On a damp July evening back in 1994, I walked hand in hand with my grandmother who, if my memory serves me correctly, had told me we were going to get ice cream. I hadn’t turned five yet but was already spending my mornings before pre-school throwing silent tantrums in the kitchen, hiding behind curtains, and refusing to get on the bus. So whenever I made nice and got to school on time, my grandmother felt obliged to show her appreciation. That day, however, we didn’t make the usual turn to the ice cream shop. Instead, we crossed the street and entered a tree-lined driveway that took us to an old stone mansion. An errand boy ushered us in. We passed through a high-ceilinged living room crowded with cane furniture until we reached an archway that led to an expansive courtyard surrounded by columned corridors. A stereo playing classical Indian music sat precariously on the edge of the platform, and I could hear the voice of a woman talk over the music. The woman, a young dance teacher, was clapping her hands in tune with the music, wading through a group of girls around my age, instructing them as she walked. I doubt I could ever forget that scene; standing in the archway, I was completely mesmerized. This was so much better than ice cream. I even took to the dance teacher, she was graceful and pretty and everything I wanted to be when I was a little girl. For some reason, though, the dance teacher I got was anything but the one I wanted. I took private dance lessons in Kuchipudi, (a Southern Indian dance form) from an old, strict, extremely dedicated man who made school seem like a better idea.

The arts community at the time ran on the basic principal that classical dance was important, its history mattered and it brought the south Indians in Mumbai together to celebrate its tradition. I took my lessons from this gentleman for over a year and, by the next summer, I was through with all six levels of basics, ready for the “grown-up” part. This actually sounds a lot better than it was. The truth is, with my grandmother around, anyone could have made it to pro lessons. All that was required from me was to show up to class, and hopefully not cry. She’d ensure the teacher wasn’t too nitpicky with movements. It wasn’t until I was about nine years old that I really discovered Kuchipudi, this time formally: studying the greats, taking more than three lessons a week, and even learning the music.

The class was a land of children until the day of a performance, which usually happened during a festival season. Makeup artists would be called in and the mothers would gather around their little girls fussing over their outfits, feeding them so they didn’t faint, and doing their hair. They were always worried about the hair. Aside from the occasional yelling that happened between mothers and their daughters, it was quite a family-like gathering in the green rooms. For most parents, this was a great occasion to both brag and whine simultaneously about the numerous other events they were required to attend. For my mom, though, this was it and, the way I saw it, she didn’t have any reason to complain. I never played a sport in my life, never ran track, I wasn’t even part of a school club. The only other big thing I did was drama and that was once, maybe twice a year. So when dance performances happened, it was a big deal.

I loved being on stage, even if my audience was only six people. The experience was glamorous and empowering at the same time. The few seconds before I went on stage were my favorite, the beat from the tabla, tat tat ta ta tat, at the toes of my feet as my teacher would begin to sing, the gentle hum from the sitar and finally a rush of energy bursting forth as the curtain rose or, as in most cases, the door opened. Curtains were a luxury. But most of all, performances made me happy when my teacher approved. I’d sneak a glance in her direction during the act and, if she was frowning, it meant that I was doing great. The cheering never affected me too much; I just liked being there in that moment, feeling like I possessed an art that a majority of people in the room could only appreciate and not practice. It’s humbling, even to a nine-year-old. I danced for a good portion of my life, performed so many times that my ankle bracelets were beginning to wear out. Like I said, it was all I did, and, in retrospect, I was pretty good.

When I got to college, my teacher had moved, as did my friends and it was understood that I too would give up dancing. My mother didn’t give it much thought either. I suppose we never really saw a “career” in dance. So I continued to do what I had to, found my path and now, I dance Kuchipudi as often as I go on a juice fast — almost never. Over the years, most of my dance friends have either been ballet or contemporary dancers and trust me when I say this, it’s much cooler mimicking ballet at a party than it is Kuchipudi. No, I’ve never tried. I suppose this absence of dance in my life after all this time has somewhat adversely affected my ability to be visually expressive. Dance does that to you, it inculcates a discipline and a confidence within you that helps break certain societal dos and don’ts.

While talking to an old dance friend before writing this essay, we stumbled upon some old photographs of us at rehearsal. I remember that the photos were taken at a particularly difficult time in our lives for various reasons, but none of these pictures reflected those emotions. Dance, unlike any other art form, is so intimate, that it all but physically transforms you into another time and place, allowing yourself to be free.

A professor of mine once told me to fall back on what I do best as a means of mediation, and what I do best is the work I do now. I can’t say I don’t love it, but the dimly-lit practice room in my friend’s house, the sound of feet on the wooden floor, and the uninterrupted hours of my dance teacher’s soothing voice singing, as we glided through the room is far more meditative than standing long hours with a bulky camera perched on my shoulder.

Uttara Valluri is a trained dancer in Kuchipudi. She decided to give dance a break when she joined college and has since gone on to pursue other art forms. Having just graduated from the University of Southern California, Uttara is now arts journalist and independent filmmaker. When she’s not making resolutions to start dancing again, she spends her free time traveling and pretending to be a cool photographer.

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I can’t identify one specific event that caused me to stop dancing. Over the years, a series of factors came to a head leading me to take the focus of my life in a different direction.  I started dancing, specifically ballet, when I was three. As a child, and even throughout my high school years, I never considered making a career out of ballet. There were just so many other activities, both in and outside of academics, that I enjoyed and showed more natural talent for. In fact this relative lack of natural talent in ballet was one of the things that drew me to it most. I’ve always loved feeling challenged, and it is impossible to achieve perfection in ballet. This was a constant driving force in my desire to continue. Because I had been in a pre-professional ballet program throughout my childhood, as senior year of high school approached, my friends were struggling with one question: college or professional company? I say my friends, and not myself specifically, because this was not something I ever gave a second thought to; of course I was going to college. I was most concerned about how I was going to factor ballet into my life going forward and knew I wasn’t ready to give it up entirely. This led me to a happy medium: the University of Utah, a place where I could continue rigorously training in ballet and also pursue other academic fields of study at a high level.

Being exposed to such committed instructors and classmates in the ballet department at the University of Utah motivated me to shift my focus toward a career in professional ballet. I spent the first three years of my undergraduate education with this goal in mind, taking extra ballet classes and performing every chance I could. During that time, I also took classes in the sciences that were always interesting and challenging; human anatomy, in particular, made me think twice about the career path I was on. Between my junior and senior year, I realized I didn’t have the necessary passion to pursue a career in ballet above anything else. The final straw came when I didn’t receive a promotion I had been working for throughout my entire tenure at the University of Utah. At the level I was performing at, a professional career would have been challenging at best and my other talents outside of ballet became more enticing. A particularly difficult aspect of ballet that I could never wrap my head around was that hard work didn’t always pay off; in fact, it had almost no relationship to the success I had achieved over the years. There was too much subjectivity, which wouldn’t have been sustainable for me in the long term.

Over the last almost decade in which I have not been dancing regularly, my relationship to dance has become more complex. I still absolutely love to see great dance performances and then afterward am usually inspired to go take a class. However, being in ballet class is incredibly frustrating. I know how to execute the movements, but my body can’t do so in a way that is even close to the level I was formerly at or the level I hoped to achieve throughout my years of training. Additionally, performing was the thing I loved most about ballet, which is obviously far from the realm of possibility for someone who can barely get through class. I hope that as I get further and further removed from my years of pre-professional training, I can take class for the enjoyment and exercise it provides and not be so critical of myself.

I have been very fortunate to have a mother who remains active in ballet. She did not dance professionally, but has danced consistently for recreation since she was a child and continues to take class several times each week. Whenever I visit home, I take class with her. These adult classes, though infrequent, have been a great way for me to see what my future in dancing could be. The atmosphere is supportive and friendly. The people who take them are trying to exercise in an enjoyable manner. This kind of relaxed environment is very encouraging, though far less rigorous. Finding a place like this is, of course, the challenge. Once my schedule becomes more predictable, this is something I hope to pursue. Who knows how far I will take it or if performing again is in my future.

Even if I never took another ballet class, I could not do justice to the way in which ballet shaped my personality, work ethic and life in the almost twenty years I was actively dancing. The constant pursuit of unattainable perfection instilled in me at an early age has kept me disciplined and constantly striving to be better in every aspect of life. Accepting and bouncing back after disappointment is a skill that has made me more resilient, as I dealt with this frequently during my dancing years. The ability to accept and implement constructive criticism has been key to the success I have experienced in my current profession. On top of these intangible factors, the friends and mentors I made throughout my dancing years remain some of my closest relationships and have helped keep me grounded despite my shift in career.

Maria Walline has a BFA in ballet performance from the University of Utah and an MD from New York Medical College. She grew up in Kansas City, dancing at the Somerset Ballet Centre and later the Kansas City Ballet School. During her years at the University of Utah, she traveled with the Character Dance Ensemble to Beijing, China, St. Petersburg, Russia, and the Basque region of Spain. She trained and performed in both character dance and ballet before moving to New York to begin her medical training. She currently lives in New York City with her husband, Conor, and is an anesthesiology resident at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center.

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I’ve only ever tried to run away from home once. I can’t remember what caused the upset that bubbled up in my stomach, but this eruption was so big, it took control over my little limbs. I packed my cardboard suitcase and stuffed it full with my most valuable possessions, went downstairs into the kitchen to make myself a “Stulle,” a butter sandwich, and stormed out the front door. I came to a halt only a few steps outside our fence. The forest next to our house looked quiet but the lurking dangers of early autumn filled my mind with worst case scenario ‘what ifs.’ Anger began to morph into fear…

I didn’t run far. The mix of rage and courage was only enough to carry me to the first bend in the forest path. Defeated, I returned home.

The second time I ran away was on stage, as part of portraying the character of stone carver Danilo in the Russian folklore “The Tale of the Stoneflower,” a children’s ballet we performed at my local dance school. Danilo runs into the woods in pursuit of the Queen of the Copper Mountain who presumably owns the Stone Flower, known to possess the key to creating absolute beauty from stone. The Prokofiev score, mixed with the adrenalin from the sheer excitement of filling the stage all by myself, took over my (slightly longer, 9-year old) limbs for 60 minutes. It filled my throat, my stomach, my lungs with a desire to move big, with ambition and drive. The music and movement catapulted me to a future I saw so clearly: something clicked. I never wanted to do anything but dance. The desire to find beauty in stone drove my character Danilo into the woods — ten years after I left it all on stage as Danilo, I ventured out and away from the comfort of the small pond of ballet school life to the big ponds of London and New York in pursuit of carving out my definition of dance and the best case relationship status we could have.

It’s complicated.

When it came to taking up the invitation to audition for my then dream company in London, I found out through the grapevine the director had pretty much already agreed on who they’d want to hire. YET, the audition was still on. I felt cheated. I spoke to my then closest mentor, my ballet teacher at the LABAN Center, who advised me to reframe: “Look at it this way — they may already know, but you have the chance to change their mind.” The simmer of hope faded soon as I tried to put myself in the director’s shoes: why take a risk on a stranger? I was always good at rationalizing myself out of opportunities. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job, but I pushed on, stood on stage at Judson Church, the Ailey Citigroup theatre, shot a dance film with former classmates surrounded by an installation of umbrellas on a street corner in Soho, and in many other beautiful places was surrounded by people who helped me define ‘beautiful.’ And the most memorable, I learned, were the ones who truly had to carve it from stone.

But with every gut wrenching rejection after auditions or broken promises of “eventually paid work,” the frustration about the politics and poor working conditions in the game grew bigger and the voice in my head grew clearer: focus on other things. It wasn’t until three years after I graduated with my BA in dance when ‘other things’ fully took over my life. That ultimately translated to me transitioning from part-time arts management gigs to dramatugy, education and outreach, grad school and, eventually, grant writing for an arts and civic engagement non-profit.

“Whoever finds that flower will never be happy” goes the myth about those who have seen the beauty of the Stone Flower. Sometimes, I feel this describes my journey with dance. Once you’ve found the bliss and pleasure in it, all of it, the repetitive but never ending challenges in the class-rehearsal-performance cycle, the high you feel after stepping back into the studio after a short break or when stepping out onto the dark, silent stage… when you cross the barrier of exhaustion and find the pure bliss that comes after passing that breaking point… once you enter into a full-blown relationship with dance, it’s often exclusive. In this case meaning it’s tempting to cut the cord to all other things in the mix of life that may also bring you joy: friends, family and love. When I eventually broke up with dance and ‘dated around’ to try other things, nothing seemed to measure up at first.

I didn’t choose to cut my cord to dance completely, ever. I was fortunate to gradually assemble the tools to develop other sides of me: the writer, the researcher, the interpreter, the connecting agent. I leave the door to dance open, because what’s behind it defines me still and always will. Working in the studio with kids or adults in facilitating dance workshops every now and then brings back those small pond memories for me: that’s where is all began. It’s uplifting to be able to pass on those sparks and see them fly off to become something of their own.

Every couple of days when I am done with work, I head over to Central Market, the Mission or Hayes Valley for open classes. I take the elevator to the fifth floor of the Odd Fellow building, or walk down 17th to ODC, or down Hayes to SF Ballet School. I know for 90 minutes of class or the occasional workshop, I can be part of that world that ended up being too much for me as a full-timer and freelancer. What’s different is, today, I chose to be enough in that world.

Current Relationship Status: we’re good friends now.

Wiebke Schuster grew up in Germany. She received her B.A. in dance theatre from TRINITY/LABAN Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London and went on to test her feet in the New York dance scene. There, she performed at venues such as Judson Church, New York City Center and the Ailey Citigroup Theatre. After returning to Germany, she worked administratively at the Bavarian State Opera and Ballet before moving to Los Angeles to pursue an M.A. in arts journalism from USC. She currently works in San Francisco as a grants writer for the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

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Pigeon toed. At seven years old my mom decided the best cure for my turned-in feet was ballet. What started as one night a week eventually consumed my life. For as long as I can remember I was enrolled in every form of dance. Every free moment I could spare was devoted to movement. I was a difficult and stubborn child, and if I wasn’t immediately good at something I would quit. I guess in that way I was lucky my dance teachers never corrected me for the first eight years of my dancing life.

Unfortunately, because I was never corrected, I learned some very bad habits. These bad habits translated into bad knees and sickled feet. I had lived in a dream world where I believed I was a good dancer. When I went to college the illusion was shattered. I was devastated to be rejected from the dance department of my university but settled on pursuing it as a minor. Slowly the realization dawned on me that I was not naturally gifted as a dancer and the reason I cringed watching myself dance was actually because I was not very talented. However, I was arguably one of the most passionate dance minors I ever knew.

Truthfully, the end of my relationship with dance came at the end of college. I simply could not afford to keep dancing. Like any break up, I tried to rationalize it. “We were too busy,” “we drifted apart.” But now I can see the truth was we were never right for each other. I loved our time together and wouldn’t trade it for anything. I learned a lot about myself and never would have met my true love, Theatre, had it not been for the time I spent with Dance.

I would love to dance again. If the planets aligned and I found myself with time and money I would definitely begin taking classes. So much time has passed I would need to begin from scratch again. And that felt daunting at times. However, recently I decided to take a chance and go to a dance audition. I went in extremely nervous since I have not danced in many years. Instead I walked away extremely proud of myself and feeling rather solid in my abilities.

Maybe someday soon I will find my way to a dance class. Dance has had a huge influence in my life and I owe a lot to it. Currently, I work seasonally as a haunt performer, and it is because of dance I am able to express so much through my body. I love to play physical characters and I find I appreciate movement and those who are able to connect to their bodies. I owe all of that to dance.

Jessica Armour currently works as a theme park employee and enjoys work as a haunt performer. She danced for almost twenty years before moving on to pursue theatre. She holds a BA in theatre acting and directing and a minor in dance performance from Chapman University as well as an MA in applied theatre arts from USC. She recently married Robert Armour whom she met through working in a haunted house.

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Ever since I was a small child, I have used dance as a medium to communicate, often just with myself. The moment I stepped into the studio for the very first time I felt a sense of home, a place where my curiosity about movement and music could be explored. I proceeded to spend almost 20 years in the dance studio, never going more than a few weeks without a barre.

After a certain point, I came to a juncture where I felt my passion and spirit drying up. I was emotionally tired of politics and dance studio dramas. My body was tired. I could no longer see a future in dance as a career or lifestyle. Each morning I dreaded the feeling of waking, knowing I would be greeted by a newfound pain or soreness never before felt in my body. Is there even a muscle in that corner of my knee or elbow to be sore? I yearned for a break and something new.

I did not immediately give up on dance. I moved to Sydney, started university, but kept taking class and did my own dance projects, including a dance video which showed up in an art gallery. I threw myself onto the yoga mat. A few years later it occurred to me that dance had gradually and completely left my life, and a sense of loss started to emerge.

But the real loss developed after a big year for my body; the year I had my son. Pregnancy, and all that goes with it, has the ability to profoundly change a woman’s body and mind. The weight of the baby contorts the pelvis and upper back. The hormones cause frequent waking, wild eating habits and emotional ups and downs. Nothing – nobody – can prepare someone for the journey of entering parenthood. I spent the last month of pregnancy at home, folding tiny socks, re-washing miscellaneous household items, and attempting short walks to the beach. I contemplated what would become of me as an individual. Ever since the moment of conception I was no longer one person, but two. I spent hours wondering what would become of my body, as it seemed implausible that I would ever see, let alone touch, my toes again.

Then came the birth. The most joyous, exciting, intense experience of my life. The birth of a child cannot be described in words, only raw, complex emotion. It was during the recovery of the birth that I suddenly and achingly missed my dancing body – my limber, twisting, flexing body. The body I could ask, kindly, to do things for me and receive a response in movement. Now, my requests were met with the grumbles of stillness, while my sedentary body adjusted to holding my new baby all day in my arms.

During this intense period of recovery from pregnancy and birth, a remarkably tragic event occurred. My father passed away in a sudden moment illustrating the circle of life, exactly four weeks after my son was born. There I was, without my body, in a period of recovery, and an overwhelming sense that the world was upside down. I was a mother now, but no longer had a father.

It was these experiences of tremendous change that revealed to me that for the duration of my life, or at least 20 years of it, my body processed emotions through dance. The zone I entered into via the barre, the plie, the tendu, all contributed to a complex psychosomatic experience of dealing with feelings, including grief. Movement is the channel I have always used to process information, acclimate to change, and build emotional stability.

Without dance as a guide to take me through life, I suddenly felt left without the tools to process the change. Out of nowhere, recurring dreams I experienced as a child returned, as if to nudge me back into dance. As a kid, I had the typical dance dreams on repeat: doing four pirouettes, forgetting my part in a trio, and just being there on stage. And now they were back. My brain was telling me to get back into that zone.

And so I listened. Just as gradually as I left dance, I am getting back into it, one stretch at a time. I take my son to the beach and he practices crawling as I do my ballet barre. I dance whenever, wherever I can. It is unclear where I will take dance and how long it will take to get back into it, but it is a process I am approaching with curiosity and enthusiasm.

I now know that I mustn’t ever leave dance. I realize that dance is not an activity with which one may come and go. Body and mind is movement and emotion, and there must always be effort made to maintain equilibrium of the two. Dance must stay with me, at the forefront of my heart and mind, to take me through life, death and birth.

Melanie Becktel trained in ballet, contemporary dance and improvisation techniques at Ballet San José of Silicon Valley in the United States, and the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia. She then danced with the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance until deciding to return to university.  She earned her Juris Doctor from Sydney Law School and is now a legal aid lawyer. Her son is nearly a year old and loves to dance, too.

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Dancing was a coincidence for me; it was because of my mother that I did my firsts steps. For a while, it was entertainment – I was a very active kid and I loved to move (and also loved the attention I received). The decision to pursue a career in ballet would not come until I was 16, after attending the Sussex Summer School. This was surely the catalyst that led me to become a professional dancer. I trained in London for three years at Central School of Ballet and then I danced for Bayerisches Stattsballett I & II in Munich for another three years. These six years were full of rich experiences both within the arts and outside of them. However, there was a moment when I decided to rethink my situation and my future goals in life.

I could not count the times that I have been asked: why did you stop dancing? What are the reasons? And I have always tried to answer with what I felt at that moment, realising how the answer was changing slightly throughout time. If I had to put it together in one sentence I would say: it was not enough for me. I do not mean that dancing is not a fulfilling career for some, but in my case, the opportunity cost became greater as my years in Munich were passing by. Certainly I was not the same person in 2013 that I was when I joined the company in 2010, and my concerns and goals at the end had little to do with ballet.

There is a thought that has come to my mind several times since I stopped dancing, and this is: “How different it is to experience a performance from the audience or from the backstage point of view?” I do not mean the obvious, but the confrontation between the magic that one perceives from the outside against the crudeness that some dancers go through at some point. My relationship with the art is good, I have learnt to appreciate movement, music and aesthetics. I enjoy a good performance, but I am disappointed with how some people in the industry corrupt and mix its pureness with their own perversions, meaning unhealthy habits of all sorts.

At this moment, I do not see myself coming back to dance in a professional way. Though I have not taken any class since I stopped, I still do some plies and tendus every now and then when I exercise. It is obvious, at least for me, that a well-executed ballet barre (for example) brings excellent benefits to one’s physical condition. Nevertheless, there is a chance that in the future I will take a class to connect myself and the music like I used to.

Overall, dancing has been a life changer for me. I am what I am by my experiences and for a big part of my life, ballet was the center of it. Physically, it shaped me; mentally, it made me tenacious and demanding. Through dance, I had an enormous cultural exchange and I got a grasp of different languages. Maybe I will not make much use of the technique I acquired with training, but the benefit that I gained will accompany me for the rest of my life.

Carlos Salcedo de Zárraga lives in Getafe, a suburb in south Madrid where he attends the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. He is in his third year of a four year degree in economics focused on quantitative analysis. He danced with Bayerisches Staatsballet, performing in major productions like Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Don Quixote and La Fille Mal Gardee, as well as modern works by Jiri Kylian (Symphony in D), Nacho Duato (Jardi Tancat and Nafloresta) and Balanchine (Who Cares). He also performed many times around the UK with Ballet Central.

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I have a good friend who is a very talented choreographer and dancer, but who has had several crises over the past few years when she’s wanted to quit. Though she’s never quite pulled the trigger (dance has a way of not letting its practitioners go so easily), I’ve always told her if she really feels that way, she should quit. Unequivocally.

Dance is glorified and romanticized in our cultural psyche. Of course, that glorification never seems to equal across-the-board financial support, but when you tell any random person you meet you’re a dancer, they suddenly see you through some quixotic haze. Never mind you’re moonlighting to make your budget work. Never mind you don’t do anything that resembles So You Think You Can Dance. To them, you’re pursuing your dream.

But dreams aren’t made of peach fuzz, and any good dream can go bad. Pursuing dance past high school or college takes guts. And not just courageous, trying-to-make-it guts. It takes guts to digest routine rejection, guts to overcome body hatred not to mention injuries, aches and pains, guts to understand the full meaning of no retirement plan, guts, guts and more guts.

I recently completed a project interviewing over 50 dancers over age 50. These are the people who never quit. The idea behind the project is to shed light on ageist ideas surrounding bodies and beauty in mainstream dance culture. But it is also about what it means to not quit. To have those guts.

But I want to talk about a different kind of guts. I think it takes guts to quit dance too. I think it takes guts to understand you will transition out of your flexible lean musculature. I think it takes guts to tell people who have romanticized your dance career without knowing anything about it why you are quitting. I think it takes guts to look at a road you have travelled for a long time and decide to try a new route.

Maybe everything about dance takes guts, both pursuing it and quitting it.

This is why I have asked several people who were once enmeshed in dance but who have pursued a totally new path to reflect on that transition. What was the catalyst that put them on that new path? How has the experience of pursuing dance reverberated throughout their lives regardless of leaving the dance floor? Under what circumstances would they practice dance again? All this October, follow Stance on Dance to hear the stories of what it means to quit.

Let’s get these voices out in the open and have a real dialogue about what it means to keep dancing or quit dancing, because I somehow suspect these two choices are not so different. Nothing is as dichotomous as black and white, and success and failure are often one and the same. In other words, the stories of disconnect are part of the dance journey too.

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