(340) Alice Robb, author of 'Don't Think, Dear: On Loving and Leaving Ballet'
This week on Conversations on Dance, we are joined by author, Alice Robb, whose memoir, ‘Don’t Think, Dear’, chronicles her experiences as a young ballet student. We talk about the creative process for the book, her decision to include far reaching studies on pain tolerance, dancer psychology, and other subjects to give context to a dancer’s life and experience, and the book’s place in recent high profile conversations that have arisen about whether, or how, problematic ballet’s past and present really are.
Alice’s book is available on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3nZkYEt
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After a nearly-decade-long hiatus from live performance, ChrisMastersDance returns with Mausoleum, at Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Fishman Space, June 2nd to 4th. Tickets at bam.org/Mausoleum.
TRANSCRIPT
This transcript was generated automatically. It’s accuracy may vary.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:00:59]:
I'm Rebecca King Ferraro.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:01:00]:
And I'm Michael Sean Breeden, and you're listening to Conversations on Dance. This week on Conversations on Dance, we are joined by author Alice Robb, whose memoir, Don't Think Dear, chronicles her experiences as a young ballet student.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:01:17]:
We talk about the creative process for the book, her decision to include far reaching studies on pain tolerance, dancer psychology, and other subjects to give context to dancer's life and experience, and the book's place in recent high profile conversations that have arisen about whether or how problematic ballet past and present really are.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:01:38]:
Good morning. Thank you so much for joining us. Alice, your book is making waves in the ballet world. It was particularly interesting for me because we were at SAB during the same years. So I just want to go back to the beginning of the genesis of this book. Did you start writing kind of just like, experiences, or did you hash out a concept and then go from there? What were the early moments of your book?
Alice Robb [00:02:05]:
Oh, my gosh. Well, thank you so much for having me on also. Very happy to be talking to you guys. Yeah. So I would say this book, the genesis of this book, it was very much a slow burn, I would say it started in my journal, as many of my ideas do. So I think long before I ever thought I might write a book about ballet, I was just kind of a big Morning Pages journaler girl. I was doing some freelance journalism in the years before this book, and I think ballet would come up from time to time. I wrote a profile of Alexandra Ancilli in 2016, so that was a few years before I started thinking about this book. But I think that kind of brought me back into the world of ballet and writing about ballet a little bit, but I think it was something that was always kind of percolating. I stopped dancing when I was 15, and there were years I can get into it, but there were years when I was certainly not consciously following the dance world. I was not going to the ballet. I was not in touch with my ballet friends, but I think it was always something that was kind of simmering in the background. And then as for this actual book, at first when I started thinking about, okay, actually, I do want to spend a few years delving back into this world, I thought it was going to be much more academic. So the original pitch for this book was like, I thought I was going to do just a sort of traditional group biography of four women dancers in history. But then just as I was working on it, kind of kept triggering memories and I was writing more personally. And then I think as I started to explore my personal story a bit more, I got back in touch with my old SAB friends and finally the kind of final click was realizing that I wanted to be about more than me. I wanted to include other my classmate stories as well.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:04:29]:
Right.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:04:30]:
One of the things that you talk about and Michael and I were talking about, the specific part of your book was like the loss of identity. After you stop dancing, there's like these phases that you go through of accepting the loss and kind of like you're saying there's a period of time where you just step away from the ballet world because it's like, too painful, and then you kind of come back to it. So I wonder if this is kind of part of that healing process. I don't know if you want to maybe say that, but kind of a way for you to go back, look at your experience with ballet and kind of digest it.
Alice Robb [00:05:07]:
Oh my gosh, so much. I mean, I think this book writing this book was so therapeutic for me in ways that I didn't even know I needed because I think my first impulse was just avoidance of ballet. I think I was not really grappling with the ways that I was still being impacted by it. And then I think really the most yeah, I mean, to use the term healing, part of the research and writing process was reconnecting with my SAB classmates and kind of realizing how many shared experiences we had gone through even without being in touch. And it was very validating. And just having other people to process this very specific experience with was really interesting. And I've heard from a lot of readers who seem to have had similar experiences, so that's also been very nice.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:05:59]:
Right? Yeah, I related to a lot of it. I loved some of the things that, I guess seemingly silly thoughts that we have. Like, when you sat down to watch the performance and you were too full to perform if you're watching the performance, like that kind of thing. Or just thinking of like you have this idea of what you want your body to be like, and you want to stay long. You're scared of bulking up. I remember I started going to the gym for the first time and lifting weights. And then I was teaching and I was like, oh no, my arm is too big now. It doesn't look like my shoulder is too close to my head. It doesn't make the right line to show my kids that kind of stuff that stays with us even though we're no longer we could shed that. But it's like part of the process of moving on, I guess.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:06:53]:
Yeah.
Alice Robb [00:06:55]:
I think it's so ridiculous because I literally as I said, I stopped dancing at 15, but I was in my late twenty s the first time I was afraid of touching a weight. And then I finally went to some hit class or something and I was like, oh, this is great. I feel really strong now. But it just was so ingrained.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:07:17]:
I did the same thing with running or something. I'm like, I can't run. It's going to be so bad on my joints. I don't know if you guys sometimes when I wake up with my necks out or something, I'll be like, oh my gosh. Right into that panic of like, how am I going to rehearse today or perform? And it's like, matter. All you have to do is just sit at a computer today. You'll be fine. It's so funny how those things really just stick with us. So I wonder one thing that's been brought up a lot in terms of your book is that people have been mentioning that it's refreshing to have someone talk about ballet that didn't have a career in ballet and stopped early. And it's just like a different perspective. So how do you feel that that does, in fact, give you a unique perspective in this conversation?
Alice Robb [00:08:03]:
Yeah, well, I think it's a perspective that's not heard from often, but I actually think it's an incredibly common perspective. And I remember because of course, so many kids start ballet, fall in love with ballet, dedicate a lot of our childhoods and our mental energy and our bodies to pursuing it, but of course, don't have careers. And I mean, I remember as a kid going to summer programs and kind of looking around and just I think that was kind of realizing there are all these kids all over the country with varying levels of training and different skills who are just most of us are not going to make it, and we're all trying so hard. Yeah. So I think that it's not a perspective that's I think most of I mean, this is a big part of why I wanted to write this book was that I think most of the memoirs out there are by dancers who have been had celebrated careers. And I love those memoirs, obviously. I read many of them in reading this book, in writing this book. But I think it's also some of these issues that we've already been talking about, the identity things. I think people are sometimes surprised that someone like me, who, again, stopped as a teenager, could still have been so impacted by ballet. And I think when I first started thinking about this book, because there haven't been many books like this, I wondered if that was actually a weird personal quirk, that I had just never been able to just get over this. And it was really through talking to other people and old classmates and stuff that I realized that we were doing this during a really formative time in our lives, and we're all still kind of living with the positive and negative effects of growing up in the Valley world.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:10:13]:
Right. I don't know of any book like that. And I think it's even there are still very few books even written by people that did have careers, but were not major careers. Tony Bentley I remember reading Winter Season and just being so shook by it because it was a completely different perspective than what we were used to. So I think it certainly adds something to this conversation because as much as we love those books, it is a different thing. But I think even your book, as much you have the ability you kind of have, of course you're talking about your personal experiences, but then there are a lot of moments where you zoom out. Like, I really enjoy how you take problematic or the patriarchal components of ballet, but then you put it in the larger framework of just kind of what women in the world experience. How did you kind of decide that would be something you would tackle? Like, that sort of juxtaposition?
Alice Robb [00:11:21]:
Yeah, I would say as far as deciding making these decisions, a lot of them just kind of emerged organically. Like, I didn't really set out with a thesis, but yeah, as I was thinking about the things that I taken from ballet, of course, I've lived half of my life outside of the ballet world, so I feel very able to speak to just the culture of just kind of being a woman in the non dancing world. And yeah, it certainly not came clear to me that it's not that ballet has invented the patriarchy. It's just maybe a bit, like more extreme in certain instances. But I quit ballet, and it's not like I then walked off into the sunset, into a world where no one ever looked at each other's bodies, and it didn't matter what you looked like. It was less extreme, but all those things were still there.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:12:31]:
Yeah. How do you think that when we're talking about that aspect, the patriarchy, how do you feel like women running companies are stepping into positions of power? Choreographers can shift that.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:12:48]:
Well.
Alice Robb [00:12:48]:
I mean, I think even just their existence, their presence is so huge and just them kind of being there as potential role models. I mean, I don't necessarily feel like qualified to issue recommendations. And I would also add that my book is pretty specific. It's pretty specifically about a certain time period and more about the after effects of that specific meaning period.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:13:20]:
Right, sure.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:13:21]:
Yeah, I understand.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:13:24]:
Something else that I found really interesting about the book is that you bring in all these studies and some are things that I would not have ever thought to be. I mean, of course they're relevant, but it's like if I were writing a book, I wouldn't have thought out these really interesting studies about pain or let's see, I just jotted down, I was like as I would go through, I'd say, here's another study you're bringing up. You have studies on dancers being in the zone. You have a study about how Havanaquila just dancing that brings people immediately elevates your mood. You have a study about people, kids wearing junk, what we call junk wearing not uniform, and how that affects their self esteem. And then studies about mirrors, the presence of mirrors. As soon as I made a joke, like my first day, I was staging a ballet and I had just read your book and they were like, oh, we could be in the studio with or without mirrors. And I was like, well, it's the first day we'll do no mirrors because I know this study now that says but I'm just curious how you decided that that was something that you wanted to bring in or like how you even started to research and how did you find those and then bring them into your work?
Alice Robb [00:14:45]:
Oh, yeah, I mean, I'm just a massive nerd, and my background is actually in science journalism. My first book was about totally Different was about the science of dreaming. And I've done a lot of, like a lot of my freelance journalism has been in the kind of more academic space. So it was just kind of like that's just kind of where my rabbit holes Go is into the scholarship and just kind of googling around on Google Scholar and various academic journals. But yeah, I mean, I thought those studies it's just amazing, all the things that have been studied as well, that someone actually designed this experiment of having college students take a class with or without a ballet skirt and then fill out surveys about their body.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:15:43]:
Oh, interesting. Yeah, I really like the one about Havanagila because they were talking too, about how we were talking that section about how babies too, just like that natural motion makes them happy. And my son is nine months old, and just like, sometimes I'll just dance to him and it just like he moves around and it is just something that's so natural and you can see it just like, bring this joy when he doesn't even know what that means. It's not like he has any consciousness as to what's going on. So I really like that. But I do want to delve into, while we're talking about these specific things that you were the studies that you were highlighting, the one about pain. Let's talk about that one because that was so fascinating. If you could give us, like, a little rundown for our listeners. I thought it was just really an interesting part of the book in particular.
Alice Robb [00:16:33]:
Yeah. So there's this test to measure pain tolerance where you stick your hand in a bucket of ice water and you tell the experimenter both when you start to feel pain and then when it reaches a point that you want to withdraw your hand from the bucket. And there's no incentive other than, I guess, sort of impressing the researcher or something. Right. And yeah, it found that dancers kept their hands in the bucket much longer. I think it was like almost twice as long as non dancers. And then at first, the authors of the study thought, oh, maybe dancers actually experienced the pain differently. But then they found that actually the dancers were more in tune. They were so in tune with their bodies that they registered. They could experience the pain and register that with pain earlier than the non dancers, which just makes it even more remarkable that they were tolerating it for so much longer.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:17:44]:
Just like, I'll take it probably at some point thinking, like, oh, this feels good. If my foot was swollen or my hand was swollen, this would feel great.
Alice Robb [00:17:51]:
Right.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:17:58]:
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Rebecca King Ferraro [00:18:30]:
After nearly a decadelong hiatus from live performance, chris Master's Dance returns with mausoleum at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Fisherman Space, June 2 to fourth. Reckoning with the dance field's history of systematic exploitation. Chris Master's Dance is building a mausoleum, a place to acknowledge and remember the past that has been laid to rest, making way for tomorrow that sets aside unsustainable forms of life and work. Don't miss mausoleum at Bam this June 2 through fourth. Tickets are available@bam.org mausoleum or click the link in the show notes.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:19:09]:
But then it's like you dive in that's one aspect of that whole section of the book, but then you explore the idea that it can be almost like sort of dancers can almost fetishize pain. We do, and it's interesting. It becomes this thing where it's like, do we do we are we inclined to that? Like, do we like that? Or did dance teach us to like that? Like this sort of chicken or egg thing that happens in a few different cases in the book. It's like also when you talk about I think you call it the doctrine of passivity, and that is another really interesting thing to explore that you take on in the book. It's like, are we inclined just naturally as people to be passive, or does dance then amplify that, or did it not exist? Like, all that sort of stuff that you're weaving in and out of the book. I think it's very interesting. When did you start to dive into that particular side of things like chicken or egg? Are we naturally passive or does dance just at least amplify that?
Alice Robb [00:20:24]:
Yeah, I think just sort of thinking about my own childhood and kind of development, and I think I definitely as a kid, fit that stereotype of, like I was very quiet and shy, and it was very comforting to be in a room where the rules were clear. And even if I couldn't always conform to them, at least I kind of knew what they were. And of course, you didn't have to say anything and yeah, I definitely heard that from a number of other people. Read that in various books. But, yeah, I think the question of whether I was drawn to ballet because of that and then kind of created this feedback loop where ballet encouraged and rewarded it. I don't know. I mean, what do you guys think you are? The professional dancers?
Michael Sean Breeden [00:21:18]:
No, it's a hard thing to unpack there, but I think it's certainly I think in your book, you really do a great job of kind of bringing up these contradictions. Like, ballet is just full of contradictions and there are questions you cannot answer, but I think you bring them up in a way that is important and certainly provoked thoughts that I had not really explored. One thing that I want to bring up that I think you're the only person I've heard say this, because there has been a lot of I feel like it happens every so often now. There have been a lot of articles about Balanchine and his behavior versus the art. I think everyone we all agree we love the ballets, but I think at some point you're going through things that are certainly, definitely problematic. I think certainly by our standards, to 2023 standards, but even at the time, I think they probably gave people pause for concern. But then you basically just say you kind of think, well, if all these women are they're choosing to give their lives to him and they're not mired in trauma, I guess then you have to let them have their experience. We can't assign them their feelings. And I feel like I've never heard anyone say that. I thought that was interesting.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:22:56]:
Yeah.
Alice Robb [00:23:00]:
Some of my teachers certainly continue to celebrate Balanchine and cherish their experiences with him, and it just wouldn't feel right at all for me as a younger woman. Who grew up in a different time to just come in and say, you can't feel that way about your life. I think we have to both respect the women who worked with him and how they feel about their experiences while also thinking about how to pass on his valets without necessarily fetishizing everything he ever said and did.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:23:44]:
Right. I mean, we had Jennifer Holmans on and we were talking about her book, which I just loved because I felt like it was the first time I had read the depiction of Balanchine as a man. And it's certainly the way I love balancing. I went to SAB, I spent my life in a Balanchine company. And it makes you feel nice to have this tingly idea that something bigger and better than yourself. But I also thought it was equally fascinating to just get a real inside view about who he was as a person because that is not something we get to explore, but I think we can.
Alice Robb [00:24:30]:
Oh, I just want to say, did you see the documentary in Valentin's classroom?
Michael Sean Breeden [00:24:35]:
Yes. Which there is a moment I want to talk about in there that you reference. But go ahead, circle back.
Alice Robb [00:24:42]:
Well, I remember actually seeing that movie was the first time I had ever seen footage of Balanchine and it was somehow so I don't know, it was just such a kind of moment of like I'd, like, grown up. Just like, hearing and thinking so much about him that he had just become, like, not a person, but just like an idea. And then yeah, there was just something very kind of.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:25:15]:
Almost jarring, like very.
Alice Robb [00:25:17]:
Humanizing and jarring to be like, oh.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:25:20]:
Yeah, I feel like our generation knows him through the steps. Right. And the ballet really is how I feel connected to it. So it is interesting, like you're saying, to see that other side.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:25:36]:
Yeah. And that's funny, I haven't thought about that. But I had that same moment, granted, was for something different, I think was a documentary and there was footage of Balanchine sheet and Stravinsky. And I remember how jarring it was to hear him speak because up until that point I had only it's like Rebecca saying, like, I knew him through the steps and it was very easy to divorce him from any sort of humanity. Just like this God like figure genius. When you dance that way, we all know how freeing that feels. It feels different. Or I think to us it felt different from other ways of moving. You do his ballets or you learn certain things about the technique and how you're meant to move bigger, or like, this is supposed to be the musicality of things. But I remember being like, oh, he's just a human being and his voice is kind of funny and.
Alice Robb [00:26:34]:
He has.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:26:34]:
This little facial tick and wow, this giant is actually just still a person.
Alice Robb [00:26:41]:
Yeah, very interesting.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:26:44]:
I want to talk wait. Oh, sorry.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:26:46]:
I know what you want to talk about.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:26:48]:
Yeah, I don't want to forget because I do think it's interesting there are those things where you're like, that would that would not be okay today, and or you question, like, why why people did accept things, and then it's because they felt, like, attached to something larger than themselves. But then when you're once removed and so let's say we're having a person staging a ballet and it's like, without the genius actually present in the room, and you're just doing the steps, but that person I don't know if Balanchine never acted like that. Maybe he didn't, but there's a moment where someone's coaching in in Balanchin's classroom, and I think we all kind of just went like, oh, this is not great for now, and it's someone coaching an Abt principal. And this principal who we rebecca and I both know and love at Adore, and the sweetest person is just like, in tears, and we're like, well, maybe we could not be doing that today. I don't know if she needed that one today. That's so interesting.
Alice Robb [00:28:09]:
That's a moment that I yeah, no, I'm very interesting that you had the same reaction as I did, because you're obviously familiar with the rehearsal norms of today. But yeah, I think what I noticed was, like, I think this kind of happens in the, like, next generation, right, where, like, the person who could be flexible and could be maybe, you know, I mean, take even the example of, like, my title, which, you know, I know some people have had feelings about. But it's like maybe Balanchine said don't think to a dancer who was overthinking and needed to hear that. But then it gets passed down as this kind of doctrine and these, like, sacred words and just becomes calcified into something into something harsher.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:28:58]:
Yeah, I did want to talk about that because there has been this conversation. The name of your book is don't think, dear. And then there has been people who have brought up the fact that there is another part of it that Don't Think Dear just do right to get out of your head. So was that like, a conscious reason that you presented the title in this way? Give us a little bit of insight into your thought process behind that.
Alice Robb [00:29:22]:
Yeah, well, I mean, I do discuss the Just Do part in my final chapter, and I think part of that is kind of like, tracked with the evolution of my thinking about that phrase and also kind of ballet as a whole. But yeah, I mean, Don't Think Dear was something that was repeated to me and stuck with me. And I think it's also about as I was just saying, the title is not an accusation. It's about something that took on a different meaning when it was once removed from the person who had said it.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:30:07]:
This is something that I feel like, just generally nuance can be stripped from the conversation. But I think that you offer a very nuanced point of view, and it's hard because it gets very, like camp pro bouncing, camp anti Balanchine or that sort of thing. But I think it's not that at all. I mean, even like, Jennifer Holmans's book, I thought was just so wonderful. It made me amplified my love for and connection to the ballets. But then people got upset by certain stories that were told and I don't know, I just think the way you deal with it in the book, like, exactly what you're talking about is the way that it was once removed. It took on a different meaning. It's no longer the genius himself saying it to you, and you're connected to this higher, not higher power, but you're not bouncing himself, but that the art is a higher power. It's almost a religion, but then he's not there. It's someone else repeating it. It kind of strips away. And then you mentioned it in the last chapter, and you think about, what if he had said that to you? And you kind of strip away the way that you can get in your own way and you get in your own head. I mean, because I certainly was that kind of dancer too. Maybe I needed him to just say something seriously. But yeah, I think it's just so much more nuanced and complicated and it's something that you cover in the book. Even just saying on loving and leaving ballet. It's like just those two words. It's like two things can be true. You can love something and leave it. Just because you left it doesn't mean that it was this horrible thing. There are contradictions in it, but it's a nuanced portrait of the experience of an artist.
Alice Robb [00:32:05]:
Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I feel like most people who have read the book have understood nuance. I think that the title is also a little bit intentionally provocative, but yeah, I think one critic called my book like, an unrequited love letter or something, which I kind of liked.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:32:31]:
How many people feel that way? I'm sure, like, probably Principal Ballerina probably feel like their autobiographies would be an unrequited love letter to ballet.
Alice Robb [00:32:43]:
Well, one thing I liked this in the book, but there's a Susan Son Tag essay where she says that dancers, she's never met anyone who's as hard as himself on themselves as dancers and talks about virishnikov berating himself after a performance. And it's sad. Yeah, but I mean, I've also heard from a lot of people who pursued a different pursued acting or academia or music to a pretty high degree as kids and teenagers and ends up with a similar relationship with their art.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:33:20]:
Yeah. And I always say this, that there's no better employee than a former dancer because we will work so hard, more harder than we don't realize that everyone around us is a. Quarter of what we feel the need to do.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:33:39]:
I'm thinking about when you said in the pain study that there is no incentive. I'm like, we don't need incentive. We are just like, we will be competitive for nothing. You know what I mean? It's like there isn't another person in the study with you, but you're just like, I probably would want to impress that person.
Alice Robb [00:33:56]:
Absolutely.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:33:57]:
We would act like that so cuckoo.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:34:05]:
Let's talk about this larger conversation that's happening right now, because there have been lots of articles happening. Your book is a big part of this discourse, so I just wonder how that makes you feel. And did you expect that this book would kind of stir up be a part of this conversation that's kind of, like, stirring right now?
Alice Robb [00:34:25]:
I mean, I didn't know what to expect. You never know if a book will just get land or if it'll just get ignored. I mean, I'm very happy that people seem to be reading it. I think it's really interesting that the podcast came out and Jennifer Holman's book came out all around the same time. I mean, maybe something just been kind of brewing for a while. I mean, I remember when me Too first hit, kind of wondering what was going to come out of the ballet world. But yeah, I think it makes sense within the larger cultural conversation we're having about the art and the artist and kind of how to think about powerful men. I mean, I think also if ten years ago, Jennifer Holmes's last book, she predicted that ballet was dying, and I think we've seen that actually. Ballet is, I think, kind of really popular right now and feels very much in the conversation in a way that I feel like it wasn't even really in my childhood.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:35:46]:
It was funny. I was talking to someone recently, and we were talking about ballet, and they're like, oh, my gosh, I've seen all these articles. Ballet is so toxic. It's just so terrible. And I just wonder if you've encountered anyone that's just kind of having that black and white perspective on this conversation and what you might say to someone who's interpreting it that way.
Alice Robb [00:36:09]:
Yeah, I mean, it's frustrating when there have been a couple of articles that I felt like kind of picked out the most salacious bits of my book, and those are in there. You know, they didn't sound like they were making stuff up, but you can take things out of context. It happens, but you see how things get a little bit distorted and then you become a representative of something that the book is out there.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:36:41]:
Right, yeah, that's why I said I think once you read the book, you see that it is not that, and that it is a very nuanced portrait of what we experience. So much of what you bring up in the book is completely relatable, I think, to almost any dancer maybe not the most prized, the person that had the easiest path, but I think, yeah, I know, maybe that doesn't exist. I mean, we bring up plenty of people, like the way, I don't know, Margot Fontaine's experience or Misty Copeland's experience, people that we think of as like, certainly making it as much as one can make it.
Alice Robb [00:37:35]:
Right.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:37:37]:
Everyone has things that they deal with in this art form.
Alice Robb [00:37:42]:
Yeah. And I mean, I think this came up in the chapter on body image and Body Dysmorphia, but that the way you're perceived often. It just doesn't necessarily have much to do with how you feel. Experience yourself well.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:37:57]:
And that was interesting in that Body Dysmorphia, you're talking about just like being in front of a mirror all the time. And I'm sure we can all relate as not being in front of a mirror anymore. That helps a lot. I think we still see all those things when we are in front of a mirror, but we have the power to take it away from us. Or like, yeah, just see myself, like, in the mirror when I go to the bathroom in the day. I'm like, oh, yeah, smeared and has been for hours. And that never would have happened as a dancer. It's just some things like that are just always there for us. And then when they get taken away, you suddenly then have that perspective of how things are different. But while we're talking about this discourse, I did want to bring up the New York Times article. Giacorlis was talking about feminism, and as it relates to this bigger conversation, she says, quote, the feminist case for ballet is right there on stage. It's freedom and his choreography. Balancing made space for women in particular and for each woman to be free, end quote. I've seen a lot of balancing dancers online sharing that. And so I'm just curious, like, sharing that as they agree with that statement that GMA. I just wonder your thoughts on that.
Alice Robb [00:39:11]:
Well, I think that I talk about in the book that it can be just an incredible feeling to do ballet and do his choreography in particular. I'm certainly not out to cancel balancing choreography, but I felt like it was a bit of a straw man argument where she brought in my book in particular because my book and my reporting are really about the training environment and the training culture, and particularly about, I mean, going back to the beginning of this conversation. It's about for every woman who becomes a balancing dancer and gets to experience that freedom on stage, there are just dozens of girls who are never going to get that experience, but who are going through kind of absorbing all of these lessons and are being really impacted by that. So I think that those experiences matter.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:40:19]:
That sort of right. I wanted to bring up I'm just thinking about what we were talking about, just even on the quote. It's like how the quote, as it gets passed down, can mean different things or stray from the original point. I was thinking about when you talk about bouncing, liking Gloria Govren's dancing, and then it said, by the time by the time we were SAB, she would not have been let in the door. And that makes me think, again about moving away from maybe what intention is. I'm not sure what the question is.
Alice Robb [00:41:03]:
No, I think it's super relevant because the period that I'm focusing on is like the generation after Balanchin's death, which I think was a more rigid time. I remember even being kind of having this cognitive dissonance as a kid when I would look at old footage of City Ballet and see these dancers who we were supposed to be emulating and they didn't look like us, they didn't look like the company at that time.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:41:36]:
Right.
Alice Robb [00:41:36]:
And that was kind of fusing. I was like, Why are we being told to suffer? To be even more extreme?
Michael Sean Breeden [00:41:46]:
Yeah, all those Dance in America videos that we grew up I'm presuming you saw those great PBS stuff with all those iconic dancers. But you're right, they did look different from what we were.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:42:05]:
I just wanted to talk about kind of this generational conversation that we're having. So there's Balanchine time, then there's the generation that we grew up in kind of working for his dancers. And then soon there's going to be a time where it's our generation leading the pack. And I know that Michael won't bring this up, but I'm going to bring it up for him just because it's, I think, a good example of something like this. When Michael was just setting increases for Justin Peck at Golden State Ballet, one of the dancers left this beautiful put this beautiful post on Instagram after working with him, talking about what a positive environment it was, how good it felt to be dancing like that. And I wonder what we hope, or what you hope in the next ten to 20 years that ballet can look like as it evolves with a new generation leading.
Alice Robb [00:43:02]:
I feel pretty optimistic. I just think our generation is maybe a little more conscientious aware. I think we've reflected on what we experienced and are able to recognize what we don't want to pass on. I think there are these really positive changes with more female directors and more female choreographers. Probably social media has pros and cons, but probably creates a bit more accountability. And yeah, I think just like I don't know. Again, I want to hear what you guys think of.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:43:55]:
I guess it makes me think, though, because I do think that that is true and that we can we always just say, like, don't pass the trauma on. That's, like our time. I go to a staging. My friends are just like that's first. But then I'm like, this is not a question we can even answer. But I'm like, why did that thought not occur to certain other people? Why do some people, I mean, do they think it's part of the process and that that makes you better? Like, for me, I'm always like, I don't, I won't. I want to well, of course I want everyone to be mentally well. And, you know, my job is also to make the best product, but they go hand in hand and I don't want to keep anything that was harmful. And sometimes that might be you can still be a taskmaster, you can still be hard on someone, but as long as that person later on is going to be like, you know what? That was good for me. That that person was hard on me. I don't know why people can't just be like, maybe that wasn't good.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:44:58]:
Well, one thing that I was thinking of when I was reading your book is I remember being told at one point, like, talking about an injury and saying, I'm going to PT or whatever, and hearing like, well, we never had physical therapy. And I'm like, yeah, but don't we want that now? That's cool that we have it now. Good improvement. And that's just to me, like a very black and white situation. Like, obviously we want more taken care of, but I think that's prevalent in everything everywhere, I suppose, views like that.
Alice Robb [00:45:30]:
I feel like there's maybe a component of kind of hazing mentality of what our teachers have been through and that they associated with rigor with some of these toxic practices. I also think maybe the culture has gotten a little bit kinder in all fields.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:45:52]:
Yeah, sometimes too. As a teacher, I would find myself being wanting to go into the studio in a different way than sometimes I saw and then just totally losing control of the classroom, especially with younger kids. And I'm like, oh, is this why they were mean to us? So then I get confused for a second.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:46:10]:
No, it's hard. Yeah, it's all about balance. But yeah, I think we're okay.
Alice Robb [00:46:15]:
That's good.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:46:16]:
We all feel optimistic and we all love ballet. I guess as the last question, alice, are you writing anything now? Do you have a book that you are working towards?
Alice Robb [00:46:31]:
Yeah, well, actually I'm writing a few little pieces about ballet. Just some little journalism pieces. And then I am working. My first two books were both in like each was in a different genre. The first was science journalism. This one is sort of narrative nonfiction memoir ish and I won't say what is the Doubt, but I'll say the third one hopefully will be in yet another genre.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:47:03]:
Big smile on your face. You must be very excited about what you're working on. Thank you so much.
Michael Sean Breeden [00:47:09]:
Thank you for joining us today.
Alice Robb [00:47:11]:
Thank you so much.
Rebecca King Ferraro [00:47:19]:
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