Ballet Misfits Blog Podcast (Patricia Pyrka)

Friends!
Welcome to this only, or maybe first episode of the Late to the Party Ballet Podcast! I started working with Evelyn Hart a couple of months ago, and you can read the full story of how that came about in one of my recent blog articles. Right from the start I realized that I really enjoyed talking with her, beyond the ballet that she was teaching me. I was dying to ask her more questions, but despite Covid-related closures, our schedules were packed and there wasn’t much time around classes to chat.

But because I felt like her story offered so many gifts, I thought – why not ask her if she would be up for a conversation that we could share with others? She graciously agreed. And so here we are!

What I only more recently learned, and what makes this conversation so relevant for us adult ballet starters, is that Evelyn started ballet quite late as a teenager, so a lot of her experience as a dancer revolved around “feeling behind” and “catching up”. Sounds familiar? :-)

Evelyn is considered one of Canada’s most famed and accomplished ballerinas. She started dancing at 14, joined the Royal Winnipeg Ballet when she was 17, and was promoted to principal dancer four years later. She won the gold medal at the International Ballet Competition in Varna, Bulgaria, at 24, upon which she started guesting and for the first time diving into lots of classical repertoire - at an unheard pace - all over the world.

What sounds like a prodigy-type journey is to a large extent also a story of rejections, overcoming limited turnout, and dealing with lots of stage fright and self-doubt. But it is also a story of incredible grit, perseverance, an incessant drive to figure out ballet technique from the inside out, and an exceptional musicality and artistry that would become the key to Evelyn’s remarkable career.

Evelyn now lives in Toronto and is a sought-after coach, teacher, and mentor to professional and pre-professional dancers. She is a Companion of the Order of Canada, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and has received a Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement.

We talk about how long it took her to overcome her late start and what advice she has for adult beginners who struggle with the “late start shadow”; what kept her going after being rejected from the National Ballet School THREE times; her take on pelvic alignment for exploring full turnout and hip joint rotation; why she chose to dance in pointe shoes that were soft as socks; the role of musicality in fundamental ballet technique; how she would start working with an absolute adult beginner; and gift of being uncompromising in any pursuit.

For me, this conversation unlocked a new self-perception around being a student and dancer who started late in life. Hearing from someone so accomplished that, really, you can CREATE at any point in your life, no matter at what age you started, was like getting a fresh infusion of purpose into my daily ballet practice. I hope you’ll get it to – and much more beyond it. Please enjoy!

Hello again friends!
Welcome to this second episode of the Late to the Party Ballet Podcast! This episode was recorded in July and it was supposed to air shortly after. But then my life started to crumble a bit due to the pandemic and travel restrictions, and all my energy was focused on resolving that.

But, now that IT IS resolved (yay!), I am excited to come back to this conversation with a very fascinating dancer, choreographer, artist: Drew Jacoby!

I came across Drew shortly after I started ballet, when I was struggling with being by far the tallest dancer in my beginner classes. And not seeing much of tall dancers in the professional ballet world either! So I googled my heart out, found Drew, and got really drawn into her story and mentality.

The reason why I wanted to chat with her for this blog is that for me, she is a great model for how to build a self-directed career in dance. What I mean by that: She created her own opportunities vs waited to be cast/hired/asked to perform. This is exactly the mindset from which I have always approached my dance and also the Late to the Party Ballet mission. For us adult dancers, it might not necessarily mean “career” but a way of taking or ballet training and transform it into a diversity of creative projects - vs. just taking classes and learning the usual classical variations.

Drew grew up in Idaho/US and got her training at San Francisco Ballet and Pacific Northwest. She joined Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet at the age of 17. What followed then is quite unusual for a ballerina: Instead of sticking to company life and working her way up through the ranks, she left the system and started freelancing in New York City at age 22. It wasn’t until her late twenties that she turned towards a company career again, when she joined the Netherlands Dans Theater and then later became a principal dancer the the Royal Ballet of Flanders. Drew has a daughter and together with her husband they now live in Seattle.

I think what stands out to me about Drew’s path and her approach to art is that even when she experiences frustrations and rejections, she doesn’t doubt her abilities. She is good at discerning that when you don’t get what you’re aiming for, it’s not so much about that you’re not cut out for it, but rather that others/environments have their own ways or working and are not ready or suitable for you. Yes, hard work is still required, but the important thing is to let go quickly and continue to look for what’s a good fit. Also, to me, she lives the opposite to “shrinking” - she is not afraid to be seen and noticed; she owns her height and movement abilities and welcomes the impact that she can have with them.

We talk about the key moment that prompted her to move to NYC and start freelancing despite always dreaming of a classical career; her advice for adult ballet starters and how to use your ballet knowledge to create opportunities for yourself; how becoming a mother changed her outlook on dance and her corner stones for raising a strong daughter.

Hearing Drew speak about the huge amount of flexibility, braveness, and confidence that she had from a very young age and that helped her create her unique career trajectory was so liberating. It reminded me that in the end, we can’t control outcomes, but we can choose what to pursue in a way that works for us, we can choose to show ourselves and go for it. Please enjoy this conversation!