Episode 183: Interview with Ruth Horowitz
Dr. Chelsea: Hi, I'm Dr. Chelsea! Welcome to Passion for Dance. It's my mission to create happier, more successful dancers through positive mental skills. And today I got to talk to another academic professional who wanted to understand the culture of professional dancers in New York and not just any professionals, those who don't usually have their story told. Not just the famous dancers, but the story of the corps de ballet dancers. Do passionate dancers get taken advantage of in the professional world, and what kind of dancer will make it in New York City?
I'm happy to share a conversation today with Dr. Ruth Horowitz, a sociologist who specifically studied dancers recently. She interviewed over 80 professionals at various levels of their career and found some really interesting results about passion, how dancers create a career by piecing together different contracts, the grit and determination it takes to make it, and how the identity of a dancer never leaves you. So if you want to know what it's like to move to New York and try to make it as a professional dancer and what kind of dancer is most likely to make it, Dr. Horowitz is here to tell you all about it with some great tools to help you reach your professional dreams.
And before I dive into the show, I want to invite you to follow wherever you're listening. It's free, and it simply means that each new episode will show up in your podcast feed every Thursday. That simple follow is what allows me to keep creating these episodes for you, so please follow wherever you're listening now, and if you're not sure how, just go to followthepodcast.com/passionfordance. You can find it with one click from there. Thank you, as always, for your support of the show. Let's get to the conversation with Dr. Horowitz!
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[Motivational Music]
Hi, I'm Dr.. Chelsea, a former professional dancer and mental performance coach. I know what it feels like to be a passionate dance teacher who cares about your dancers, but you want to challenge them and help them be their best, and I also recognize that some traditions and teaching practices in the dance world are harmful. So I'm on a mission to change our dance industry by creating happier, more successful dancers using positive mental skills.
When you understand how to help your dancers with their confidence, how to find their own motivation, work together as a team and more, your dancers will unlock new levels of competitive success and happiness. And it's not just about them; you deserve the same. So we'll talk about how dance teachers can use positive mental skills to be more confident, resilient, and motivated as well.
Be sure to hit “subscribe” wherever you listen to podcasts. There are new episodes every Thursday, and each week you'll hear from me and my guests with advice and actionable tips for building mental toughness, covering topics about mindset, motivation, resilience, and building a community. Passion for Dance is a show designed to help dance educators like you have a positive impact on every dancer you teach.
[Motivational Music]
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Dr. Chelsea: Hi Ruth! Thank you for being here today.
Dr. Ruth: Thank you, Chelsea, for inviting me this afternoon.
Dr. Chelsea: Absolutely! Will you tell us about your dance journey, your kind of dance origin story?
Ruth’s Dance Origin Story – 3:04
Dr. Ruth: Well, I am not a professional dancer, nor was I ever a professional dancer. I started when I was a kid, about six or seven years old, but it was a big modern dance class, which is what I took. It was once a week all the way through high school. I did take a jazz class in my senior year of high school, which I liked very much. Then in college I took, you know, some modern dance classes and also had the opportunity to take a few Martha Graham classes, which I also enjoyed very much.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Dr. Ruth: So I then had many years in which I didn't dance through graduate school, and when I was an assistant professor and glued to my research and teaching. And then after I got tenure, I started back and I thought, “Oh, well, I'll take some modern dance classes.” But there weren't any good modern dance classes where I was teaching at that time, but there was a really excellent ballet studio. And so, I said, “Okay, I'll take ballet.”
So I started ballet. I was a little bit over 30, so that cut my professional career short. And I enjoyed it very much, and I continued when I moved to New York and found a studio that had open classes that were basic, were not geared towards professionals but people whom I would call hobbyists. I refer to myself as a hobbyist, and I take two to three classes a week, except during COVID when I was up to eight in order to get some exercise.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Dr. Ruth: Then I figured out that my body couldn't support eight classes a week, so I had to decrease.
But in order to do this project, it's not based on my experiences, per se, but I interviewed 87 dancers. They were at all different stages of their careers. Some of them finished their dancing experience when they graduated from high school, others were professionals, and others had left performing many years before. They ranged in age from 20 to 87.
Dr. Chelsea: Oh, wonderful. I love that you found it later in life, and I think that's great because so many people, especially dancers who train when they're young, feel like they have to stop at, you know, 18, 22 and you certainly don't have to stop, and you can even discover a love of it later in life. Yeah.
Dr. Ruth: Many of the young people in the classes that I take, who are now in their thirties, you know, danced quite seriously in high school and now come back to it as young professionals doing many different kinds of things. And luckily being in New York, there are so many performances. We actually go frequently as a group to performances around the city.
Dr. Chelsea: Oh, fun.
Dr. Ruth: We're a very educated audience, I would say.
Dr. Chelsea: That's wonderful. And so, you mentioned your project, and that's what I want to talk about. But I want to back up for our listeners. So you are a professor of sociology, correct?
Dr. Ruth: That is correct.
Dr. Chelsea: Will you explain to our listeners what that means?
What Led Ruth to Examining Sociology of Dancers – 6:51
Dr. Ruth: Okay. Well, I have been teaching since I got my PhD many years ago, and I've been retired for one year. As a sociologist, it's really a study of society, and we study all different kinds of things from issues of social class to issues of housing and gentrification and gender issues, race issues, all across the spectrum.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah. So what led you to looking at sociology in dancers? I think that's pretty unique. There's not many who will study dancers as a group, which is why I was so attracted to your work. I was like I have to hear about what you've learned. So why dancers?
Dr. Ruth: I have to explain my career as from West Side Story to West Side Story.
Dr. Chelsea: Okay, I love it!
Dr. Ruth: Okay, so when I was about 11 years old, I was living in Boston, and the traveling Broadway production came to Boston, and my parents took me to West Side Story. And there were two sides to seeing West Side Story, and I asked my parents afterwards, “What is Puerto Rico?” Because I knew all the states, and it wasn't a state, but it was sort of in the US, but these people immigrated to the US and were speaking Spanish. Huh.
Happily, my father was able to explain that to me, and I became very interested in trying to understand groups that were different from my personal experiences. Growing up the way I did, I had no idea that there were all these people who were Spanish speaking who were in New York, many at that point in New York City, and they had immigrated from someplace else. I mean, I knew my grandparents had immigrated from other places but, you know, I was not thinking about it in those terms. But I remember thinking about that, and that started my ideas about understanding and getting into worlds where it was not my natural place to be.
There was a second element to West Side Story that I think my parents kind of regretted after a while. I remember coming home and saying to my mother, “Can I use my allowance to buy a record of the music from West Side Story?” And my mother thought that was a very good idea. We went down and we actually got a record, and I had a phonograph. For those people who are younger, you know, you had this big box, and the little needle went down on a revolving disc, and it played music.
My bedroom where I had my little phonograph and the record was right over the living room, and every night I used to dance to a complete side of West Side Story. I'm not very heavy, but on the other hand, I think I clunked quite a bit. It was a big old wooden house, and so, I'm surprised that the ceiling didn't shed a little bit of plaster as I grand jetéd across the bedroom floor. I used to fall on my bed, knock my desk chair over, and various things like that.
So when I had got an opportunity to study dancers — and I've studied everything. I've studied immigration issues. I've studied actually, you know the street gangs were, to me, very interesting, and I've spent quite a bit of time with young people who were in gangs, and so, that was my first book. And then I did a number of other things in between and I thought to myself, “Why don't I study something that I really like? Is there anything out there on the sociology of dance and of dancers?” And I read a lot of biographies, and who were they? Who were the famous dancers that, you know, everyone who has studied a little bit of dance knows their name? And I looked around and I said, “Oh gosh, there's nothing about the corps of the big ballet companies. There's nothing about all the dancers in small companies or dancers who are in little groups that don't exist except at certain points of time when a choreographer slash artistic director is able to get some funding.” And I said, “Boy, now, that looks like an interesting world that I can examine.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah
Dr. Ruth: So I decided on studying dance as my last major project.
Dr. Chelsea: And I'm so glad you did. I love the West Side Story pulling you into the dance world and it sounds like your sociology work as well. It was such a great cross.
So when I was looking into your work and your book, you said something that really struck me, and it's what you were just talking about with the corps. So I just want to quote you for a minute. You said, “Corps de ballet dancers typically don't have name recognition and yet comprise the majority of professional dancers today, and the way that they stitch together careers through dedication and grit and no small amount of skill are telling of broader trends that shape the precarious labor of professional dance.” And I immediately was like, “Yes!” What you said before, people are not talking about the corps and the bulk of professional dancers who are not famous, who are not going to get that prestige.
So can you talk to me about those broader trends that you found in the labor market for professional dancers?
Broad Trends Ruth Found in the Labor Market for Professional Dancers – 13:20
Dr. Ruth: Well, this is the core of sociology (C-O-R-E of sociology). One of the things that I, you know, noticed after reading all these biographies and autobiographies — but, you know, except for Toni Bentley's tale about when she was a dancer for the New York City Ballet, there wasn't anything in the corps.
Dr. Ruth: So I started interviewing dancers, and then I discover, because I didn't know this, that most of even our major companies with 40 or more dancers do not have 52-week-a-year contracts. Most of their contracts, I mean, I think American Ballet Theater is about 35 weeks this year. Well, what do they do for income for the rest of the year?
Dr. Chelsea: Right.
Dr. Ruth: And I said, “This is very strange.”
And then I hadn't been totally aware of how many of the professional dancers, particularly here in New York, belong to small companies which have very short seasons, and a lot of them are less than 26 weeks, and you need 26 to get unemployment in most places. So the dancers were actually always looking for other things to do. Whether you're in one of the major companies where, you know, if you can get a summer intensive teaching position, or you can get somebody to hire you to dance someplace else in the off season, you know, you can't survive economically. So I said, “Ooh, this is, this is important.”
And then starting to look at how many of the dancers were actually, what I call, project-based dancers who dance with several different organizations and several different groups of people over the course of the year, those of whom are successful, but they can't make enough money to live, and they need to find other kinds of work like teaching or wait staffing, or one of the dancers told me that cater-waitering was a very popular form of employment in New York because it's very flexible, and you tell them you are available on Wednesday or not, and so, that's great employment.
But living on your wages as a project-based dancer is almost impossible. And even the small companies, they don't pay enough that you can live on dance alone.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Dr. Ruth: So it's very precarious labor. And even if you have, let's say, a job in a unionized company — and I think there are about 28 companies that are unionized across the country — you have one-year contracts. So if they have a need for a different kind of dancer next year, you're out of a job. If they have a cut back in their funding, you may be out of a job at the end of the year. They can't fire you for no reason. But they can let you go at the end of a year-long contract, and because all companies are economically precarious in a lot of ways, or some of them more than others, but you know, it's a very hard thing to keep a company going financially and keep a reasonable size group of dancers.
Dr. Chelsea: Yes, and I think that's amazing to hear some of those numbers. And when people are thinking about, you know, “I want to be a professional in New York,” that feels like I made it. It's like, but that doesn't mean, you know, the consistency, the economic stability — that’s not something that you can rely on very confidently, yeah.
Dr. Ruth: Now, a lot of them do, you know, very well in the sense of getting the people whom I'm calling portfolio dancers, because they put together a portfolio of work, some of them do reasonably well by getting — they belong to three or four different “companies” (I'm putting quotes under companies) or projects, and they're dancing with some frequency.
Dr. Chelsea: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Ruth: But they still can't give up another source of income.
Dr. Chelsea: Right. Well, and like you said, they're piecing it together, right? They're finding multiple opportunities to then create that portfolio, yeah.
Dr. Ruth: And, you know, they have to pay for classes in addition to housing and food, you know?
Dr. Chelsea: Right. Yeah.
Dr. Ruth: So it's pretty expensive.
Dr. Chelsea: Absolutely. Well, and that makes me think — of course, I take the psychology side. So I'm like, “What kind of person is willing to do that?” And it's that passion, and you talk about passion for this work.
Will you talk to a little bit about your views on passion? Exactly what you're describing now, so dancers have to have that level of passion, or sometimes I think because of passion, we're willing to give too much because I'll just do it for the love knowing that the situation is hard?
Ruth’s Views on Passion – 19:05
Dr. Ruth: Well, first, I think they have to have an ability to see or a learned skill to see risk as challenge.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Dr. Ruth: And moving to New York, a lot of people will think of as too risky.
Dr. Chelsea: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Ruth: Or they can see it as a challenge that there are going to be some opportunities, they're going to make opportunities. They don't see the situation as risky. A lot of the training when people are young is actually a challenge. It is a challenge to put together doing well in high school and also preparing to dance professionally. I mean, the organizational skills that you need to do that are pretty —
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Dr. Ruth: — they're excellent.
Dr. Chelsea: Yes.
Dr. Ruth: And, you know, you have to be willing. I mean, there are challenges from body challenges constantly. It's like do you leap into that guy's arms or not? You know, you could land on your head. That's what I would think. You know, dancers can't think that way because if they did, they would stop themselves and you can't stop yourself. So people who survive and do well see things that other people see as risky as a challenge, and that's necessary to maintain your passion, which is a feeling that you have, but it's got to be nurtured by your teachers, by your parents, and by your peers in a lot of ways.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Dr. Ruth: So it's your passion can sort of wane at any time I think.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah, for sure.
Dr. Ruth: In sociology, one of the things that had happened was that people started challenging the notion of seeking your passion. I mean, students in college, you know, in sociology or whatever their major is, “Follow your passion.”
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Dr. Ruth: And a lot of people say, “Well, wait a minute. Following your passion? You're going to get into all kinds of trouble,” because you're not going to be able to see when you're being abused in your work because you are working. You're not independent from a work organization, or one of the things that some sociologists have argued is that women who seek their passion, where's their passion? It's frequently in teaching and service occupations and things like that. And, you know, that's one of the reasons why women get paid less than men is they're in professions where they're following their passions rather than going after the money.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Dr. Ruth: Well, I think we wouldn't have a whole lot of art without passion.
Dr. Chelsea: Yes.
Dr. Ruth: Because there are a lot of challenges and the chances of making enough to live on is very, very, very tough. But making it rich? There may be a handful of people internationally, because it's an international profession at this point —
Dr. Chelsea: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Ruth: — who make real money.
Dr. Chelsea: Right. No, I think that’s such a good observation and makes sense that women tend to follow their passion more, and if they do, it's often in a service field, as you said. And, I mean, I'm the teacher calling the kettle black here. I get it. Like, I followed my passion, and I love it, but yeah, it’s just different, especially in the arts because it's not usually funded in that way. But you're right. I think if we didn't follow our passions, we probably wouldn't have a lot of the beautiful art that we have.
Dr. Ruth: Yeah. Oh, I mean, we would have very little of it actually. Yeah.
Dr. Chelsea: Right. Yeah, no, I think that is a really interesting way to think about passion, and I guess to me though, that also means — or it doesn't mean don't do it, right?
Dr. Ruth: No.
Dr. Chelsea: It's just know what that is, know what that relationship is and what that, as you said, the precarious labor, what that's going to look like. It's just be informed. Would you agree?
Dr. Ruth: Yeah, it shouldn't really stop anybody from trying. It's just that, you know, you have to be somewhat aware of some of the challenges that you're going to face and, you know, running off at 18 to New York to dance unless you have work is probably going to be really difficult.
Dr. Chelsea: Absolutely. Well, I don't know if anything comes to mind, and it's okay if not, but during your interviews, if there was a story of particular like grit or dedication from one of the dancers you talked to if you’d be willing to share?
Two Dancers’ Stories – 24:16
Dr. Ruth: Well, I can read you a little section of two different dancers.
Dr. Chelsea: Okay.
Dr. Ruth: One is a woman, and one is a man.
“I got it all done. Looking back, some of the things I did were crazy. My parents wanted to support me as much as possible in my wanting to dance. They were also, ‘Your first priority is school, and dance comes second.’ I maintained a 4.0, and I was taking advanced placement classes and scoring fours and fives on those tests. I was also taking college courses at the community college. They thought if dance didn't work out, I needed to be ready. For me, it was chemical engineering.”
Dr. Chelsea: Oh, geez. But yeah, I think that's true for a lot of dancers. When they say, “I want to be a dancer,” the reaction is like, “Okay, that's great. But what's the backup?”
Dr. Ruth: Yep.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Dr. Ruth: And she's actually now in graduate school.
This is a young man: “The stage was my home. Yes, that's just where I thrived. I love doing it, but performing was something completely different for me. When I say dance saved my life, there were a lot of other things going on in my life, and dance was the one stable thing that was good for me, where I was getting positive recognition and reinforcement, as opposed to, let's say, school, where it was a miserable experience for me.”
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah, wow. I think that resonates with a lot of people where dance is the place where you feel safe and happy. Yeah, wonderful. Thank you for sharing those.
Dr. Ruth: Many more are in the book!
Dr. Chelsea: Yes, lots more in the book. Please go get it. I'll make sure it's linked, and I'll have you share more at the end too.
You use this wonderful phrase that I'm assuming is more of a sociology thing. I haven't heard it, even though my work aligns a lot, but this idea of biographical continuity. And, to me, in psychology it's like that identity and that sense of self, but the continuity idea, anyway, it just resonated with me. And, you know, when I talk to a lot of dancers, understanding their identity is such a journey and is something that they're trying to understand. So will you share a little about what that biographical continuity means to you and why it's so important for dancers?
Why Biographical Continuity is Important For Dancers – 26:44
Dr. Ruth: Okay. Well, once a dancer, always a dancer.
Dr. Chelsea: Yes.
Dr. Ruth: I mean, it's really part of who you are. In the beginning, it can become all consuming, all in. It has to be very major. It's the same — I mean, here I am. I've been a professor for I think it was 48 years and now I'm retired, and it’s like, “Uh-oh, who am I now?”
Dr. Chelsea: Yes, absolutely. That transition.
Dr. Ruth: And the dancers, I mean, have to learn to think of themselves as more than just dancers. You know, for a while, when you're a kid growing up, that's really who you are though. Most of the dancers I spoke to were actually excellent students, but they would say, “Hey, I'm really a dancer. School was not all that meaningful to me.”
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Dr. Ruth: And what sometimes happens over a course of a career is a number of particularly the ballet dancers who go directly from high school into a company, all of a sudden say, “You know,” after about ten years or so, “I mean, I want to be something a little bit else. I really need to begin to seek a little bit more about who I can possibly be, who I can add to my identity.” And several of them, whom I spoke to after spending about ten years in major companies, said, “I really needed to branch out. I didn't want to be just a dancer.”
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Dr. Ruth: And they went back to school, and some of them struggled for a while because the dancer identity was so — and I'm talking about the performing dancer identity was so strong that they had trouble sort of separating themselves from the performance aspect of dance.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Dr. Ruth: Some of them go back to college later. Some of them go back and forth. But they begin to adopt different identities.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Dr. Ruth: Student identity, and they figure out what they want to do while they're doing it, and then they develop a worker identity. But you never lose that dancer self, that dancer identity.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Dr. Ruth: It's always going to be there. It's going to be more in memory. But almost everybody that I spoke to who had been out of dance for a while still had some connection with the dance world, whether somebody was on the board of directors of a school. One woman, her daughter was training in a major center. There were several people interested in therapy and had gone on to get PhDs in clinical psychology. And, you know, they still worked a lot with dancers and things like that, so everybody still had a connection.
And the other thing is it's very — well, I find it reasonably easy to see a group of people and figure out who's the dancer.
Dr. Chelsea: Same. Yes.
Dr. Ruth: Your body still looks like a dancer. While I was doing the interviews, I would find myself, you know, caving in in the middle and stuff, and the dancers would all — and it didn't matter what age they were, they'd be sitting there on the edge of their chairs, back straight.
Dr. Chelsea: Yes. [Laughs]
Dr. Ruth: One time I had my hip replaced, and I had went to physical therapy. And the first time I met the physical therapist, I was lying on the table. I was looking down, and I said to her, “Oh, you're a dancer.” She said, “How'd you know?” I said, “You're standing in first position.”
Dr. Chelsea: [Laughs] Yep. It doesn't leave us. Well, I like that you said with identity that it's not replacing your dance identity, you're adding to it. I think that's a really important distinction, yeah.
Dr. Ruth: It's like, you don't forget your past, whatever you do. It's there, but it's in a different position than it was, and it has to be because you're onto different things.
One dancer whom I spoke to recently that I interviewed a number of years ago now has three kids. She teaches dance, and she was a very accomplished dancer, so she still has her dancer identity, but she is also a mother, and that's really important to her.
Dr. Chelsea: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dr. Ruth: And that's — you know, she has accomplished a lot, I would say, in transitioning to something else, where dance is in a different spot. That doesn't mean you don't have these wonderful memories of performing, and, you know, I understand when dancers get together, they chat about all the things that go on backstage.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah, when I get with my dance friends, right, it's all dance all the time.
Dr. Ruth: Yeah. Well, you know, when I go out to dinner with my sociology friends, it's the same thing, so…
Dr. Chelsea: Right. Well, I always try to ask people and provide for my listeners some practical advice, some kind of concrete tools. Anything that came out of your interviews that you can share with us of, you know, those actions or tools that dancers can use either to maintain that identity, sustain their passion, anything in there that you can share?
Ruth’s Practical Advice for Dancers – 33:02
Dr. Ruth: Well, I don't have any explicit tools, but it's reflecting on all the skills that you have, that you learn in class, and that you learn being a high school dancer. And that is everything from learning how to compete and not fall apart — and compete with yourself, not with other people. A lot of people use the mirror to worry about weight, and that is, of course, an issue for some people. But you learn to say, “Oh, I guess last week I could only get my leg in arabesque up this high, but this week I'm getting it a little bit higher, and I think I'm a little bit straighter.” You're competing with yourself. That's a very good skill to have.
Dr. Chelsea: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Ruth: And then dance also teaches cooperation.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Dr. Ruth: I mean, that first Nutcracker, which every interviewee told me about. Though I never asked about Nutcracker, everyone had a Nutcracker story.
Dr. Chelsea: [Laughs]
Dr. Ruth: You learn that you have to dance with other people, and the entrance queue is the same for everyone. Every mouse has to go onstage on cue, you know?
Dr. Chelsea: Yep.
Dr. Ruth: And it doesn't matter if you can lift your leg higher than the other swans or the other snowflakes, you have to keep it at the same height as everyone else. That's cooperation. And so, the competition that you need — because it is a very competitive profession, you have to learn not to fall apart at auditions.
Dr. Chelsea: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Ruth: Because everybody had stories. You know, one dancer who danced with a major company told me, she said, “You know, I was 18, and I graduated from high school. That whole spring, I was going off to different companies, and I'd get no answer, you know, whether they were interested in me or not,” and it was, like, the tenth audition that she went to, the artistic director called her into the office afterwards and said, “We want you.”
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Dr. Ruth: But she had to do ten or so auditions before that, and none of them would tell her anything, and she didn't know what the meaning of that was, and you're not going to get a straight answer.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah, you don't get that feedback.
Dr. Ruth: Probably, you know, from the artistic director, you didn't get a, “So we'll call you.”
Dr. Chelsea: Right. [Laughs]
Dr. Ruth: And it's like, “Okay? What does this mean?” So, you know, yes, it's extremely competitive, and you have to learn how to deal with that competition. You know, it's like getting better roles. I mean, one of the things that dancers talk to me about in remaining in the corps is getting the soloist roles or getting a principal role. Well, you know, there are how many members of the corps and how many roles? Not a whole lot that are soloist and principal roles.
So, you know, it is competitive, and you're competing with your friends, but you have to learn to cooperate, and that is taught. The organizational skills of this — you know, running back and forth, that's really important for a lot of different work and seeing difficult situations as challenges is incredibly important in anything that you do.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Dr. Ruth: So, remember that you have those kinds of skills. So when you go out, you know, you're going to see things as challenges. You're not going to be able to do things on the first round, but you know, you can meet the challenge and learn how to do whatever you're doing in new work. And so, that's a whole thing. You know a lot.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah, I think that's wonderful advice. Being able to reflect, “What do you truly know? What skills do you really have?” And then being able to see the opportunity as a challenge, yeah.
Dr. Ruth: You know, and then working through later what is it that you really liked about dance, and what kinds of occupations would you like to go on to, whether it's what I call bodywork kinds of professions such as pilates teachers, yoga teachers, there's dance teacher, there are massage therapists and physical therapists or orthopedic surgeon because dancers understand the body better than most people do.
Dr. Chelsea: Yeah.
Dr. Ruth: Or are you interested in the art of it? Can you envision yourself making costumes, scenery, choreographing? You know, the artistic director, which of course needs organizational skills in addition to art skills. Or, you know, people go on and do all different kinds of things. I mean, there are people who dance with big companies that are lawyers, that are psychologists, that are doctors, that are in finance, that are in all kinds of businesses, and some very creative businesses, and they sort of use their creative skills, as one dancer told me, in her work, which was organizing — she’d organized conferences, large conferences.
Dr. Chelsea: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Ruth: So she said, “You know, it's like organizing a dance performance and stuff,” and was coordinating, and she used that in order to organize conferences. Now, that's a real skill!
Dr. Chelsea: It is, for sure. Actually, I know a couple dancers who make really good project managers and event managers, yep.
Dr. Ruth: Oh, yeah, I decided that after organizing my book launch, I said, “That's not my skill.”
Dr. Chelsea: Yes, it's also knowing what's not your skill.
Dr. Ruth: Yeah.
Dr. Chelsea: Yes, that makes sense. I think that's wonderful advice, both of those sets of — yeah, being able to know your skill, know how you're going to bring it, and taking the time to reflect. Thank you!
Before we go, will you let listeners know about your book? I don't think we even said the title while we've been talking, but please share your book, how people can find it, or any more information about you.
Dr. Ruth: Okay, it's called Passionate Work: Choreographing a Dance Career. It can be found on Amazon, Barnes and Noble has it on its website, or you can get it from Stanford University Press directly.
Dr. Chelsea: Okay.
Dr. Ruth: You can also ask your local bookstore and say, “Why don't you have it?”
Dr. Chelsea: Yes, absolutely. Advocate for more dance and art books wherever you get your books, yes. I'll make sure those links are in the show notes where you're listening now, so you can find that. There are some wonderful stories in there. Thank you for sharing the little snippets that you did. So many good stories.
Thank you so much, Ruth, for sharing your expertise and chatting with me today. I really appreciate it, and I think you've shared some wonderful ideas and advice for our listeners. Thank you!
Dr. Ruth: Well, thank you for having me on it! I've enjoyed sharing it. I hope your listeners can learn a little bit from what I have to say.
Dr. Chelsea: Absolutely, I'm sure they will. Well, thank you so much, Ruth.
Dr. Ruth: Thank you!
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Thank you for listening to Passion for Dance! You can find all episode resources at www.chelseapierotti.com/podcast, and be sure to follow me on Instagram for more high-performance tips at @Dr..chelsea.pierotti. This podcast is for passionate dance teachers and coaches who are ready to change the dance industry by creating happier, more successful dancers. I'm Dr.. Chelsea and keep sharing your passion for dance with the world.
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