Today on the show, I chat with Veronica K, who runs an online ballet cross-training and injury prevention platform.

We talk about a wide range of topics, including physical therapy, cyberbullying, and popular fake or unrealistic before/after photos.

It’s an awesome conversation where we get a chance to compare notes on how we help ballet work for adult dancers and regular everyday human bodies.

But, the best part is that you will get to hear Veronica’s unique perspective from her physical therapy and personal training background that she brings to the ballet world.

Enjoy!

---

LISTEN ON APPLE






Listen on Spotify






YouTube

Julie: Welcome to the show, Veronica. I'm so excited to get to sit down with you and just chat about all things ballet.

Veronica: Yes, I'm super excited to thank you for having me, Julie.

Julie: So fun. So Veronica, for anyone who doesn't know her yet, Veronica runs an injury prevention, ballet cross training platform, and really is huge on safe ballet practices, which as you all know, I care a lot about with all my adult dancers longevity is our key here. And so I'm really excited to be able to chat with you today about all things adult ballet, because we have so much in common with our dancers and how we're trying to train them to dance for the rest of their lives and not dance for a short spurt and get injured. We want our dancers to be healthy and dancing forever.

Veronica: Absolutely, absolutely. That is the key with our both of our methodologies and how we teach, which is why I enjoy talking to you so much, because you're just like, you have very similar views on things that I hold very near and dear to me.

Julie: Sometimes I get asked if we are competing with each other. And I think you get this question sometimes as well. And I just want to start off the conversation by addressing that in case anyone is sitting there listening, wondering why we're chatting with each other. But to me, and I'm curious, your thoughts on this as well, I'll start, to me my competition is boredom with ballet, my competition is getting you getting injured and not being able to dance anymore. My competition is you feeling like you can't do it and losing motivation and quitting dance forever. My competition is any of the challenges in the ballet world that push one of our dancers out of the ballet world, I see someone like you and any of the other adult ballet providers out there as continuing to foster my dancers love for ballet and continuing to keep them motivated and continuing to keep them safe and healthy and in the valley world and trying to help keep them from being driven out by any of those other factors being too busy being too bored, being sad being unmotivated. So that's how I see the synergy between what we do and a lot of the other dance teachers out there. What are your thoughts? Anything you want to add to them?

Veronica: I agree 100%. I've never had anybody come to me and be like, “Yeah, well, I just don't want to take your classes or do your platform because I like Julie better.” We have a lot of dancers who we share because we provide different services. And we share a lot of people.

And I guess like I never really thought of myself as going up against someone else in specific for competition. I did competitions, like the competition circuits, a lot growing up, and you see all these different dance teachers coming together in those competitions. And they're like, “hey, these are my kids,” “These are my kids.” And sometimes you'd go to the other studio and your teacher would want you to take a class at that other studio. Because it's helpful for a student to take classes with other teachers because everybody teaches differently.

<figure class="block-animation-none">

“It’s helpful for a student to take classes with other teachers because everybody teaches differently.”

</figure>

So I've never felt like, and I even tell my kids like that I have my teens, at the in person studio that I work out a little bit, I tell them like it is good for you to take classes with multiple teachers, you don't want to be learning from just one person your entire life. And then it'd be like, “Oh, man, you know what I learned with this one person my entire life, I've never seen anything else.” That's really weird for that student, if you're venturing out like that, or even if you're not venturing out and spreading your wings.

The biggest hurdles in my business, like to get students to actually dance are a lot of the same things that you pointed out. But my biggest competitor is financial restraintss, because I always feel for those people who are like, “I really want to take class somewhere or do something, but I don't have the money.” Like that is a big hurdle that a lot of people have to deal with.

But yeah, mentally and physically, those barriers are much harder to get by than to join the dance world and share students with another studio or another teacher or something like that. I think that most teachers understand that the arts are hard to thrive in and we want to support each other, we're not out to go kill each other. So I don't know, I definitely do not consider us competitors. That's for sure.

Julie: I agree. I agree 100%, I think it's so important to get different perspectives, because each teacher brings their background to the table. So the things that I know that I find, the things that I struggled with the most are the easiest for me to teach the things that I've helped people breakthrough are the easiest for me to teach.

The things that came more naturally, to me, are incredibly challenging to teach. And they're not the same things as what came naturally to you. And so you are able, “you” not necessarily “you” specifically, but you other teachers are able to fill in those gaps that I have in my teaching, and are able to provide that perspective, because ballet is like, there's a lot to learn! Oh my gosh, there is an incredible amount to learn. Sometimes it's overwhelming, even as teachers, and so to know that there's someone else out there who's got my back, and who's got my dancers back. And that can help fill in those gaps is like, takes a weight off. And as a teacher.

Veronica: Yeah, yeah. And I still go well, not right now. But before COVID hit. And before I got pregnant, I still was taking classes with other people, because I like to see how somebody else is explaining something. Because I don't remember it was a year ago now, but I went and took this class with an instructor and she was older. And she broke down the difference of passé and retiré so well that I was like, “I never even thought of it that way. And that's a really great way to tell students who are beginners what the difference between it is and why you have to know the difference.”

So it's just really helpful. I think, the more connections you make, that's that's gonna only help you more and like you said, I didn't even think of what you just said. But it is so much easier for me to help somebody get better at pirouettes, and I am terrible at pirouettes, I’ve always been bad at pirouettes, but I can help people get their pirouettes better, so much better than I can help people with like other things that like came naturally. And feet! my feet were always flat as boards, and I am so good with the feet now. Oh, my gosh, that's crazy that you said that though. It just kind of opened my mind up. And I'm like, “Oh, those are my teaching strengths. My dancing weaknesses.”

Julie: Yeah. And it's like, if you want to turn it, don't go to a good Turner. I mean, maybe someone who was a bad turner, and you see their before pictures. But like those of us who really struggled with turns, and I'm the same way, and I struggle a lot with anxiety up on pointe. I'm terrified of pointe. But I'm really good at teaching pointe and getting out the fear because I have so much of it and I've had to overcome it. And it's the same thing with like these things that we've had to overcome, even though we're not necessarily perfect at them yet. I mean, who's perfect at anything? We are really good at teaching them because I'm like, “Let me tell you the 100 things I've tried, and I can tell you all the things that worked and didn't work.”

Veronica: Yeah. And my you know, saying that it my teacher that I grew up, she was a really good turner she would just whip out like turns and I was like, “Okay, hold on let me just fall down.”

Julie: Well, so yeah, definitely. Some of them can teach the pirouettes. But some people who naturally turn are just like, I don't know, you turn it's like, if I can't turn, that's not helpful, because I don't know how to turn. So it's, it's interesting.

---

On Toxic Before & After Imagery

Julie: But I also it kind of is a good seg