I miss ballet. From the age of eight, up until two years ago, I was training as a serious ballet student. I actually started dancing even earlier at the age of three, but I was fully decided on ballet by age eight. I loved getting to perform with a professional company as a student in ballets like The Nutcracker, which is what originally inspired me to stay committed to the sport. At 16 years old, I joined a pre-professional ballet program where I trained +25 hours a week for five years. I was taking online classes in high school and college so I could be at the studio during the day. I loved getting to go into the studio and work on getting better at something. I loved having a strong passion and feeling dedication and discipline towards it. Nothing else in my life has ever made me feel as inspired as I felt when I was dancing. But at some point along the way, joy became secondary to proving my value as a dancer with the quality of my technique and the extent of my abilities.
I miss my friends. We grew up together in the same ballet studio, taking the same classes, going to the same rehearsals, and performing in the same performances. As advanced ballet students, we danced in the same pre-professional ballet program together, where we got to see each other every day and be each other’s cheerleaders in a sport that is so competitive. Now, I’m at school full-time, and they’re still dancing. And I’m still cheering them on from the sidelines as I watch their ballet careers carry on. I am excited for all of my friends’ successes, but it can hurt to watch someone live out something that was once your dream and talk about things that you can no longer relate to. It’s bittersweet.
I miss my teachers. Especially the ones who I could tell cared about me. My time as a pre-professional ballerina, while an amazing experience, was also a period of hardship for me. I endured two major injuries and a third chronic one. Once I was injured the first time, getting injured again just seemed to get easier. My first injury involved a hip surgery for an overuse injury called a labral tear, and just seven months later, I experienced a health scare where I ended up in the hospital for three days. Then, half a year after that, I was in a boot because I had fractured my foot. In all of this difficulty, there is one teacher who I remember genuinely seemed to care about me and look out for me. He was the main person who would check in on me and ask me how I was doing or remind me to take it easy because dancing through pain wouldn’t help me out in the long run. He would always say that it’s a marathon, not a short race. I miss him the most.
A career as a ballerina is uncertain and unstable and nearing the end of my time as a ballet student, I was in turmoil trying to figure out my next steps. Due to Covid’s quarantine and sitting out from several injuries, I stayed on my program longer than most students would. I was aging out of my ballet school and started to feel like I was no longer wanted there, even after being a student there for 13 years. I could accept that I would have to move out of state to find a job as a ballerina with little to no pay, or I could retire and move on. Eventually, I realized that going to college and putting all of this effort towards a degree would still be a step in the right direction of what I wanted out of life. I felt wronged and obsolete and I was in pain every day, so walking away was easy. Coming back to it is what’s difficult.
Alysa Liu, an Olympic gold-medalist figure skater, inspired me to find the joy in it again. In Alysa Liu’s 60 minutes interview, she explains how expectations and strict guidance made figure skating “[feel] like a responsibility or a burden even”. For me, ballet became the same. Our sports start as play when we’re young and ignorant of perfectionism but as we get older, we get harder and harder on ourselves due to influence from outside forces, whether that be coaches, peers, or social media. It was hard for me to celebrate my accomplishments and recognize my perseverance which got me through tough times because there was always a feeling that I could be doing more and that I still wasn’t good enough yet.
So watching Alysa Liu rise above the intensity and stress of competition on an Olympic stage was revolutionary. Her gold-medal win was a win for all of the girls who quit their sport earlier than they would have liked. It’s a win for the girls who were burnt out from all of the pressure. It’s a win for reclaiming autonomy in sports that are so particular about the look of women’s bodies. Alysa Liu wasn’t just representing the United States of America but also all of the girls who look up to her as a role model. Girls like me, who wish that Alysa’s jubilee and playfulness were something that I could always experience. This is what I want to bring back into my own sport.
I realized that if I want to get back into ballet, I need to look at it with a different perspective, not the same wounded one. I realized that it is a gift that I can get back into it on my own terms and at my own pace. I don’t have to do it if I don’t want to. I don’t have to dance if my body is still hurting. But when I do dance, it will be for me. I won’t feel the pressure to impress anyone and I won’t be competing for attention or favor. Because, at this point in my life, that’s not what it’s about anymore. It’s about doing what makes me happy and moving on from the things that don’t.
It seems like I’m always looking back on when I was dancing every day. I don’t think that I’ll ever stop missing it but I’ve found other small things that eventually add up to be enough. Things like learning many other dance styles, including country swing, line dancing, salsa, hip hop, and tango. In all of this, I’ve found that bringing joy into everything I do is the real dream and that staying close to my values has helped me continue to feel fulfilled and happy even after retiring from something that was my whole life.
My final thought to other retired dancers and female athletes is that there is no right or wrong to how you are supposed to live your life. Taking a break or moving on doesn’t mean that you have to be done forever or are defeated; it means that you are opening yourself up to other opportunities and experiences. I have had many fun and new experiences in the past two years since I retired from dancing full-time, and I’m ready for returning to ballet to be another one.