all three of us to conference call that afternoon in 2023, when I dialed the number they’d given me, Max answered and said that Irina was running late— still in a coaching session— so we decided to just get started with the interview and Irina would join in when she got home.

And from there on out, I hardly got a word in edgewise.

My first question was about what emotions came up when looking at photos of himself, how long they’d known Gene and how it felt to look at shots from his career now that he’s not dancing anymore (“The longer I stare at them, I feel I am transported in time,” Max said. “I do remember the stage, I do remember the smell of the costume, the role, the feeling, everything…. it all comes back… it’s like I have truly dived into a time machine.”) From there, Max led me down a long, winding road, as if I was a passenger on a sightseeing tour, narrating the scenery all the way back to his and Irina’s childhood in Kyiv, where they met as students at the Kyiv National Ballet School. He painted vivid pictures of their parallel tracks as star students, turning professional, leaving home, finding their way to the U.S. (he went first, with barely any English and no contacts), joining ABT, collecting role after role and ballet after ballet and rising from the corps to principal. By the time an hour had passed, I was wondering if Irina was going to join us after all. Turns out that she’d arrived home already and had been puttering around their apartment, waiting for Max to take a breath so that she could pipe up.

I did get to talk to Irina, too, eventually. Her version of their shared and individual histories centered on passion— for dance, for the theater, for living for something larger than oneself. Two hours after I’d dialed them up, I felt like I’d been to Ukraine, Europe, the Metropolitan Opera House, and their apartment in New York City, where they’d held wildly popular Zoom ballet classes during the Covid pandemic that cemented their reputations as deeply invested, wise, caring, tough-loving and humorous teachers.

I felt an immediate bond with both Max and Irina although our lives, aside from the ballet world we both inhabit, were (and are) wildly different. We’re about the same age and our years as performers were roughly the same, but I heard something in their voices and in the way they described their life stories that sparked an especially strong “me, too!” reaction.

It’s the absolute need to dance above all else and despite any challenges; the theater as a place of safety, security, and as a “home”; the intense sense of time passing too quickly and needing to seize every moment; and— yes— the pain of dancing. The mental and physical struggle to balance effort and ease, to be both keenly present and also very aware of one’s specific spot in a vast world.

But also, and importantly: that any pain completely disappeared on stage and was never a reason to stop or even hesitate. There is no martyrdom or sacrifice, only conviction that this is what you are meant to do and this is the time that you are meant to do it. That certainty carries us through life, as the relationship between a dancer’s body and spirit, like any other, evolves, but they know each other too well for doubt or mistrust.

Here are some of my favorite parts of our conversation.

Max, on his transition from performing to teaching:

“No, I don’t miss dancing. For me, it was natural to stop, but for some people it’s a huge void. I felt in every fiber of my being that I’d reached full circle. I could have squeezed out another two years, but it wasn’t fresh anymore. I was suffocating.”

And on how he and Irina’s relationship slid from dance partners to friends to romance (Before they emigrated, they performed pas de deux in galas all over the world, including on one in the U.S.):

”There were five or six couples on the tour, and six rooms at the hotel. The presenter assumed I was Irina’s boyfriend at the time, and handed me a key to our room. So we just said, ‘Okay…” and went to the room. I don’t know if we were too shy or scared or it just happened so fast, but we just went with it.”

And Irina, who left me a ten-minute voice memo after we’d hung up to add more thoughts about why her burning need to be on stage kept her going after ballet:

“Art is like emotional cleaning. We are all so stressed, through life, but art is healing.

On stage, I always like to take risks. I throw myself into it. If I didn’t, I was not living fully. This edge, this excitement, that’s probably what fascinated my audiences. If I was not fully expressing myself, I felt trapped.

There was not a single day of my career that I was not in pain. That was my biggest struggle. My body was, in certain ways, very lucky, but in certain ways, not. My feet were not the best. I always had tendonitis, sprains, swollen this, swollen that, and then it translated all the way to my knees, hips and my back. But it was never enough to make me think about stopping. I was limping before, limping after, but onstage, I was the happiest person. The adrenaline completely overpowered the pain. My mind took me to a different sphere.”

And on the concept of ‘perfection’:

“For me, there is no ‘perfect.’ If I look at my footage now, and these photographs, I see energy and excitement that overpower the flaws. There’s a fine line, a thin edge, between academically, graphically beautiful— you work like crazy in the studio to make it that way— and expressing it through your body language. That’s what we’re sharing with our dancers now. Being an artist on stage is more than knowing the steps— that doesn’t mean you will become a full artist. You need to be clean, but also to find the depth in the music, your emotion, the drama, and the colors you can apply to even an non-story ballet. That’s when the picture comes alive.”

Irina and Max will join me and Gene next Sunday, May 3, at the Bloch dancewear store at Lincoln Center (51 Columbus Ave between 61 and 62nd Sts.) between 3 and 5pm. We’ll be signing books (available there for purchase if you don’t have yours already) and sharing more about these two stunning artists’ lives, past and present. I can’t wait to meet them in person, although I feel I already have.

Please join us!

(And if you’re interested in some new dance gear, attendees get a special day-of discount at Bloch!)

Last week, we had the largest gathering of Infinite Steps dancers to date! Seven of the wonderful thirty-three in the book joined me and Gene at Capezio’s flagship midtown Manhattan store for an informal chat about some of the threads that, we all agreed, magically seem to run through each of their chapters in the book. There was mingling, chatting, hugs with folks long unseen and with (for me, at least) several who I’ve never been in the same room with— yet I’d just written a mini-biography about.

Here are some snapshots of the evening, which also felt significant for me personally. Aside from the excitement of seeing that this book means as much to so many others as it does to me, I could not help thinking back to going to this very Capezio store as a kid and teenager nearly every week, or so it seemed, for shoes, tights, leotards, warm up pants… Last Friday, standing in the store (renovated and looking much different than it did in the ‘80s and ‘90s), I thought about how if you’d told me 35 years ago that someday I’d have a book launch in that very spot, I’d have been stunned, disbelieving, and probably a little confused.

And lastly, Max’s advice for young dancers today:

“Social media and the phone may help, but still, you have to go back to the studio. The phone may be your agent, your manager, but you still have to work. A lot. 2,000 followers doesn’t matter. The curtain goes up, and it’s you against 4,000 people. Just be prepared for that.”

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Vjola wrote: “I have just received the book… and I’m honestly overwhelmed with emotion. I had to pause for a moment just to take it in. What you have created is not just a book—it feels like a gift of the heart, offered to dance, to dancers, and to every soul whose story lives within it.”

Before I interviewed Vjola, Gene had given me some background about her career, their relationship, and what he knew of her life post-performance (read her chapter to discover it for yourself— but I’ll hint that it involves being a teenage refugee, a ballerina, and a thrilling career shift.) So I was prepared, when we met on the Zoom, for this simply gorgeous, elegant, poised and stylish yet casual woman who exuded warmth although she had every right to be guarded. She said she felt self-conscious about her English (Vjola is Albanian and has lived in France for many years), so had a friend sitting nearby to help with translation if needed. In the background, her airy, light, quintessentially Parisian apartment made me marvel, yet again, at our incomprehensible ability to converse with and see people in real time, anywhere on the globe.

Right away, Vjola opened up— and that, as I came to see during our conversation, is foundational to her philosophy of life. One of my favorite quotes from the entire book is hers: “If you listen to your heart and your head, follow what you feel, you are never wrong.”

But that, in our increasingly complicated, distracting, enormous, demanding world, is not easy. How can you even hear your own heart and head amid the din of everyday life? Decision-making becomes enormously fraught. Consequences loom whichever way you go. Life is short, precious and wild. Fear is everywhere— of making the wrong choice or, even worse, of not making a choice at all and then wasting one’s precious time on earth. Tasks are everywhere, all the time. Resting is an act of defiance.

In our email exchange after she’d received her copy of Infinite Steps, Vjola elaborated on what she’s figured out at this point in her own incredibly colorful, passionate and fully lived artistic life.

“The idea of “following one’s heart” is actually quite complex. Said that simply, it becomes a kind of shortcut. To truly be able to follow one’s heart—and to succeed in doing so—is a privilege, even a form of luck. And today, that possibility is often challenged, as the world around us has become so different, and sometimes more demanding.”

I’m beginning to think that living an artistic life is the surest way to hear oneself think. The further I get from the stage, the further I sometimes feel from my own heart, though writing about it does allow an outlet for the same voice that came flooding out of me while dancing. But I wish that Vjola’s true statement that following one’s heart is a privilege wasn’t so true.

The concept of knowing one’s mission and purpose in life was echoed over and over by other dancers I talked to for this book. Here’s Maria Kotchekova:

“Dance is my voice. I do not have this voice as a human being, but as a dancer I have this power that is way beyond something I could imagine.”

If you are in New York next week, please join me and Gene and several of the Infinite Steps dancers for a chat, meet-and-greet, book signing, photo display, and celebration at the Capezio flagship store (1650 Broadway, 2nd floor) on Friday, April 17 from 5:30-7:30pm!

It’s free and open to the public, but you do have the option to buy a ticket via EventBrite, which gets you a copy of Infinite Steps and a reserved spot to take a short class from former ABT soloist and Infinite Steps dancer Craig Salstein.

See you there!

BEFORE YOU GO!

It’s bear season here in Asheville…

I heard the news, read the rebuttals and watched the Instagram reels in response to Chalamet’s interview, but I didn’t feel the same flare of resentment as many others did. My reaction was more of a sigh and an eye roll. This was just another off-the-cuff, thoughtless comment that, really, had very little to do with ballet or opera. If he’d been sitting for a formal discussion specifically about the place of classic performing arts in the 21st century and, in that context, had dismissed ballet and opera as unimportant or unpopular, then… well, I’d have more to say.

But he wasn’t. He was talking about himself, trying to reinforce his OWN relevance in pop culture, his personal “brand,” his popularity and his ego by demeaning the littler people, by brushing aside the types of performance art that don’t measure their worth in dollar amounts. It was his way of emphasizing—or maybe making sure others agree—that his own place in culture is, relatively speaking, more valuable and valid.

Chalamet even acknowledged that fact by saying, “I just lost fourteen cents in viewership…” as if he’d caught his own faux pas and reflexively grabbed for a way out. What he was really doing there was doubling down: he’d suddenly sensed wrongness of his argument and needed to justify his stance with proof that poor little ballet and opera are, literally, poor. And, therefore, not worth caring about. Disposable, unimportant, unnecessary.

As I write this, I AM getting a bit incensed. But the thing is, it doesn’t matter what someone like Chalamet says or thinks about ballet— his dismissal of it isn’t going to make a person like it or not like it any more than they already do. Dancers and fans won’t decide to stop dancing or go to a movie instead of buying a ticket to the ballet because an actor thinks it’s marginal. And yet, I do think that those who’ve never taken more than a glance at ballet can always discover its magnitude— I doubt that a first-time ballet goer will recall Chalamet saying “no one cares about this….” and decide that his words override the impact of what they’re seeing onstage.

We in the ballet world always just keep on going— on a daily and even minute-by-minute basis, over months and years, and through the generations. The drive to create dance, to experience it, and to embody life through movement is unstoppable. Yes, it would be neat if more people had ballet in their lives and could feel the thrills of its many powers, nuances, and discoveries. And it’s a definite yes that if companies, dancers, teachers, choreographers and organizations had a wee bit more economic stability, we would be healthier— physically and mentally. I’ve seen greatly talented young dancers who had everything they needed for a wonderful career in ballet— except the money to pay for audition tours, accept a spot at a prestigious university ballet program, or take a company job that didn’t offer a living wage. Artistic potential is lost because of economics.

But we’re not on life support as an industry or, even more so, as an art form. Dancers are the breathing machines of ballet, and every day they make it more and more alive.

The past few weeks have brought an exciting (and exhausting!) flurry of Infinite Steps activity. I was in New York to present with my co-author, Gene Schiavone, at the American Dance Guild’s second annual Book Fair, and also went to Wilmington, DE, to visit First State Ballet Theatre where Infinite Steps dancer Hailey Fairhurst is a member. And I did a reading at Asheville’s own Malaprop’s Books and Cafe with my fabulous co-presenter, Megan Jones Medford. Some more podcasts have aired, too: The Brainy Ballerina and Dance Talk with Joanne Carey. Have a listen!

If you’ve read and enjoyed Infinite Steps: Thirty-Three Dancers and Their Lives in Ballet, would you consider leaving a review and rating on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any other online platform? Reader reviews and testimonials go a long way in helping our book land in front of other readers’ eyes. THANK YOU!

Some Other Things On My Mind This Week

• My left hip is one year old this weekend!

• In Seattle, kids will get to dance in P.E. class, thanks to a partnership program between Pacific Northwest Ballet and Seattle Public Schools!

• An Asheville-area company has been making patches for NASA astronauts since 1961 and its official supplier since 1970. Its latest products are now on board the Artemis II!

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The image I had of Balanchine was certainly incomplete, however. I learned that he’d come to the U.S. from St. Petersburg, via Europe, had started the School of American Ballet with Lincoln Kirstein, that Serenade was the first ballet he choreographed here and that it was for students, that he’d been married multiple times, had a facial tic and a penchant for puns, liked to iron, was fanatical about the “now,”and wanted dancing done with great energy and speed. I read about how his classes were notoriously hard and that as a teacher, he was exacting. I absorbed stories about his urging dancers to always strive to exceed what they’d done before— be more precise, move bigger, dance faster. Or slower. I read anecdotes and recollections about him from former dancers. I knew that he loved to cook (and was good at it), especially Russian dishes, and delighted in sharing meals and entertaining. He loved drinking vodka. He like to wear Western-style string ties and roll up his shirt sleeves when he was teaching or choreographing. I read about his death in 1983 from a mysterious illness that was later diagnosed as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. I especially remember the vivid description of Balanchine’s funeral in Merrill Ashley’s book, Dancing For Balanchine.

My impression of Balanchine was not quite awe-struck or reverent— I was more curious, because of my infatuation with the style of training I was immersed in and because at that point, all of my teachers had known him personally as colleagues, contemporaries, or dancers— but I WAS in awe of the ballets he’d choreographed. Balanchine’s ballets were the first ones I performed on stage as a child, then as a teenager, and as I grew up and became a professional dancer, they were always my favorite ones to dance. I was lucky to have been in companies that had a lot of Balanchine in their repertoires, but even after 18 years as a professional, there are scores of Mr. B’s ballets that I never got to do. Sadness.

In the past few years, there’s been a lot of investigation into and discussion about the life of George Balanchine, the man, whose many public and private personas don’t always appear to align. Much of this renewed focus on his personal life has acted like a negative spotlight, prompting questions about Balanchine’s choreographic and institutional achievements and contributions. I listened to the podcasts and read the articles and, even though the intention of these conversations might have been to sharply analyze the hows and whys of Balanchine’s life, actions, and relationships, I never felt I knew or understood him any better.

But then I read Elizabeth Kendall’s latest book: Balanchine Finds His America: A Tale of Love Lost and Ballet Reborn, published last October by Oxford University Press.

Elizabeth’s a dance observer, scholar, writer, historian, professor and memoirist.She’s written a lot about Balanchine (and other things!) before this book, but Balanchine Finds His America is different— it looks at a very specific, important era of his life (and ours, even those of us who weren’t born) through Balanchine’s eyes. Or how Elizabeth, based on her deep, thorough, thoughtful research, imagines he saw the new country he’d arrived in, the people he met, the things he thought about.

George Balanchine, age twenty-nine, is looking down from the window of the suite on the thirty-fourth floor of the Barbizon Plaza Hotel on Central Park South in New York, New York. It’s October 17, 1933, Balachine’s very first night in America. I can almost see his keen face, high forehead, doubt lines already etched around his mouth, staring down into a sea of blackness— the blackness of Central Park, with a few twinkling lights around its rim. He’s still a young man, though he’s been through a lifetime of trouble: war, revolution, famine, an emigration from Russia to Europe. And here he is at the second start of a second emigration— to a new continent. Or what could be a second emigration.

That’s the first paragraph of the first chapter in Elizabeth’s book. You can see why I was pulled in!

By the time I finished the book, I really did feel that I knew Balanchine— the person and the genius choreographer. Elizabeth manages to untangle the complicated (and previously, to me, confusing) iterations of the companies that pre-existed NYCB so that I could finally see why Ballet Caravan was more significant than its name implies. We see how the roles of the many figures whose names I’d only vaguely known as important players in the Story of Balanchine, but hadn’t really had a grasp on why, were continually shifting in and out of Balanchine’s orbit. Elizabeth writes like she speaks— you feel like she’s talking right to you, sitting across a table or at a coffee shop, or walking down the street—and both her knowledge and her down-to-earthness come through.

(Maybe that’s partly because I’ve known Elizabeth since I was 14 years old. I was a student at the Pacific Northwest Ballet School summer course the year that Elizabeth was there to be the translator for a Russian teacher, Nina Danilova. Elizabeth’s warmth, her beaming smile, buoyant energy and her downright friendliness made a very lasting impression.)

In Balanchine Finds His America, Elizabeth takes us along with Balanchine from New York to California and lots of places in between, analyzing how certain landmark ballets that he created during that decade were influenced by the era and by Balanchine’s own mentality and emotions at that time. I learned about the World’s Fair, New York City’s tangle of competing dance impresarios and the struggle for theater space, and I loved picturing the various outfits and lodgings, habits, and social goings-on, both ballet-related and not, of 1930s America.

Elizabeth doesn’t keep herself out of this book, either. In her Preface and Epilogue, she is open about her own conflicted feelings regarding Balanchine, writing about how to consider the things he did and said that today (and probably back then, too, but more quietly) would be, frankly, awful. She writes this in her Epilogue:

It was hard, while writing, to reconcile the two parts of myself: the feminist and the Balanchine fan. I got help from W.H. Auden’s introduction to the works of the poet Constantine Cavafy (translated by Fae Delvan)— Cavafy, who, in key poems, describes an erotic world of “casual pickups and short-lived affairs” among men. Auden doesn’t criticize Cavafy’s experience in this introduction. His only criticism, he writes, “applies to all poets, namely that Cavafy does not, perhaps, fully appreciate his exceptional good fortune in being someone who can transmute into poetry valuable experiences which, for those who lack this power, may be trivial or even harmful.

In other book news… I was a guest on The Ballet Help Desk last week, the day after I’d traveled to Raleigh, NC, for a reading and signing at the wonderful Quail Ridge Books. I’ve admired the hosts of The Ballet Help Desk for a while now— Brett and Jenny are two “ballet moms” who started their podcast to make things clearer and easier for other dance parents and students by covering nearly every aspect of life in the ballet world, from training programs to auditioning to injuries and mental health. They’re known for bringing as much clarity as possible to topics that can seem overwhelming, hard, or downright weird by asking pointed questions and not beating around the bush in their quest for answers. The questions they had for me centered on my impressions about the ballet job market today, the realities of “going for it,” and how students and young professionals can, and should, face their prospects with practicality while holding onto their dreams and ambitions. And, of course, we also talked about my own career and transition and the latest accomplishment of which I am so proud. You can listen to the episode here or on any podcast platform.

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SALE ALERT!

Visit University Press of Florida’s website to take advantage of their Spring Sale and get 25% off your order AND FREE SHIPPING! Use code 31SPR26. Don’t wait until May 31, when the code expires!

I was on board from the first conversation Gene and I had, back in October of 2022. I’d already written about ballet life as I see it through my own eyes, and although I have more to say from that viewpoint, I didn’t want to— yet. But the chance to talk to a whole bunch of other dancers from all over the place, whose experiences both paralleled and were wildly different from mine, and to then consider and shape their stories for others to read, felt just right. I could step aside and be the microphone for other dancers who had largely been seen but not heard.

As the months passed, our project began to take shape— it shifted a lot. When I look back at notes from our early conversations, I see all the ideas Gene and I had that eventually fell by the wayside, replaced by others but not necessarily discarded (we’ve got lots of cutting-room floor scraps to make something else from.) I love the messiness of art-making. The broad strokes, the tossing around and trying on of ideas and potentialities, the experiments, and the slow (although sometimes it’s startlingly fast) process of chipping away at the big block of a concept until what you were meant to create emerges. Then, looking at the final product, it seems inevitable— it was there all the time, and you just had to paw through the weeds to reveal it.

When my box of author copies arrived the other day, I almost laughed, thinking about how many times over the past three years we’d thought we were just around the corner from completion, only for “finished” to disappear around yet another bend in the long, winding road towards publication.

So you’d think that after all this time, I’d tear open that box like an Asheville bear at an overflowing garbage can.

But, strangely, I didn’t. I brought it inside, put it on the kitchen floor, and started making dinner. And then I puttered around the house for a while. Probably swept the floors. Checked my email. Thought about opening the box, and also thought about not opening it.

For some reason, I suddenly didn’t want to cross the finish line. Of course, the book had been done for a while already— but the reality of the physical book signified the end of a chapter in my life. Suddenly, the months of working and waiting seem to have passed in the blink of an eye. And I wanted them back.

Some will say that old thing about the end of one chapter is the beginning of another, and yes, it is. But I’m nostalgic, sentimental, and ambivalent about the future. I’m also nervous— as with Being A Ballerina, I’m hit with the reality that this thing Gene and I created is now out of our hands and, literally, in the hands of anyone else who happens to pick it up.

Onward. My neighbor came over to metaphorically hold my hand while I cut open the box and pulled out a fresh copy of Infinite Steps: Thirty-Three Dancers and Their Lives in Ballet. As I flipped through it and saw the book that I’d only seen on my computer screen up to then, I tried to imagine that I’d never heard of the book before, that I was someone randomly picking it up in a bookstore. And I think that if I was little ballet-student Gavin all over again, I would have found a cozy corner of the store to sit down and read that thing cover to cover.

If you’re in Asheville, please come see me at Malaprop’s Books and Cafe on Sunday, March 22 at 4:30 pm. I’ll be having a conversation about Infinite Steps and the ways we can all see ourselves through these dancers’ lives with my good friend, the dancer, teacher and choreographer Megan Jones Medford. More information is here.

And if you’re in the Raleigh/Durham/Cary area, please come to Quail Ridge Books on Tuesday, March 17 at 6:30 pm for the same, but with Jared Redick, assistant dean of dance at University of North Carolina School of the Arts. More info on that gig is here.

We’ve already gotten some good press! A starred review in Library Journal and beautiful mentions in En Face Magazine and Critical Dance, as well as a lovely feature article in Dance Magazine.

My stomach flutters, though, as I wait for the most important reviews of all— from the dancers of Infinite Steps, who are receiving their copies now. They are the ultimate judges of this book’s success, and if they think we’ve painted their portraits in words and photos with truth and beauty, that’s all I need.

Order your copy of Infinite Steps from University Press of Florida (use code 31SAVE for a 20% discount) or anywhere books are sold (a great option is Bookshop.org.) Request it at your local bookstore if they don’t have it already, please!

And please, please, please ENJOY the book!

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An interesting podcast

I went to Ketchum and Sun Valley, ID, a couple of weeks ago to guest teach for Ballet Sun Valley (and do a little book promo at the same time.) On the flight home, I happened to listen to the Ballet Science podcast episode titled… yes… “How This Airline Pilot Started Ballet.” I am all over the topic of later-in-life ballet students. This one, the pilot and dancer Christopher Marici, talks about the reasons why he finds ballet so fulfilling, fun, satisfying and such a great complement to his life as a pilot. The parallels between the two pursuits are many, from the type of demeanor required (a fixation on detail, order and precision and a high sense of responsibility) to the absolutely beautiful analogy Christopher makes between ballet and piloting: both take you out of this world.

So, next time you’re on a flight consider that your pilot might be doing grand pliés and relevés in the cockpit (when his copilot is on duty, hopefully.) In the back of the plane, meanwhile, this is how I cope.

These days, there are several different competitions— too many to list here— many more than when I was a student. Back then, there were only a very few that I was aware of: the Jackson International Ballet Competition, Moscow International Ballet Competition, and the most famous of all, the Prix de Lausanne. All were much too elite for me to even entertain the notion of trying to enter.

I did do one competition myself, though, when I was a senior in high school. It was much lower-profile than any of the big international ones and, subsequently, there were no stakes. Nonetheless, it did not go well for me. Nowadays, it’s called YoungArts, but I think in the ‘90s it was…. something about youth and advancement and the arts. It was held in Miami, and to get there, you had to have yourself videoed doing a variation (pre-smartphone, that was a much more involved endeavor than it is today) submit it (by mailing in a VHS tape), and then wait. Notification came by way of a telegram!!! Can you believe? I don’t know why they used Western Union instead of a phone call or letter. But anyway, I got invited to go to Miami, along with a few classmates, for a weekend of mixing and mingling with other artsy teenagers (the competition included multiple disciplines— classical and contemporary dance, instrumental and vocal music, theater, and I think even visual art), taking a master class or two, and performing our solos for the judges.

You can read more about why my experience was not so hot here, in this article I wrote for Pointe a few years back about the type of mindset a dance student should have when going to a competition. I’ll just say that in hindsight that although I came back a bit deflated, it didn’t last: I sincerely wish I’d had the chance to do more such things. The first time out, I learned how to do it— I saw and felt how to handle myself, mentally and physically and emotionally. I got the drift. I noticed how the kids around me were handling themselves, took some cues, and translated them for my own use. Even without getting close to the top award, I felt validated and purposeful.

It was just as well, since a few months later I was launching into my professional career and not looking back. But now that I have students who DO have multiple chances to prepare for and participate in competitions, I see again how valuable they are. Ballet comps have gotten a bad rep for looking like sheer money-making enterprises that don’t give enough back to the young dancers who peg so much on them. But, while I agree with some aspects of that argument, I think for most students— like myself— the benefits are real. I love helping my students decide whether to take part— the mere fact of their interest in doing so signifies something— prepping them over a few months, and then guiding them through the actual event. Of course, this is nothing like the Olympic Games, but the psychology of it all is the same, just on a smaller scale. And no gold medals, podiums, or anthems.

There was an article in the New York Times the other day headlined “What Olympians Can Teach Us About Disappointment.” Aha, I thought— dancers don’t need to learn from Olympians because, like a serious athlete, they encounter such things (no, not on the world’s stage, but still) day in and day out. I stand firm that not every disappointment is a bad thing. There are the tiny ones— GRRRR, I can’t nail that pirouette!— the medium ones (casting) and the ones that make it seem like the world should stop turning because this thing— whatever it is— is so awful (major injury, job loss… things that happen in most any industry). Over time, they add up and lose sting, but add the friction that breeds what people call “grit.” The NYT article describes the tools athletes hone through their training so that disappointments are strengtheners instead of kicking them over: the power of purpose (any dancer has this as their magic weapon), a team of supporters (teachers, fellow dancers, family), and just a sheer love of and compulsion to keep doing what you’re doing are what enable a person— dancer, athlete, average Joe— to keep putting one proverbial foot in front of the other.

A few weeks ago, I took a group of students to the Youth International Ballet Competition. We were almost derailed by an ice storm, but the administrators of the comp condensed the schedule and all my kids were able to take their adjudicated classes and perform their solos. And all did wonderfully under multiple types of pressure and, I think and I hope, came home with a new layer of pride, assurance, self-awareness and worldliness. Let’s be honest— who hasn’t fantasized about being an Olympic champion? Personal triumph deserves a moment on the podium, whether there are TV cameras on you in a packed arena and cheering fans or not.

Pub date for Infinite Steps is a month away… and pre-ordered books ship THIS WEEK!!!! Ahh!

Raleigh-area folks, please save the date and come see me at Quail Ridge Books on March 17.

Asheville-area folks, please save the date and come see me and Megan Jones Medford at Malaprop’s Books on March 22.

New York-area folks, you can come say hi at the American Dance Guild Book Fair on March 29!

More events to be announced soon! Stay tuned.

And of course… don’t forget to order yours if you haven’t already. Use discount code 31SAVE for 20% off.

And lastly, happy (belated by the time you read this) Valentine’s Day from the lovely dancers at BCA!

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Without realizing at the time, I was also honing my eye for ballet and forming my own aesthetic taste. What I was learning in my ballet classes was physical; what I saw on stage in performances was emotional; but being able to stare for as long as I wanted at a crystallized split-second segment of ballet taught me about detail: line, expression, subtlety.

Dance photographs captured my heart, my imagination, and triggered my sense of possibility. I still remember specific ones that made a special impression: a very young Gelsey Kirkland in a student performance, another very young Merrill Ashley in class, Suzanne Farrell in Don Quixote. I noticed, without judgement, differences in dancers’ lines, proportions, affectations, and even technique, which is put under the microscope by the camera’s lens.

And now, of course, I feel more passionate about the power of dance photography— and photography in general— than ever. My sister, Flynn Larsen, is a photographer (Flynn did some photography for Pacific Northwest Ballet when I was in that company and took one of my favorite pictures of myself of all time). And, as you loyal readers know, for the past three years I’ve been working with former American Ballet Theatre photographer Gene Schiavone on our book of photographs and essays spotlighting thirty-three dancers he’s worked with over the course of his career.

I was very excited to have the chance to explore another new dance photography book recently that is, like my and Gene’s book, Infinite Steps, also a testament to the significance of photographs to an ephemeral art form. In Balanchine’s Steps: How The George Balanchine Foundation Preserves His Genius, was created in celebration of the 30th anniversary of The George Balanchine Foundation’s Video Archives. Since 1995, the Foundation has orchestrated coaching sessions between dancers who originated roles in Balanchine ballets and the dancers of today who will perform and keep them vital, vibrant, and relevant. The sessions are video recorded, along with interviews with the originators, and archived for posterity. And— as we see in this book— there has (almost always— some early sessions were not photographed) been a photographer in the studio too, discretely snapping away. A few weeks ago, I spoke with the book’s photo editor and designer, Kyle Froman, who is himself a former New York City Ballet dancer. Kyle and I share a sense of photos as the most striking record of ballet— both the pieces of choreography and the artists who perform them.

I wrote an article about the book and my conversation with Kyle, which appears now in The Ballet Herald. I’ll spare you a rehash of my thoughts and let you read them for yourself in the magazine.

I do want to mention something Kyle said, though, that I think pinpoints the magical way photography enables the continuity of dance. By plucking out slices to treasure without interrupting its flow, “Things morph, whether you try to freeze them or not,” he said. “They change over time, and they should, depending on who is dancing and where we are in this world. But some things should never change.”

Infinite Steps: Thirty-Three Dancers And Their Lives In Ballet debuts March 17. Pre-order from University Press of Florida (use code 31SAVE for 20% off) or your favorite bookseller (I love it when people ask their local bookshop to stock my books! And bookshop.org offers discounts, too.) Or, yes, Amazon.

North Carolina-area folks, would you like to join me at Quail Ridge Books on pub day? I’ll read excerpts and talk with University of North Carolina School of the Arts assistant Dean of Dance, Jared Redick, about themes I saw running throughout Infinite Steps and that we’ve both encountered in our own ballet careers.

And Asheville people, mark March 22 on your calendar if you’d like to attend my reading and book signing at Malaprop’s Books and Cafe with my friend and fellow dancer, teacher and choreographer Megan Jones Medford.

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Of course I did leave the house, get myself to the studio and start preparing (my pre-class warmup got more and more necessary, and longer, as the years went on). But the heaviness of spirit lingered. I vividly remember standing at “my spot” at the barre in the Oregon Ballet Theatre studio moments before the teacher started class, thinking, “I really don’t want to do this.” It was a physical reluctance as much as a mental one.

But I never bailed. I couldn’t make myself not do it. I could have simply picked up my bag and walked out, done a little stretching and exercises in an empty studio by myself instead, but I never did. Why? Why not give myself a break? Because I knew it— a “break”— wouldn’t make me feel better. In fact, I’d feel worse than if I powered through the initial slog. I needed to do it.

And there was something else. A little voice reminding me that I actually did want to. The part of me that wanted to keep my sweatpants on and curl up like a cat was vying for my attention, but its allure would be thin and fleeting and I knew it. The longer-lasting good feelings would come, I knew, if I ignored saccharine temptation and got started with those pliés.

Why do dancers go to class every single day?

They stand there at the barre, repeating the same dry exercises over and over. They seem to focus needlessly, excessively hard on small, simple movements. It looks boring (and to be honest, often it really kind of is.) The “fun” part of class, the big jumps and traveling steps, takes up only the last few minutes. There’s a lot of grunt work for a very short joy ride across the studio floor.

Are they martyrs? Masochists? Obsessed? Immature? Indentured servants in the fiefdom of ballet company life, held hostage in the studio by their love of dance? Just plain nuts?

The only accuracy in the above paragraph is “obsessed.” But in a good way, I’d argue.

A few weeks ago, I listened to Shankar Vedantam interview psychiatrist Anna Lembke about addiction. In our world of over-abundance and commercialism, we’re surrounded by pleasure and pleasurable things. Indulgences are waved in front of our faces, everywhere we go. But our brains, I learned, are hard-wired to seek balance— homeostasis— in order for us to feel a sense of stability, predictability, safety. Extremely pleasurable experiences can give you that, sort of, but only briefly— a “high.” As Shankar described it, this pain-pleasure “seesaw” of our nervous system is always trying to find balance. When one side— say, the pleasure side— is weighted too heavily, too often, the seesaw violently crashes down to the other side— that’s your poor animal brain trying to correct itself— and you feel the extreme contrast of not having that pleasurable thing anymore. So… what do we do? We go back for more, to tip the seesaw back in the first direction (the pleasure side). And, at least in the modern Western world, “more” is always right there, handy for the taking.

What does this have to do with ballet?

Ballet has its own pleasure/pain seesaw. But engaging in it— doing a ballet class— is to almost literally feel that seesaw gently tipping to one side, then the other, than back again, very slightly, always pretty close to center, or balance. And we all know, dancers or not, that ballet requires (and develops!) physical balance as well as mental (Black Swan is fiction, folks!)

Ballet definitely looks and feels like an addiction, but the draw is not like a drug that churns you into a vicious cycle of seeking high after high after high until the high doesn’t even feel high anymore.

In ballet, the effort (that is a much more accurate word than “pain”) and reward metrics continually waver back and forth, never over-dominating the other. We’re hooked by the satisfactions, which come from something as simple as moving through barre work and as magnificent as a triumphant performance in front of a live audience, and we’re compelled to push through drudgery, effort, frustration, and yes, occasional actual pain, because those forces always, basically, equal each other out.

So at the end of the proverbial and actual day, ballet makes you feel good. Whole. Satisfied, even when things have gone wrong or badly.

Some things Shankar and Anna named that characterize an addictive substance or behavior are true of ballet:

• It puts you in a “trance,” or flow state, by blurring other thoughts and distractions;

• It takes you fully inside yourself, both mind and body;

• It’s available in limitless supply;

• It teases you to continue “using” because there is no end. No finish line, no final completion. Just an ongoing path, with twists and turns that obscure what discoveries might lie just ahead.

BUT! Ballet also naturally “cures” you of its grip… because eventually, in the short- and long-terms (the end of a piece of choreography, the rehearsal day, or the entire career), fatigue wins out. And you gratefully step away. The withdrawal is natural.

Shankar and Anna’s conversation turned to cures. The things they talked about— going cold turkey, removing temptation, distracting yourself, finding support and motivation in a community or recovery group— made me think about how ballet has the things that are both the addictive qualities but also the cures: it’s so immersive that you can’t really think about anything else, it involves your entire self— body, brain, emotions, breathing, coordination, awareness, patterns, memorization. The experience of dancing in a class or a company is like group therapy, if I may go out on a limb. You’re in a studio, backstage at a theater, sharing dressing rooms with other people going through the exact same thing, a communal experience that’s simultaneously intensely personal.

You’re each working through your own demons, but in the company of others. You feel each other. There’s great comfort and strength in that.

I’ve heard about equine therapy, where people in recovery are tasked with taking care of horses as a way to learn to take care: of another creature first, and then of themselves. To me, taking ballet is like taking care of yourself. Your body and your technique are like the gentle creatures you’re responsible for, and that you’re continually learning more about.

I wonder what would happen if people struggling with addiction took ballet classes.

Dance therapy isn’t new. Dance To Be Free is an organization that teaches dance to inmates with the aim of giving them an outlet to process their pain, come to terms with their pasts, find love of themselves again and renew the senses of autonomy and self-worth that are stripped away in prison. The program tries to counter the effects of incarceration, paving the way for people to re-enter society with pride instead of anger and bitterness.

Dance To Be Free uses more expressive, less technique-based dance practices (though the participants do learn and perform choreography) than a traditional, classical ballet class. I wonder, though… if learning even the basics of a fine-tuned skill like classical ballet, which nurtures quiet pride, self-assurance and self-worth, and still allows for an infinite range of personal expression, would be beneficial to someone in a state of inner crisis— whether it’s addiction or incarceration.

I think it would.

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Infinite Steps

Thirty-Three Dancers and Their Lives in Ballet

Gavin Larsen and Gene Schiavone

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Portraits of dancers rendered through reflective storytelling and exquisite photography, illustrating the varieties of individual paths within the world of ballet

“What a wonderful look at the process of making art! Readers witness the artistry of Schiavone’s photography through portraits of remarkable dance artists and get to know the dancers themselves through Larsen’s writing. Infinite Steps allows readers to experience one art form within another.”—Kevin McKenzie, former artistic director, American Ballet Theatre

“Engaging and eloquent, former dancer Gavin Larsen provides a fascinating peek into the lives of intriguing artists at various career stages and a unique exploration into what drives dancers’ ambitions, all captured through the expert lens of Gene Schiavone, a cherished photographer for Boston Ballet over many decades.”—Mikko Nissinen, artistic director, Boston Ballet

“Gavin Larsen writes with sensitivity and thoughtfulness that reveal facets of the dance world in glimmering new ways. Combined with Gene Schiavone’s beautiful photographs, these stories will resonate with dancers and even fascinate readers unfamiliar with the dance world.”—Jenifer Ringer, former principal dancer, New York City Ballet

“What pours out of the pages of this book is love: love for dancers, love for ballet, and love for the hard work of art, as well as a keen understanding of the extraordinary moment in which a dancer and photographer meet. Everyone involved in the creation of this book knows just how much effort and devotion goes into a life in ballet, an art that disappears in the moment that it comes into being.”—Marina Harss, author of The Boy from Kyiv: Alexei Ratmansky’s Life in Ballet

“The range of dancers profiled in this book provides not only a well-rounded view of the ballet world from aspirants to legends but also a testament to the fascination of dance photographers for the art form. A knowledgeable dancer wrote these profiles, and that shines through constantly. They are sensitive, deeply considered, and illuminating.”—Rachel Howard, dance correspondent, San Francisco Chronicle

“Offers a refreshing take on dance photography. We not only see the beauty of the dancers’ movement magnificently represented by Schiavone’s photographs, but we also get to know them through their own words brought to life through Larsen’s resonant writing. This artistic collaboration, with intimate glimpses behind the scenes, makes the dancers’ lives leap off the pages in more ways than one.”—Elysia Dawn, chief executive director, United Arts Collier

Infinite Steps invites readers into the deeply personal journeys of thirty-three ballet dancers from around the world, tracing their paths from first pliés to final bows and beyond. Through intimate profiles by writer and dancer Gavin Larsen and stunning photographs by Gene Schiavone, this book reveals the physical demands and quiet triumphs that define a life in ballet. Each chapter offers a glimpse into a dancer’s inner world, illuminating the realities behind the moments portrayed by the images.

The dancers featured in this book span generations, career stages, and perspectives. Some, such as Misty Copeland, are internationally celebrated stars, while others are just beginning their journeys, and still others have transitioned into new lives beyond the stage. Alina Cojocaru began dancing in Kyiv at 9 years old before becoming a principal dancer with The Royal Ballet and English National Ballet. Paloma Herrera became one of the youngest principal dancers in the history of American Ballet Theatre, and Marja’ Quaqua received Copeland’s prestigious Ballet in the City Scholarship for emerging Black dancers. Kylie Edwards performed with the City Ballet of San Diego and transitioned to an acting career, while Vjola Hajati found a second home performing cabaret at the Moulin Rouge in Paris.

From the discipline of training to the vulnerability of retirement, these stories reflect the full spectrum of what it means to be a dancer, resonating with Schiavone’s images of the artists at work and rest. Infinite Steps is a tribute to the resilience, craft, and humanity of dancers. For lifelong ballet lovers, students dreaming of the stage, or anyone interested in learning about the people behind incredible art, this book offers a rare and heartfelt look at the many ways a life in dance can unfold.

Gavin Larsen was a professional ballet dancer for 18 years before retiring to write and teach about dance. She has written for Dance Magazine, Pointe, Oregon ArtsWatch, and the Threepenny Review, among others, and is the author of Being a Ballerina: The Power and Perfection of a Dancing Life. Gene Schiavone was the staff photographer for American Ballet Theatre from 2000 to 2020. He has also provided photography for Boston Ballet, the Mariinsky Theatre, and the Bolshoi Ballet, as well as studio photography for student and professional dancers.

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When I listen to the All Things Considered podcast in the evenings, I frequently tap “next” to skip over segments that don’t interest me (confession— the ones I skip are usually the movie reviews, actor interviews, “fluff” pieces. I want the hard news, please). But when My Unsung Hero (from my fave show, Hidden Brain) comes up, I pause whatever else I’m doing and either move closer to my phone or turn up the volume.

Each mini-narrative in the Unsung Hero series features an anecdote from someone who’s found themself in a bind in some way— everything from major, life-threatening situations to simple but unhappy mishaps and jams. This person needed help, whether that was logistical, physical, or emotional. The protagonists of these stories are unexpectedly (key word) saved, guided, or comforted by a stranger who had absolutely no obligation to step in— and in fact, often went far out of their own way to be of aid. What the stranger did or offered might have been as small as a supportive word of encouragement or as heroic as pulling someone out of burning building, but regardless of the specifics, at a moment when the storyteller felt completely alone, without options or hope, someone did something to change their life for the better. There’s no expectation for compensation or reciprocity. Sometimes, in fact, the ‘hero’ doesn’t even stick around long enough to be thanked. Often, for this reason, the storyteller concludes with a message for their unsung hero, whose name they may never even have learned: “If you are out there somewhere, listening to this, ‘thank you.’” But even if the hero isn’t listening and doesn’t hear how lasting their actions were, at least they’re not unsung anymore.

Interestingly, I can’t recall the specifics of the one episode that’s left the most lasting impression on me. What planted itself in my head and I hope I never forget was a quote from the very end of the anecdote: upon being profusely thanked for taking the time to help, the hero replied that it was nothing. “Everyone has five minutes.”

It’s true. But in our crazy world, it often doesn’t seem like it.

With those words—“Everyone has five minutes”— circulating through my own hidden brain, this week I committed myself to undertaking the New York Times’ Ten Minute Challenge. Every month, the editors select a well-known painting and provide prompts for readers/viewers to consider as they spend ten uninterrupted minutes gazing at it on their screens (you are permitted to quit looking at any time, of course. There’s no policing). The questions the editors pose help guide your thinking, opening the door for you, so to speak, making the painting more interesting right from the get-go. It’s like a set of hand rails as you tiptoe into unfamiliar territory. At the end of ten minutes (or whenever you’re done studying the painting, if you exit early), the page scrolls down to reveal context, insight, and analysis that, optimally, bring you even deeper into the artwork and, also— here’s the point of art, right?— your own thoughts, world and self.

This month the painting is Frida Kahlo’s The Two Fridas. I did it. I spent the full ten minutes (even went over a few seconds!) studying the painting, zooming in and out, panning right and left, up and down, back and forth over the Fridas’ expressions, clothes, hands, the background, even the bench they’re sitting on. The editors’ prompts did exactly what they were supposed to do— spark my own questions, my own impressions and opinions and ideas.

When I finished my ten-minute dive into The Two Fridas (and here’s the second confession of this post: my mind did wander a few times and I might have been distracted by a text message ping), I read the editors’ mini-tutorial: why Kahlo painted The Two Fridas at that particular point in her life, what had just happened to her, what she was depicting, the symbolism of the hearts, the hands, the blood, the dresses… How and why she began painting, how tortured and colorful and rich and devastating her life was and how that came out in her art.

It felt really good. I wasn’t a visual art expert before and I’m still not, but having even this small amount of knowledge and closeness to one artwork gave me something more than just some interesting trivia about a famous painting— it was a connection. It takes very little exposure to art— of any sort— to touch your human instincts for empathy, curiosity, and self-reflection. This whole endeavor— all ten minutes of it— reinforced my philosophy that the more you know about something, the more interesting it becomes. The less you know, the less likely you are to care about it— or the people involved in it.

The Ten-Minute Challenge also was a reminder that the “five minutes” lingering on my mind from the Unsung Hero story are worth using. The world did not end because I studied a painting long enough to have thoughts about it. I didn’t miss a deadline; I wasn’t late for class. I learned some things about an artist, an artwork, an era of history, a culture. I appreciate someone else’s life and struggle.

I may be naive, but I’m wondering if (and hoping that) the currently out-of-control advancement of artificial intelligence will spark a backlash, a return to and re-appreciation of slowness, deliberation, hand-making, doing and creating things physically with our very own, non-digitized bodies. Practicing— and looking at— physical art keeps us real. We are still who we are. For the gazillionth time since my life in dance began, I thank my lucky stars for a career in a profession that needs, basically, only one tool— a body— and some open space.

Every day in the dance studio, the only digital device is my phone, set to Do Not Disturb, playing ballet music. For two or more hours at a stretch, the only “screen” my students interact with is the mirror in which they study the art that they’re creating, on, with and for themselves. The only “technology” is their physical bodies and their pointe shoes (which, although they’ve sure changed a lot since Marie Taglioni’s day, are still remarkably simple and most attempts to “improve” them don’t really do much). We are doing the balletic equivalent of a close read every day.

And they love it. My students, I mean. There’s no race to their dance bags to fetch their phones the split second class is over or in the pause between barre and center. They’re thriving with this daily “two hour challenge” to focus on one thing, to think about it, to learn about it, to invest their physical selves in it, to question it, explore it and go further down its endless path, without following an empty promise of the non-existent “perfection.” Class time is our refuge from the grasp of the digital world.

Speaking of dancing…

Infinite Steps news!

Here’s something neat: After you’ve browsed Pointe magazine’s holiday roundup of dance photography books, how about choosing an old-fashioned I.O.U. to hand to that special person in your life this holiday season, so they get the joy of receiving a gift twice— and you get the joy of giving twice? If you pre-order Infinite Steps, you can download and print a specially designed card for your giftee (three different lovely designs to choose from!) that’ll whet their appetite for the book’s arrival in very early spring. Go here to choose and download your card, and here to pre-order. (Pre-orders ship on February 18, 2026.)

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But here’s one thing I do miss:

Arabesque.

Arabesque must be the iconic position of ballet. Whether you’re an avid dance fan, know ballet only through The Nutcracker, or have never even seen a live performance, I can almost guarantee that you know an arabesque when you see one.

Young children associate their ballerina dreams with striking a proud, strong, straight-as-an-arrow piqué arabesque, and as a female dancer you’ll spend more time in arabesque than any other position (except maybe 5th.) Yet as simple, clear, clean and effortless as a well-done arabesque looks, it is deceptively hard to attain. (Somewhere in one of my family’s photo albums there exists a snapshot of an under-six-year-old me attempting an arabesque on the back patio of my grandma’s apartment. I vividly remember thinking that the position I was making was exactly like the ballerinas I’d seen in books, and being absolutely deflated when I saw my own picture, which looked like a child imitating a nose-diving airplane.)

My youngest students are taken aback (pun unintended) when I start teaching them how to arrive at a correct arabesque. The body does not intuitively go into that shape and it’s dismaying to discover how hard it is to keep one’s upper body upright without tipping off to one side; both legs completely, completely straight and turned out while lifting one directly behind, foot pointed, and shoulders down away from one’s ears. Add the arms, which should be elegant, soft, and reach precisely to the front and side, and you’ve got the pieces to solve the mysterious puzzle of the arabesque.

But here’s the rub: you can’t look at your arabesque without ruining it.

Lacking a 360-degree swivel-neck or eyes on the back of your head, when you are in an arabesque, your lifted leg is out of view. Without turning to peek in the mirror, you can only guess how your arabesque looks— how high is my leg, how upright is my back, how square or open is my hip, how straight are my knees? The moment you turn your gaze to check, the purity of the shape is lost. And yet, what you think you’re telling your leg, back, shoulders, supporting leg and foot to do might be very different from what they actually are doing (as I discovered after that summer day at Grandma’s house.)

We all do give in to the temptation to glance at our arabesques in the mirror (you really have to, or else you’ll never know what you need to fix), but always with an understanding that what you see in the reflection is not the real picture. Arabesque’s beautiful paradox is that you’ll only ever see your creation in your imagination— or in a photograph. To look directly at your arabesque is to cause its death.

The photographer Gene Schiavone (my collaborator on our forthcoming book) once made a comment to me about the mystical nature of dance, an art form that exists only in the moment it’s created: “The photograph is proof of what you did,” he said. That reality can be thrilling, validating, or devastating (one of the worst photographs ever taken of me or anyone else was published in The Washington Post after my opening night with The Suzanne Farrell Ballet. The photographer caught me on the way down from a grand jeté: bent legs, collapsed arms, like a deflated ballerina-balloon or a parody of one).

Seeing photographic evidence of what you’ve done can also be perception-shifting and life changing. Dancer Annelisse Veldhuyzenvanzanten (who’s featured in Infinite Steps) had her first photo shoot with Gene when she’d only been studying ballet for a couple of years. When she saw the image of herself doing a jump she’d never tried before, she said, “It changed me going forward. My goals had seemed so far in the future, but seeing that picture motivated me because I realized I was closer than I thought I was.” Although Annelisse was talking about a spectacular jump, for a dancer, seeing evidence of their pristine, clear, clean, energetic and powerful arabesque is just as validating as what she described— it’s a realization that you’re in the club. You really are a ballet dancer.

Arabesque takes a lot of strength, which very young students do not yet have, and I mean physical strength as well as mental. As a student, you can gradually learn how to organize your body into arabesque, but only if your mind doesn’t convince you to give up the effort or give in to mediocrity. Arabesque doesn’t come knocking at your door— you have to make it from scratch all by yourself.

As the years go on, arabesques get stronger, straighter, cleaner. And easier.

Then, when the initial shock at the difficulty and discomfort of such a light and graceful position fades, the beautiful versatility of the arabesque comes out.

To me, arabesque is freedom.

When I was dancing, arabesque felt like my magic power. You’re rooted to the ground by your supporting leg, but at the same time, your arms and lifted leg reach forward, side and back, sending energy in all directions— even up! It’s bird-like (Swan Lake must be the ballet with the greatest number of arabesques per capita) in shape, in meaning, in movement and poise. There’s an entire chapter on arabesque in Laura Jacobs’ absolutely fascinating and excellent book, Celestial Bodies: How to Look at Ballet. In it, she says:

“Arabesque is always on the move, outside of time, seeking that which is hidden, and as silent as the Sphinx.”

Jacobs also writes about the word itself: what does it really mean? When I was a student, my own instruction on ballet terminology was haphazard and incomplete (and over the years I gradually came to see that it was also full of inaccuracies.) But I did learn the translated meanings of most of the ballet basics: plié, tendu, sautè, pas de chat, jeté, etc., but never arabesque. In her Chapter 5, “Arabesque, Above All,” Jacobs describes the musical association with the word (a “compositional form,” and/or an ornamentation of a melody) and the historic artistic ones. In ancient times, “arabesques” were curved, spiraling motifs that symbolized eternity and flow in the natural and spiritual worlds. I vaguely knew those things when I was a student and professional dancer, but never really thought about how those concepts related to the basic first arabesque that I carried in my proverbial toolkit. One day, in the middle of company class, it occurred to me to ask someone who, I assumed, would know what “arabesque” literally means. I turned to my friend Paul, a native French speaker who was born in Montreal, grew up in Switzerland, and moved to Canada as a young adult. “‘It means ‘horse-like,’” he said. “Like an Arabian horse— ‘Arab-esque.’” Hmm, I thought. Really? Paul is not only a dancer, teacher, choreographer and director, he’s also a horse guy, so I took his explanation with a grain of salt. But now I get it. The shape is “Arab-esque.” I love the notion that an arabesque is animal-like and can take on not only the shape of but the sensitivities of a non-human. Yet another reason why it feels so expansive.

I think that arabesque is ballet’s symbol for infinity.

And that’s why, I also think, that arabesque is the defining image of ballet. But it may also be a symbol of our times— or maybe, of all times. It carries so many meanings: determination (achieving an unlikely physical feat); balance (physical balance but also effortful balance— too much of a “whack” turns your arabesque into a contorted trick without any subtlety); equal focus on the past, present and future; possibility and potential; strength and vulnerability (might she topple over?). It also symbolizes trajectory, travel, and even hints at the ability to take off into the sky (sissone arabesque does just that.) Just looking at a dancer’s arabesque gives a person the sense that they, too, can be infinite, liberated, and endlessly variable.

That’s why dancers grow to love the arabesque.

And why people love to see it.

Slight adjustments to the height of your leg, angle of your head, placement of your arms; whether you are on pointe or demi-pointe; on a straight standing leg or in plié… all of these options are the adjectives coloring your arabesques. You can tinge them with sadness, with fatigue, with defiance, with joy. You can angle your body away from the audience, coyly hiding your leg, or tip the entire shape into a penché, tempting disaster while creating amazing suspense and drama (penché is one of those ballet steps that actually IS as hard as it looks.) Arabesques in a group or in repetition (Swan Lake, Giselle, La Bayadère…) stun an audience into holding its collective breath. A good partner can help you make your arabesque even larger, longer, higher, and exuberant than you can on your own.

In arabesque, you feel both enormous and precise. Hovering in place, but ready to escape.

Sadly, as hard as it is to train your body to love the arabesque, it’s all too easy to lose it. But the feeling of doing it never dies. I’ll never forget the thrill of the just-right piqué arabesque, the invincibility of propelling myself on pointe and suspending time and gravity.

Today, I still crave an arabesque. My arthritic spine yelps in protest, but even so, every once in a while when I’m out on a walk and find myself on an empty stretch of road, I’ll stop, look around to make sure I’m really alone, and step proudly into as huge a piqué arabesque as I can muster these days. I can’t hold it, but who cares. Just moving into that arabesque makes me feel spiritually in charge, optimistic, grounded, and free.

That’s why I think arabesque is the prescription for our times. For all of us!

Try it for yourself. Don’t worry about how it looks (don’t peek in a mirror!). Just strike the pose and let me know how it makes you feel!

You’ll find lots of beautiful, evocative arabesques here… ⬇️

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Even before Gene Schiavone and I started working Infinite Steps, I had interviewed a lot of people in the dance field: dancers, teachers, students of all ages, choreographers, directors… even a couple of dance parents, a pointe shoe fitter, a mental health coach, a conductor, pianists, dance union representative... While I’m the definition of ‘introverted’ and am definitely no Susan Stamberg, the prospect of conducting an interview feels much less daunting to me than walking into a cocktail party. With a clear topic to discuss, an immediate point of connection (dance), and common language (also dance), I go into interviews with a sort of anticipatory freedom and curiosity. Specific questions anchor the conversation, but I love to let the interviewee lead me— most everyone (there have been exceptions), if you get them going, will relax into talking about themselves: what they do, why they do it, what they know, how they learned it. It’s an easy leap from one answer to another question. Very often, I feel like the interviews conduct themselves.

In the process of writing Infinite Steps, I was welcomed thirty-three times into the lives and minds of people whose backgrounds, ages, experiences, personalities and views range from a teenage New York City Ballet apprentice (Laina Mae Kirkeide, who was still a student when we first talked) to former dancers all over the globe. Despite knowing only two of them personally before this project started, I immediately felt the warmth of our common home: the enormous, yet intimate, dance world. Their insights on life, work, relationships, aging, ambition and fate gave me a lot to think about. I logged off from each conversation feeling energized, admiring, and anxious to present the dancers inside these photographs to the world.

You might think that after spending my entire life in this industry, training, performing, teaching, and observing, there would be nothing new for me to learn. And to some extent, that’s true. But last week, when I finished proofreading the book straight through from page one to 183, like a painter stepping back from their canvas or a choreographer watching the first run-through of their ballet, I finally had a bird’s eye view of our work. And what I saw was not the collection of photos and profiles that we’d set out to make.

Yes, Infinite Steps showcases thirty-three dancers’ lives in ballet through Gene’s arresting photographs and my essays, but now I think it’s more than that. It’s not just about ballet. It’s thirty-three case studies on the human experience— seen through the lens of dance. It’s about how people find, honor, and follow their purpose and weather the inevitable storms of life with as little knowledge of the future as anyone else. But for every dancer in this book, the one thing that couldn’t be shaken— even when forces conspired to take it away— was their iron clad need to dance. And that’s what carries them through.

What I see now, as I look at this group of wildly different individuals whose experiences span generations, geography, cultures, entryways and exits, are underpinning themes that vary only in context, but never in truth, and that make sense whether you’re a dancer or not. Here are just a few.

• Listen to your heart… (“If you follow what you feel, you are never wrong,” said Vjola Hajati, who left a ballet career behind to become a star in the Moulin Rouge)

• Savor the ‘now’… (“I have peace of mind instead of always pushing, thinking, ‘What’s next?’” said Herman Cornejo, the ABT superstar)

• … But never stagnate (“That’s been the story of my life: I’ve always been like, ‘What’s next?’” said Xiomara Reyes, Herman’s longtime partner who escaped her native Cuba to forge an international career and now, in her 50s, still dances. I love that Herman and Xiomara, who connected so deeply on stage, have distinctly opposite mindsets about the phrase, ‘What’s next?’)

• Move through disappointment, pain, rejection, and fear (“I was able to push through any negativity because I wanted it so badly— it was a life choice,” said Max Beloserkovsky, another longtime ABT principal who came to New York from Ukraine with no English, no job, and only hope)

• There doesn’t have to be a goal (“For me, there is no ‘perfect.’ When there is depth in performance, the picture comes alive,” said Irina Dvorovenko, Max’s partner in life and art, who segued her ballet career to the stage and screen)

• Ballet is powerful (“Dance is my voice. I do not have this voice as a human being, but as a dancer I have this power that is way beyond something I could imagine,” said Marja’ Quaqua, a dancer with a small company in South Carolina whose battles with depression turned into a mission to help other dancers find self-assurance and validation)

I think we’re all on an endless quest to know and understand more about our own selves, whether we realize that or not. Learning about someone else’s life gives us a way to consider— though not necessarily to compare— our own. I hope that in reading about these dancers, you see what I see: thirty-three examples of how to live an examined life— the dancer’s way.

Pre-order Infinite Steps: Thirty-Three Dancers and Their Lives in Ballet at upf.com, Amazon, and/or put in a request for it at your local bookstore.

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Infinite Steps: Thirty-Three Dancers and Their Lives in Ballet will be officially released by University Press of Florida on March 17, 2026 (but you can pre-order it now on upf.com or Amazon.)

It goes without saying that I am thrilled that we’ve finally reached this stage. While the creation of Infinite Steps took many fewer years than my first book (which was a decade, at least, in the making), there were many times when I feared this one would live up to its name.

I’ve often thought that it’s a good thing that the curves, twists and unforeseen side-journeys along the road of an endeavor obscure one’s view of the finish line. Because if we knew how many times we’d go sideways instead of forwards, or have to backtrack, circle around, or jog in place, we might despair at how much more work there was to be done and doubt our stamina— or resolve— to do it. With this project, although all those things did happen at various points, the purpose of the book itself— and the thirty-three stars on its pages— kept kicking me back into gear.

Infinite Steps is a collection of photographs (by Gene) and narrative essays (by me) of and about thirty-three of the hundreds of dancers he shot over the course of his career (not just with ABT dancers, but those many other companies, schools, and in individual photo shoots). Each dancer’s chapter features a small handful of photos that Gene and I picked out to best express their depth, range, and something distinct about their personality and character—which Gene knew so well. We wanted the photos, paired with what I came to think of as each dancer’s “mini memoir,” to allow you, too, to feel and more vividly understand the moments before, during and after the second the shutter clicked.

I interviewed all thirty-three dancers over the course of about a year and a half, some of them twice. Some conversations ran well over an hour long, and all of the dancers told me so much about themselves that I could have written an entire book about each one. Without exception, the conversations left me sincerely, honestly and completely inspired, awed, motivated, and re-energized to not only do my own work, but to celebrate and honor theirs. Gazing at Gene’s photos over and over, filling in the beauty of his imagery with what I had learned about the dancers, I kept coming back to what I’ve always felt in my heart about dancers: they are ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

Some advance reader comments…

“What a wonderful look at the process of making art! Readers witness the artistry of Schiavone’s photography through portraits of remarkable dance artists and get to know the dancers themselves through Larsen’s writing. Infinite Steps allows readers to experience one art form within another.” - Kevin McKenzie, former artistic director, American Ballet Theatre

“Gavin Larsen writes with sensitivity and thoughtfulness that reveal facets of the dance world in glimmering new ways. Combined with Gene Schiavone’s beautiful photographs, these stories will resonate with dancers and even fascinate readers unfamiliar with the dance world.— Jenifer Ringer, former principal dancer, New York City Ballet

“Engaging and eloquent, former dancer Gavin Larsen provides a fascinating peek into the lives of intriguing artists at various career stages and a unique exploration into what drives dancers’ ambitions, all captured through the expert lens of Gene Schiavone, a cherished photographer for Boston Ballet over many decades.”— Mikko Nissinen, artistic director, Boston Ballet

“What pours out of the pages of this book is love: love for dancers, love for ballet, and love for the hard work of art, as well as a keen understanding of the extraordinary moment in which a dancer and photographer meet. Everyone involved in the creation of this book knows just how much effort and devotion goes into a life in ballet, an art that disappears in the moment that it comes into being.”— Marina Harss, author of The Boy from Kyiv: Alexei Ratmansky’s Life in Ballet

“The range of dancers profiled in this book provides not only a well-rounded view of the ballet world from aspirants to legends but also a testament to the fascination of dance photographers for the art form. A knowledgeable dancer wrote these profiles, and that shines through constantly. They are sensitive, deeply considered, and illuminating.” — Rachel Howard, dance correspondent, San Francisco Chronicle

So, coming soon to a bookstore near you… Infinite Steps!

Please follow Gene and me on Facebook and also Gene and me on Instagram if you don’t already. That’s where we’ll be broadcasting more updates, “teaser” posts with sneak-peek content, and news about book events, signings, and who knows what else.

In related news, I was interviewed over the summer by Nancy Dobbs Owen, a former dancer, now educator, choreographer, and writer, for the L.A. Dance Chronicle. Her article ran last week and you can read it here. I had a great time talking with Nancy. It turns out that we have many more connections beyond the what we expected to be built-in as ballet professionals of the same generation. We chatted, ranted, raved, laughed and commiserated during our rambling talk. I do love the pieces of our conversation that Nancy curated for the publication, and was really moved by her introduction. I hope you are, too.

If you learn how the heart and mind communicate with each other, then all doors are open. Because whatever life throws at you, you will be stronger, more resilient, and more understanding.

~Alina Cojocaru

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