S2:Ep 6 - A Golden Year

PART SIX - "It feels like this hazy distant silhouette of a thing that doesn’t feel real, like a wild dream that I can’t fully recall."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Okay, Erica, you gotta get ready. This is too good.
What are we watching? So we're in my basement and
I'm going to force you to watch The Nutcracker, and
not just any Nutcracker. You're Nutcracker when you were Marie
aka Clara and other versions, but the main character that

(00:27):
was a Golden Year? A Golden Year? How did you
get these on your computer? Because weren't they vhs? Yeah?
How did you get these? Mom? And Dad? Can we
get to watch it? Because I'm dying to watch? All right?

(00:47):
I think this is going to be fun. I know
you're probably a little bit anxious. Oh my gosh, just
seeing the still of the costumes. So I guess I
should tell you. My name is Alan, I'm Erica's sister.
I also produced this show. I know it might feel
abrupt to suddenly hear from me, but there's something about

(01:09):
Erica that she's extremely reluctant to talk about that I
think you should know. Okay, I'm going to click on it.
We're going to full screen it. You're ready. The Youth
Ballet Company presents two thousand and one The Nutcracker December fourteenth, fifteenth,

(01:36):
and sixteenth. WHOA, this is epic they have, like the
roles they have, the whole cast, little List, Mouse Cook,
Missus Stallbam, doctor Stalbam. I didn't know he's a doctor.
Erica devoted her life to ballet for more than ten years.
She thought about trying to go all the way to
join a company and become a professional dancer. I can

(02:01):
picture all of these dancers and like how they danced.
I remember what their feet looked like, what looked like
definitely Marie so Bam, Erica Lance. Clearly, I'm enthusiastic. I'm
trying to pump Erica up and get her more excited,
but she's visibly uncomfortable. As the music plays and the

(02:24):
opening credits role, She's shifting in her seat. She's good
at masking how she feels, but I can tell it's
sparking a memory. I'm asking Erica to go back to
a time that honestly feels like another life, a time
when ballet defined her, a time when her ambition to
perform well and maybe to go pro consumed our family.

(02:48):
We haven't talked much about it for probably fifteen years,
and I think there's a reason for that, because when
Erica left, she closed that door and never opened it again.
As much as she loved it, she suffered in it.
At least that's what I think I saw. I was
so young that it feels like this hazy, distant silhouette

(03:09):
of a thing that doesn't feel real, like a wild
dream that I can't fully recall. Curtains opening, Where would
you have been in the wings? In the wings? Yep,
getting ready for my first entrance. I love that you
remember your first entrance. Of course, there you are. Oh,

(03:31):
are yours out here? I'm sneaking out trying to see
the presence. We'll look at those pointed feed Wow. I
look better than I expected somehow. Yeah, you look amazing.
You're acting with your whole body and moving very gracefully. Wow.

(03:55):
I'm actually really proud of my dancing in this. I
think I forgot how good I was at this point.
Does it bring you back, like, how did it feel
to be performing the lead role in the Nutcracker? It's
just so fun. I loved all of those rehearsals, and

(04:15):
I was always there for a very long time because
I was the main character, and I did not mind
at all. It's just pure fun, pure fun, totally worth
any pain, all right. Being tired or something totally worth it.
I absolutely loved it. Working on this series has been

(04:39):
hard on Erica. She's often had a quick aside like
why am I doing this? Or I don't know why
I signed up for this. It also brings up a
lot of what ifs and regrets. Interviewing people and writing
about ballet every day has made us both realize how
much her time in ballet is a part of who
she is. It led to a conversation that honestly, we

(05:03):
needed to have as sisters from Rococo Punch and iHeart Podcasts.
This is the turning Room of mirrors. I'm Alan Lance Lesser,

(05:27):
Part six a golden year, So thanks Erica for finally
doing this. I feel like it's been pulling teeth to
get you to sit down and talk about some of
the stuff. And I'm not sure quite why, but I
feel like part of it is that you don't like

(05:48):
to talk about yourself too much. Yeah, I do feel
self conscious. You feel self conscious? How so? Yeah? I
mean not maybe not self conscious, but I mean honestly, like, yes,
I studied ballet when I was a kid, but I
didn't become a professional dancer. I didn't actually like fully

(06:10):
commit and go all the way, and so I just
feel like a fraud. I'm not the person who has
the most insight into this by like any stretch of
the imagination, So why would I be talking about my
own story or my own experience, Like there are so
many other people who are more important. So you basically

(06:33):
are experiencing imposter syndrome. I bet Also, if you had
become a professional, you still would be like, well, I
wasn't a principal, so my story doesn't matter, like you
would find any reason to not count your story as worthwhile.
And the fact is, like you devoted your life totally

(06:54):
to ballet for years. I know again I can just
feel you being uncomfortable talking about this. But anyway, do
you remember what was your favorite performance that you did?
I don't know, but definitely one of the most meaningful
to me was the year I was Marie and the

(07:15):
Nutcracker or Clara. That was obviously a huge deal. It
was really special because I had looked up to these
dancers for years who played Murrie. So getting cast as Marie,
I mean, it's like a dream come true. At age twelve,
you were twelve. Looking back, it's like twelve sounds so young. Yeah. Wow.

(07:40):
But by the time I was twelve, I was dancing
every day, and I was at a school that also
had this like youth ballet company essentially, and so we
were performing constantly. WHOA, what's weird is I almost feel
like I've blocked out some of these memories about how
much it was that was every day. Jeez. I mean,

(08:03):
it is true when you're dancing that seriously, you really
do feel like you have to dance every day to
keep up what you're doing and to be improving every day.
At that point, you're so in tune with your body that, yeah,
when you take a day off, you feel it. And
I remember one time I took like three days or
something off and I can't remember if I was sick

(08:24):
or if our family went out of town for a
few days, but I came back to class and I
actually thought I was having an okay class. I don't
think I felt like I was doing particularly badly. And
I was standing at the bar in the studio and
my teacher, who is this Russian teacher who I absolutely adored.
She had really high standards, which I loved, but at

(08:47):
one point and she like stopped and I could tell
she was upset, and she looked at me and she said, Erica,
Edica like she said it in her Russian accent, like
you miss one day, you notice the difference you missed
two two days. I noticed the difference you missed three days.
Everybody notices the difference. WHOA that makes her sound mean.

(09:08):
I actually adored her as a teacher, but that really
stuck with me, and it definitely made me feel like
it's just not worth it to take days off. How
did you feel in that moment? Probably embarrassed, but it

(09:29):
wasn't like a big out of the normal thing, like
you're used to being called out in class, You're used
to being corrected in front of everyone. But it was
more just this very memorable phrase that was a good
reminder of the importance of staying in class at home.
The dynamics of Erica's ballet, classroom casting, and technique, it

(09:52):
all became our form of childhood gossip. I loved being
in on it. I watched Erica constantly improved and grow
into this polished dancer, but she'd also come home every
night in physical pain. I can remember the constant bags
of frozen peas or footpaths or full salt baths. Sometimes

(10:16):
Erica would sit in the middle of our living room floor,
slowly stretching her aching muscles and tending to her wounds,
and sometimes she just collapse onto this big green recliner
and just lie there for hours. She always seemed to
be on the mend. When did you first start having injuries?

(10:42):
I think the first time I sprained my ankle, I
was five, And after that first sprain, I was always
aware of my ankle. I always had ankle problems. And
the thing is, when you injure your ankle, after it heals,
it is a little more susceptible to injury. And so
it just felt like a constant battle with my ankle.

(11:03):
And eventually it went from like having mild sprains from
time to time too. I did develop chronic tendonitis in
my achilles tendons, which I think is like super common,
but it was really painful and I was experiencing it
I think at a level that it wasn't like normal,
and that's what I started seeing a bunch of physical

(11:26):
therapists for for years. It was such a constant I mean,
you're always dancing through pain, but you kind of get
used to it. Always. Yeah, I mean to some extent.
I do remember one day in particular, it was like
a Saturday day of rehearsals. I can picture the point
whose I was wearing. It was a pair of grish goes.

(11:48):
They might have been like slightly too broken in at
that point, but we were preparing for multiple performances coming up.
I just remember that I was cast in a lot
of things. It was a really exciting set of castings
because I was kind of cast above my level. But
the result is that I like didn't get any time off.

(12:09):
Like I was just constantly rehearsing one after the next,
and my friends were getting little breaks and I just
like wasn't getting a break. And there was this one
piece where we're basically on point the whole time, Like
the whole thing is that we're burying across the floor
like the entire dance, so you're like literally never not

(12:30):
on point. And I had like so many blisters that day,
and I just was like, oh my god, I cannot
run this piece one more time, and that you'd be like,
let's run it again, and I'd just be like please. Now.
I just remember thinking to myself, my god, this is insane,
But Also it was like so exhilarating because I felt

(12:52):
like such a professional because I just like was dancing
all day and you know, you feel important if you
like don't have time for breaks, and you do feel
like an adult. I mean, when you're making those types
of sacrifices where you're not hanging up with friends, you're
in the studio and you're dancing through pain, you feel
like a grown up. And it's partly because the instructor

(13:22):
to some extent, treats you like a grown up, Like
the expectations are so high you need to like put
on your adult behavior. Kind of that's what kids want.
They want to probably to a certain extent, they want,
like teachers to have high standards and high expectations or
to challenge them. Like I do think that that's so
empowering to not be seen as just like a kid

(13:44):
who's doing this for fun. It's like, no, take me seriously,
Like I wouldn't want any less. I would want to
be treated that way because I took it so seriously.
And also I don't want my fellow dancers slacking off either,
because we all want it to be the best it
can be. Erica really wanted to be the best she

(14:28):
could in every way, and I remember noticing that desire
shift to how she felt about her appearance. I want
to pause here because we're about to talk about topics
that could be really triggering and even unhealthy to listen to.
They have to do with body image and include some

(14:48):
really skewed and unhealthy thinking. And if you feel you
might be triggered by explicit discussions of body image or
eating disorders, you might want to stop listening here. There's
a reason search to suggest that hearing specifics about eating
disorders could contribute to actual symptoms. I loved so much

(15:08):
of my body when I was dancing, like I liked
my feet, I liked my legs. I liked the level
of hyper extension. I felt like it was a little
but not too much. I liked a lot of my shapes.
I loved how I looked in a lot of ways,
and I was looking at myself all the time. I
was proud of my body, except for the I wanted

(15:33):
to be thinner. I just I really wanted bones jutting out.
But like, where do you think that came from? Because
I don't feel like it came from you. I thought
I was too fat starting from age four. Geez, can

(15:54):
you tell me your first like, why do you say
age four? What's your first memory of that? I think
it was four. It could be that I'm not don't
have the age right. My first memory of feeling that
I was too fat was not in ballet class, but
I think it was influenced by dance. There was like
a stage where we would do cabarets in the summer
and things. I was on stage and I had I

(16:18):
was like kind of standing with a sway back. I
had more of a sway back because like a toddler,
and I was aware suddenly that my like that made
my stomach stick out. And that's my first, like very
concrete memory of wishing that my stomach were smaller, and

(16:41):
that never went away. I started dance classes when I
was three, and I mean, I think it's it's hard
to just stand in a leotard in front of a
mirror every day as a kid. Do you remember any

(17:01):
times when a teacher like specifically told you to lose
weight or implied it in some way. No, that's the thing.
I don't think I ever had a teacher say, Erica,
you need to lose weight. No, I think it's like
very clear that you want to be thin, Like no

(17:22):
one needs to say that explicitly in class. There was
just such an awareness that thinness was clearly important. And
I think sometimes teachers would tell stories about their own
training that were kind of intended to point out how
messed up something was, but also inevitably then communicated maybe
the messed up message to us unintentionally. So like I

(17:48):
remember one of my teachers who was from Ukraine and
she'd been trained in Russian schools. She would tell stories
that a teacher would go and pinch your back, and
if they could pinch your back and get any kind
of like fat in the pinch, the teacher would say, oh,

(18:08):
I see, even having a little too much milk in
other words, like drinking milk was making them fat. But
I was like, oh, I guess I don't want any
pinchable fat in my back. She also would tell us
stories about how Russian schools worked at the time. You know,
you're a little girl between age six and ten. I
don't know the exact age, but if you want to

(18:28):
get into a Russian school, you go in. You're auditioning.
At one point, you take off your clothes you're naked,
I think for the audition often your topless as a
little girl. And then you also have like a medical
examination where they measure your body. They might even like
look at your parents to see how you're likely to

(18:50):
develop physically, basically saying we only want to admit people
into our school who have the exact proportions and ballet
body that we're looking for. Yeah, you're also thinking, you
know what I cut it in Russia. I don't know.
I think I remember the teacher that you're talking about,
and she was I think, amazing in a lot of ways.

(19:12):
But like also, I feel like to a certain degree,
there's an element of psychological breeding with that by just
saying like, oh, listen to how bad I had it,
or the types of disparaging comments I received. These other
comments I'm making are nothing compared to that. Yeah, the

(19:33):
messaging is, oh wow, look how intense that is over
in Russia, wasn't it? Nicely? Don't do that here? But
now I have these ideas that I'm supposed to have
certain measurements in order to be the best ballerina. Now
I'm aware of that, even if that wasn't the intention.

(19:55):
I do remember one time you walked in because you
were always there because you're always having to like with
mom as she's like driving me to class and stuff.
But you walked in, and I think she was like, oh,
you you would be accepted. You ailin? Yeah, you know.
I even remember she had me do first position and
she like, I'm not even her student, and she took

(20:17):
her hands and put them on my ankles and crept
her hands all the way up to my up my
legs to my hips, feeling my turnout wow, and literally
put her hands all over my legs up to like
my butt, and then was like, yes, you would be
accepted or something. And I felt so good at the
time because I mean like I was even totally drenched

(20:41):
in ballet culture at this point, because I was, you know,
just watching you all the time. Yeah, And then I
feel like you were like, oh, what the heck, why
didn't she say that about me? Yeah? Definitely, every day
I saw Erica striving for some image of perfection. I

(21:03):
remember when she got obsessed with the idea that her
ponytail should be smooth with no bumps. She'd spend what
felt like forever stuck in a loop slicking her hair back.
Then checking it for bombs, taking it out, and starting
all over again. I'd watch her perform these rituals in
the mirror, the mirrors at home and in the ballet

(21:24):
studio became a decider of Erica's self worth. There are
a lot of like body markers, body checking, like just
things that I think are probably potentially super triggering for people.
But yeah, I remember, like we shared a bathroom and
you just had certain rituals of checking yourself in the

(21:47):
mirror in certain ways that you would do almost like
repetitively padding certain parts of your body. I would like
turn and profile to the mirror. I'd like go one
way and then the other, and I would look at
my profile, see how then I was. I'd put one
hand in front of my stomach and one hand on
my back and go tap tap the other side, tap tap,

(22:08):
like how then are we today? Yeah? And then you would,
you know, do that regularly throughout the week, throughout the day.
I have a memory or two of you actually like

(22:30):
teaching me the body checking. Not oh God, no, that
sounds bad, not in like a judgmental god or no.
I was more like curious, like I would ask you explicitly,
like what are you doing or like what is that
supposed to do? What you're doing right there, that specific thing,
and then you'd be like, oh, well, I just go

(22:50):
like this and like that to check this, and I
think it helps with this. And like being a younger sister,
you know, I kind of looked up to you and
would almost like you know, be like oh wow. And
then you had lots of rules about when you could eat.
And again these were like also explicit things that we

(23:12):
talked about and that you'd be like, I've heard that
if you don't eat after X time, it like really
helps for this for that reason, which I mean didn't
even really make sense. But my point is ballet had
permeated our family culture or our family Yeah, and so

(23:35):
talking about that stuff, even explicitly, it was just like
oh interesting, got to try that accepted. Yeah. I also
think there was a lot less awareness of eating disorders
and what that meant at the time. Yeah, I mean

(23:58):
we had heard of eating disorders before, but we thought
like the more extreme versions when someone's being hospitalized for
an eating disorder. Yeah, at the time, we thought it
was anorexia or bolimia. And because Alan, you, like you
were home from summer break or something. In college, you
were researching eating disorders and you were like, oh, yeah, Erica,

(24:23):
you had an eating disorder or you had a disordered
eating of some kind. I was like what, and you
listed a bunch of things, and I remember you explaining
what body checking was. And I actively did not want
an eating disorder, and I knew how dangerous they could be,
and I was very aware of the dangers of it,

(24:44):
but I definitely didn't restrict food as much as I
wanted to be able to restrict food. And then I
remember with bolimia, like also I did not want bulimia,
but I did try to throw up on multiple occasions,
and I just like literally couldn't do it physically. And
that was probably a really good thing because I could
see myself getting into that back then. But one year

(25:05):
I ended up homeschooling because my dance schedule at that
particular ballet school was so intense that like, I was
missing a lot of school. During that time, I got
really into like trying certain foods. So for a while
I was really into grape fruit and grape nuts, which
I also thought was funny because it was like the
word great and both of these foods, and like I
would eat like a late breakfast because I was homeschool

(25:28):
so I could do this. I would eat late breakfast
of like half a grapefruit and some grape nuts and
then some other snack or food and then you know,
not eat after my allotted hour and be done eating
for the day. Wow. And that year, I don't think
I really noticed it, but I guess I must have

(25:51):
lost a lot of weight. I remember at the end
of the year, I was like at the bar next
to the mirror. We wasn't during class. It was like
maybe people we're putting their point shoes on or something.
My teacher said Erica, like, I've noticed your leotards. Look
your leotard's loose. Your leotard's loose on you. You're looking
good or something like that, jeez, basically complimenting me that

(26:15):
my leotard, which I had worn, you know, regularly throughout
the year, was now loose on me. And I felt
so good when she said that. Oh my god, Oh
I was so happy. I was so happy. Around this time,
I remember how ballet started monopolizing our family life, either

(26:36):
because Erica wasn't around as much or just because we
were spending so much time doing things for ballet. We'd
spend time in the Point shoe store while Erica tried
on shoes, and our mom and I would help se
on ribbons. We'd burn the edges with a lit match
so they wouldn't fray. We'd go to the mall and

(26:56):
purchase expensive hair pieces or stage makeup that the school requested.
Then there were the countless car rides and waiting for
class to be over. I'd write in my childhood diary
how I missed her, and I just remember Erica around then.

(27:16):
She seemed down. She didn't have time for hangouts or sleepovers,
and no matter how she seemed to perform in class
or on stage, she was always stuck in this same loop.
Just how much I hated my body and all of
the emotional consternation around that, and like constant obsession with that,

(27:40):
It was very tiring. So I was just really knotted
up inside that year because I just wanted my bones
to jut out. That's what I wanted. I wanted to
be bony. But I remember like I'd be like crying
at home late night. I'd be home from ballet and crying,

(28:03):
And I remember one night I was crying, and like
mom and Dad were on the couch and I was
on the floor, and I was telling them that I
needed to be thinner, and they were I think they
were just like, what, like, we don't know what to do.
And I think around that time they actually went to
the head of the school and said, like, you know,
they have parent teacher conferences and they said, you know,

(28:24):
one of Erica's concerns is that she's worried about being
thin enough. And you know, really, to the head teacher's credit,
she said, no, no, she's fine. She doesn't need to
worry about that. All of the reassurances I needed and
Mom and Dad passed that on to me, which did
mean a lot because she had been a principal with ABT.

(28:45):
She you know, she knew what she was talking about,
but I think it caused so much emotional weight that
increased just the general turmoil around this decision of should
I keep dancing or should I allow myself to do
some of the other things I love as well. One year,

(29:31):
Erica got into a prestigious pre professional summer intensive for ballet.
With this type of program, she'd spend the summer away
from home, living in a dorm training in hopes of
eventually joining a company. It should have been caused for celebration,
but for some reason, Erica just felt dread. I had

(29:53):
been questioning whether this was the right path for me already,
and there was a period where I was crying, like
almost nightly about it. I just felt so torn in
different directions. I just wasn't ready to give up my
whole self to it. I've always had a lot of interests,
too many interests, and ballet had become my whole life.

(30:17):
But it sort of had become my whole life out
of default because it required that I was considering quitting
high school and just focusing on dance. And I loved
school Alan you know, I was like a total nerd,
and you know, I was in a lot of pain
a lot of the time with my multiple injuries. Meanwhile,

(30:42):
Erica spent a lot of time in physical therapy. One day,
she went in for routine visit to deal with one
of her many chronic injuries, and so I remember that
day in the physical therapist office, we were in like
a separate room. So usually doing exercises, we'd be in
this sort of main room where a lot of people

(31:02):
there were machines, but for some reason we went into
this other, smaller office room off of the main room,
and that's when she said, you know, honestly, I'm not
seeing the improvement that we want, and you're not seeing
the improvement that we want. And really to get over this,
I think you're going to need to take three months off,

(31:24):
take the summer off. I felt like I couldn't miss
two days, and then she says, take three months off.
But as soon as she said that, I felt relief.
I didn't feel sad. I was I was like, yeay,
I was happy because I instantly knew I was never

(31:46):
going back and I never did. Whoa did you never
even go back to class? Like what happened there? I
think I went back. I went back to one class.
I don't know why I'm crying. I think it just

(32:08):
meant a lot to me at the time, and it
was like one of the hardest decisions I ever made.
I can't believe I'm crying about this, but I just like,
I really loved it so much. Yeah you did, and

(32:28):
it is hard to know that, Um, it feels like
you're giving it up permanently because you can't like go
back to that level. But I remember I I went
back to one last class. I think it was a

(32:51):
weird class because it was post the school term and
before the summer intensive starts, and so it was like
a weird in betweeen limbo classes. How it felt. It
felt less serious or just slightly less formal, and it
was a modern class, and I just danced my heart

(33:11):
out and I had so much fun, and I felt
so free in the movement. I think maybe also because
it was modern and we had these combinations across the
floor that we're just you're jumping in like all directions
and turning in the air, and I just felt so free.

(33:33):
It felt so exhilarating. And I remember after the class
one of my ballet teachers had been watching it for
some reason, which never happens. And it was one of
the teachers who's really she's extremely straightforward, doesn't compliment you often,
can be very harsh, would make people cry in class.
And what did she say? I used to remember the

(33:55):
word so well, but essentially she said, I've never seen
you dance like that, and she gave me this look. Basically,
what she was communicating to me was you have something
like you have it like that was amazing, wow, And
it's like I really was able to put myself in
it in a way I never had. And I thanked

(34:16):
her and I felt totally. I felt so free. As
I walked out that door. I knew I was never
going back. I wasn't planning to take classes of any
kind because it was an all or nothing. It was
all or nothing. I wasn't going to watch my body
slowly degrade in the mirror. I wasn't going to do that.
So I was not going back. I felt good about it,

(34:39):
but it is hard to hear as you're leaving, you know,
someone communicating like what you're capable of if you decide
to stay. She didn't know I was leaving either. I
hadn't told anyone. I hadn't told my teachers, I didn't
tell my classmates. I basically he left and ever went back,

(35:01):
and I didn't say goodbye. I didn't say goodbye to anyone. Why.
I don't know. I'm just curious because I guess I

(35:29):
don't even know, and maybe you don't know exactly why.
But like when you just started crying, like what were
you thinking? Why? What brought that out? I think I
just really loved to dance. I did. I did love
it more than anything. Um, I do think it was
a natural part of me and I and the reality

(35:51):
is I was like I it really did come from me,
like I do think that, you know, practically before I
could walk, I wanted to dance. It made me feel
connected with music. And I always used to say I
dance because when I dance, I am the music and
there's just nothing that feels as amazing as that. And

(36:13):
so at the time it felt like the biggest, most
important decision of my life, and it was. It was
the most central decision at that time for me. But
this all sounds so overdramatic for like a fifteen year old,
sixteen year old or whatever I was. But why was
I crying just now? I think I dismissed it. I

(36:47):
wish I hadn't said all or nothing, Like I wish
I had just kept taking a few classes, not in
the pre professional program and the open division. I think
it would have been too hard at the time, But
I wish I had done that. I wonder though, if
you could have you know, Yeah, I feel like in

(37:08):
your particular situation, like it was too hard, Like sometimes
when you have like a breakup or something. You need
to have time where you're not communicating. Otherwise it's just
way too complicated. Yeah, you're right, that's totally what it was.
It was like a breakup. It was really like a divorce,

(37:32):
so from like a really potentially even toxic relationship, just
because it was all encompassing for you. Yeah, And I
do think, like I even get emotional seeing you get
emotional because I know you so well. And maybe this

(37:53):
is horrible to say, but I feel like, in some
ways that was your great love and I don't know
if you've ever found that in anything else. And I
think that's why you're crying. Yeah, But the problem is
that even though maybe that was your great love, the

(38:15):
cost was too high. Yeah. When I look at my
sister now, I see a confident woman. She's full of
life and not afraid to say what she thinks. But
that took time. For months, maybe even years, after Erica
left ballet, she often had a more quiet demeanor. She

(38:36):
kept the slicked back hair, She seemed to trust others
more than herself. The other thing I wanted to say is,
like I said that thing about it was your one love,
But I think that's the way you perceive it. Yeah,
you're right. Ultimately ballet wasn't enough for me, And that

(38:59):
doesn't mean ballet isn't enough for other people, But it
just wasn't enough for me to give up everything else.
Sometimes I'm not sure what came first, because I started
dancing when I was three years old? So what is me?
Because I'm me? And what is me because of ballet?
I do think ballet does instill this like rigorous, constant

(39:21):
self criticism where that is your job, and maybe trusting
how others see you as well more than how you
even see yourself at times. Actually, now that I'm saying this,
it kind of reminds me of what Wilhelmina Frankfurt told us.
Balanchie used to say, you can't see you, only I
can see you. If that's the messaging you're getting in

(39:44):
your training, you do learn to trust someone else's perception
of you more than your perception of yourself. It's funny
to think how the culture of ballet that's been passed
down for generations effects not only the professional dancers, but

(40:07):
the thousands and thousands of little children who learn this
art form. How many people do you know who like
danced as a kid, and how many of them may
have been deeply affected by this culture. It's like all
these years you're learning to reflect back what other people want,

(40:28):
and you're learning to look at your reflection and see
what's wrong with it. All those hours you spend in
the studio, all of those hours you spend in that
room of mirrors, It's like that room of mirrors is
still in your brain, sticks with you next time on

(41:11):
The Turning? Who decided this? Who decided that you have
to have twig like arms or legs? Did the skies
open up and the ballet god said? This is Howard
host to beat? No, it's just how we've all been programmed.

(41:35):
The Turning is a production of Rococo Punch and iHeart Podcasts.
It's written and produced by Erica Lance and Me. Our
story editor is Emily Foreman. Mixing and sound designed by
James Trout. Jessica Carissa is our assistant producer. Andrea Swahe
is our digital producer. Fact checking by Andrea Lopez Crusado.

(41:58):
Our executive producers are John Paratti and Jessica Alpert at
Rococo Punch, and Katrina Norville and Nikki e Tour at
iHeart podcasts. For photos and more details on the series,
follow us on Instagram at Rococo Punch, and you can

(42:19):
reach out via email The Turning at Rococo punch dot com.
I'm Alan Lance Lesser. Thanks for listening.