An Honest Introduction

My aim is to share with my audience via this blog my personal process as a ‘Transitioning Dancer’.

A change of career seems like a daunting step for anyone, but for a dancer it can seem especially overwhelming. Quite often we are ‘hand-picked’ at a young age, to leave our families behind and attend a vocational school somewhere else in the country or even another country abroad in order to receive the necessary training to make it eventually as a professional dancer. So many of us fall out along the way and quite often in the future when we look back as a professional dancer we might consider those that didn’t make it as the ‘lucky ones’! I know I certainly do at times.

Why? Surely the life of a dancer is filled with excitement, travelling and performance. As a dancer, you know what I’m talking about and it is filled with those things but this is not what I want to write about.

So why are the ‘dropouts’ the lucky ones? Do we know at the age of 11 years old what we really want to do? I didn’t - but dance for me was a chance not a choice, I’ll have to go more in to that later.

The ‘lucky ones’ get to reassess and actually choose something else. Maybe they will continue but they can also study early on and quite often have stayed long enough in the schooling to have the discipline to restart and be successful at whatever they choose to be. Obviously, I do not want to assume this is the case for everyone.

I wish personally there was more time for me in my education to develop my other interests to study and to get some sort of higher education. And it does not get better when one goes to a ballet company, believe me. 

       I can only speak for myself but I’m now coming up to this time of transition and ever since I became a Principal Dancer in Stuttgart many years ago now, I have felt an underlying anxiety as to what I will do next. This does not mean to say that I did not enjoy my career and most of the time I did not even have a second to think about it but when I changed to a smaller company (Ballet Zurich) with fewer shows in a season and less travelling I could feel the anxiety stronger than ever.

I would even, go as far as to say, that it was one of my reasons for moving to Zurich. I wanted to be in a place where I could still continue my art and mastery but to also be able to realise my potential future. I would like to add here that before coming to Zurich I even considered taking a job offer at Cirque du Soleil. 

Already at the age of 30, having never sustained a serious injury, I was taking decisions as to what to do next after dance. At this point I was arriving to the peak of my career in Stuttgart, the joy of being on stage had flourished and yet I somewhat ended it all too fast by leaving.

No regrets though! Zurich provided me with many other, different opportunities but it was certainly not all about the dance anymore.

Now, at the ripe old age (for a dancer) of 36, I’m being faced with potentially not having a job for the season of 2024/2025, (this remains to be seen). A season starts in August, so by this time I’ll be nearly 38. That’s a good innings for a dancer and to come out pretty much injury free, is really great.

I’ve been confronted with many thoughts about this as my body could probably handle another 5-7 years without too many problems. “Is it a waste to retire when I’m still able to dance?” “Does my body have to be finished/broken and then I will be forced to stop?”, “Why does the director potentially not want me when I’m still so capable?” These are all questions I’m faced with but the quiet voice in my head when I think clearly and if am honest with myself I have nothing to prove anymore. My mental approach has been slowly declining and then yes, the dreaded Covid period came along and it was ever so present.

For so many dancers I think anxiety was at an all-time high. “When were we going to perform again?!” For many of us our only social circles were with our colleagues that understand us and our families which were miles, in some cases oceans away!

But for myself, I think for the first time I found a quietness. It gave me a chance to think!