Just smile and nod.

Heading to Connecticut tomorrow for a weekend getaway and can't help but remember all of the memories I have from that state! I attended the Nutmeg Conservatory for the Arts as a high schooler and it was one of the best experiences of my life. I lived with an absolutely amazing host family that I still am in touch with and made some really great friends as well.

My perspective on everything is constantly shifting, but tonight I was thinking about myself at the boarding school in Connecticut and my mind instantly shot to a specific day where a teacher called me into his office...

...he was kind of creepy, but I always smiled and acted politely as a young student should.

This must have been one of the first months of being in school there; September or October maybe (exactly 7 years ago from right now!) He was very talkative so I listened, but what I was about to hear would stick in my head and keep playing over and over and over. To this day, when I am in my weakest of places, I hear it in my head and try to suppress it because I am healthy and smart enough to know that I am a stronger person than some educators I have met in my past.

He started off by saying that he was thrilled to have me back at the school from the previous summer of 2005. He said how promising of a student I was and how he couldn't wait to see where my career would take me. Then, he told me that the Principal of the school had seen me in my placement class earlier that week and said, "Wow. That's disappointing. What happened to her legs?"

Now, mind you, I was a 16 at the time. I weighed approximately 110 pounds. They had last seen me when I was 14. Generally, most normal people are aware, they were not, that a human body changes in that age bracket. A lot of maturing goes on in that time frame and apparently it wasn't good maturing in her eyes. This is the ballet world. Shit like this happens all the time. There are physical requirements. It sucks, but that's reality. I don't have a ballet body, but I have a beautiful strong body and only finally at 23 am I aware of the advantages of that.

Here's my thing: It was one thing for a Principal to say this. It was another for a different teacher to repeat it. It was an entirely different situation to repeat. to. my. mortified. face.

What is absolutely unacceptable is that this was a school that costs an extraordinary amount of money and claims to have a nurturing environment and faculty (and does have a handful of great faculty members), but for this man to call himself a professional in the field and then to be so ignorant as to tell a young girl that someone above him said something is wrong with her legs, tells us that there is a much bigger problem that begins with whom we allow to teach ballet and impress young girls in the first place.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but problems with legs would be paralysis. Problems with legs would be amputation. Problems with legs would be broken bones. There was nothing wrong with me and I feel sad for the weak teenager I was who let him finish the rest of that conversation while still smiling and nodding and agreeing.

2013 Apology/Thank you

I moved back to New York City about a year ago and for the girl who was going to "document so many things"...she sure wasn't too successful. I am sorry...and mostly sorry to myself.

Throughout the course of the year, I had a few scattered successes and many, many more failures, but one of my most disappointing failures was the ability to keep up my blog. 

The transition from NYU college-student (2011) to living at home with a full refrigerator in Chicago and dancing on scholarship all day every day (2012) was one thing, but the transition from those luxuries in Chicago to real-adult-without-meal-plan-in-Manhattan (2012/13) was an entirely different story. 

I feel as if I have lived ten thousand lifetimes in the one year that I have been back. 

______________

I have been blessed in countless ways. I have been challenged in just as many ways. 

The biggest, most important, update is that I have fallen in love with an incredible man who treats me with the respect and love that every girl dreams of finding one day. 

On the contrary, I have worked the stereotypical 3am serving jobs in order to keep auditioning and paying rent, I have dealt with unforeseen medical issues, I have seen friends give up on their dreams for different reasons but mainly in pursuit of financial stability, I have been cut and cut and cut and cut, I have seen friends sign dream contracts, I have cursed at my super for his absolute fucking stupidity, I have learned how to install an A/C unit without falling out of the window with it, I have (almost) learned how to fix ant, roach, and mice infestation while at the same time having an ant, roach, and mice phobia, I learned how to flirt with Mexican kitchen boys at the restaurant in order to get free dinner (before I met you Kunal!), I have met the wrong people, I have met the right people, and everything in between. 

I haven't figured out (yet) if moving back to New York was the right decision as far as my dance career goes, but what I do know is that these experiences have made me as strong as a steel trap and will be able to carry them with me for the rest of my life. 

I am most grateful for that. Thank you, New York. I love you.

...you haven't even seen the best of me yet. We're just getting started. 

Week 1 Update

The Upper East Side from the Upper West Side

So, I've been in New York for about a week now which is crazy because I'm STILL getting settled.

The apartment is wonderful, the roommates are (obviously) wonderful, the area is wonderful, the garbage smell is wonderful, even the god awful 100 degree heat is...wonderful. Clearly, I hate it here. 

Somehow managed to get a waitressing job already which is an absolute godsend. I'm taking a break from menu and drink studying right this very second. 

Bought a gym membership. 

Have a full Metrocard.

Sounds like it's get up and just do it time to me. 

en route

Never once have I said that I was a normal child. Normal children do not grow into normal adults so that explains a lot for the people who know me NOW, but seriously...I was one fireball of a child. 

Let's toss around a good example of my crazy child self tonight to fuel that insomnia a little bit more:

My entire family went to see the Bob Fosse tour in Chicago when I was little. I don't come from a family of dancers by any mean so this was purely for enjoyment, but at 7 or 8 this was the first show that I remember seeing to this day. Specifically this scene (I clapped my hands in my lap for the rest of the show): 

That night, I got home and told my Mom I wanted to write a letter to whoever was in charge and tell them that THAT was what I wanted to do. 

Okay. Well, that's great, but Bob had been dead for about 10 years at that point and neither me nor my Mom knew that. 

I wrote a long letter and addressed it to Bob Fosse and thank GOD, I mean really, thank GOD, my Mom somehow found out about his passing a decade prior and thought...well, this name Ann Reinking looks good and is the next person on the playbill. 

Why not let my 7 year old send a letter to her? (she's a reallllll big deal.)

And so I did. I wrote a letter to Ann Reinking when I was 7 years old and got the most lovely response in return. I asked her where to dance and everything. Am I mortified now? Absolutely. 

The crazy thing is that I am actually seeing postings for auditions that she is in charge of and it's kind of cool that I have stuck with this for so long. It's such a part of me that I can't imagine it not being a part of my life.

With that being said. 

NYC 

is happening

tomorrow!

LET'S DO IT. But before then, enjoy some baby frizzfrazz moments below ;) 

Here we are!

It's July 1st, and the lease has officially started for my first cute little Upper West Side apartment. I'll be living with three great friends, pursuing a dream, I'm 22, healthy, happy and I'm assuming life doesn't get much better than this? The only thing that would be better is if my entire family could live here with me too.

(OH one more thing: if the Kerryman Pub and everyone inside of it could be airlifted and dropped right in Manhattan too!)

I am feeling quite grateful for all that is going on in my life though. It's an exciting transition...nerves and all!

I decided to put my scholarship to the Dance Theatre of Harlem on hold for the moment because of the way my Spring and early summer panned out. The issue in my foot has completely healed (yay!) but that's because I essentially took the month of June off from dancing and although that has forced me to take it easy I think I made the right decision in the long run. With that being said, I am returning to New York with some breathing room to get settled, find a night job, etc.

The original plan was to start the road trip yesterday, but due to my chauffeurs busy schedule as well, we are leaving tomorrow at some point.

Until then, going to enjoy my last summer day in sweet home Illinois!

READ ME 

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This blog post is probably the best advice I have heard in a long time regarding how to audition and audition...and audition and audition...in a healthy and balanced way. Those of you who are around me or talk to me on a daily basis: please remind me to read this in a few months time. If I start getting bitchy and moan-y tell me to go home and read this blog. Thank you for helping us ALL in advance :)

"If you don’t get a callback, let it go.  Go take a class, go make some money, go sit in the park and absorb nature, go drink, go to the gym.  Just keep going."

This article is heartbreaking and so so true. 

Lightsey Darst: The Poorest Art: Dance and Money

By: Lightsey Darst

I've come to a conclusion about dance and money: if dancers did not sometimes sleep with rich people, American dance as we know it would cease to exist.

Absurd and degrading as this conclusion is -- can you imagine the same being said of any other art form? -- the dancers and dancemakers I've tried it out on have reacted with, at most, a laugh. Many haven't reacted at all, as if this idea were already part of their lives. Dance's capital is its sensual appeal; it has little other resource.

Just how poor is dance? There are far too many ways to answer this question. Let's start with a simple answer; let's talk to a dancer.

This is Penny. Every inch the ballerina, birdlike and elegant, she's also -- though you might not notice it at first -- hard as steel inside her cloud of tulle and sequins.

The base rate for ballet dancers in most markets is, Penny explains, $500 a week; the contract is usually per week even when year-round health insurance is included because the season does not run for a full year, but for 30 to 40 weeks. Cost of living increases and seniority, as well as rank in those companies which use the corps-soloist-principal system, might raise one above this base; men also often are paid more. Penny reckons that, in a good year, her salary might amount to 18,000. Throw in some income from teaching, guesting as a Sugarplum in a regional Nutcracker, and unemployment for the summer (ballet dancers routinely go on unemployment in the summer), and you have perhaps 26,000 in Penny's most lucrative year. Penny is in her upper-30s; she has been a ballerina for 17 years.

"But," Penny says, seeing the expression on my face, "you must be in the same boat." I can understand why she would think so. All artists talk poor. But though most writers I know make little or nothing from their writing, they can trade on their MFAs and their literary cred for college teaching gigs. If they have jobs, they make at least 50,000; even as adjuncts, they can bring down Penny's max and then some. And you have to consider expenses: what do writers pay for -- a laptop every few years? Throw in daily coffee and you're still nowhere near a dancer's overhead. Penny's ballet classes, shoes, and some basic physical therapy are all covered by her company, but she must pay for dance clothes, classes over her 12 to 22 weeks off ($12 to $14 a class, minimum of three times a week), as well as any outside training her body needs -- yoga, Pilates, etc. -- at $15 to $50 a session. Rolfing, massage, and bodywork, which many dancers find essential, go higher; one popular local bodyworker charges $250 for a first session and $80 to $90 for follow-ups.

What all this means is that Penny pays out everything she takes in. She has no savings and no debt; she's learned to live "close to the bone." That edge you see in her dance? Her steel is real.
And Penny is one of the lucky ones, actually on contract. According to John Munger, former director of research for Dance/USA, surveys of several markets showed that at most 6 percent of serious dancemakers (including companies and independent choreographers) offered salaries; the rest paid in a variety of ways -- set honoraria, per hour rates, or box office cuts. These independent contractor payments might go as high as $12 per hour for rehearsal and $50 for each performance, or as low as a few hundred dollars lump sum for a project lasting a year or more. "Most serious dancers make less than $25,000 a year from dancing," Munger says. Many make less, and many make their primary living outside dance. Average number of jobs that serious dancers reported in a survey in Washington D.C.: four.

But this is how it's supposed to be, right? Beautiful young things staffing brasseries and coffee shops, leaning slenderly by your side as you decide between a French 75 and a glass of white Bordeaux, their art sweat the shining patina of your evening out? It's fine that they're poor --they're young, they're living la vie bohème. Retirement and health care, that's for adults. And we don't think dancers are adults. Peruse, side by side, the average dance review and the average art review (book review, pop music review -- anything) and you can see how we infantilize dancers and how, while we view other artists as masters of their craft and serious thinkers, we see dancers as mere talented bodies.

A few of these talented bodies make more. According to Munger, seven or eight companies in the U.S. offer 52-week contracts with two weeks paid vacation, just like any other job. Some dancers -- "but not more than one hundred in the U.S." -- command $2,500 a week, adding up to $130,000 a year; add in the guest appearances these dancers can make and the number goes up from there. Over $100,000 -- this is starting to sound like money. But when you consider that most of these dancers live in New York City, you can hardly call them rich, and you can't compare them to top artists in other fields -- coloratura sopranos, virtuoso violinists, splashy postimpressionists.

If we thought of dancers as tax-paying adults, if we took them seriously, then we'd have to take seriously the message common across practically all dance: that the life of the body matters. The moment matters: it matters how you feel, what you do to your body and to other bodies. This is what dance, unforgivably, says: the flesh is good.

Friiiddaayyy

Home on this cold Friday morning and of course it's cold in Chicago now because it's finally June 1st when it should be warm. Ridiculous.

Icing my foot. Drinking tea (the best tea). Twiddling my thumbs. Knitting a sweater. Contemplating life. 

OH, waiting to hear back from Revel in Atlantic City because I was invited to do an audition there in two weeks! 

...until I must go in to work at 4. Come visit me!!

Man on Fire

Not only was this my new favorite song by Edward Sharpe, but he even used New York City Ballet dancers at the end. Check it out at 3:00