Today on the show, I chat with Marieke, who lives in the Netherlands and dances ballet.

We talk about her winding journey as a ballet dancer, but also about mindfulness, ego, and how she has learned to quiet the judgemental mind and love to dance.

I hope you love this episode as much as I do.

Enjoy!

Connect with Marieke

Marieke Van Vugt Website

Your Brain On Ballet

Mindfulness and Ballet

Twitter: @mvugt

Instagram: @mkvanvugt

Ballet Rising podcast episode about Ballet and the Brain

On getting started in ballet

Julie: Welcome, Marieke, to the show. I'm so excited to be able to chat with you today.

Marieke: Yeah, I'm excited to I love listening to this podcast. So I'm also happy to be to contribute to it.

Julie: And where are you calling me from today?

Marieke: From Groningen in the Netherlands. It's all the way in the north.

Julie: Of all the countries. We've had two guests from the Netherlands. How funny.

Marike: Yeah, well, there's lots of ballet happening in the Netherlands. Clearly,

Julie: The Dutch National Ballet is just amazing.

Marieke: Yeah. And love it too. And then, of course, we have Netherlands Dance Theater as well.

Julie: Yeah, amazing.

Julie: So let's just get started with a little bit of your background. How did you get into ballet? How did you get from the beginning to where you are now?

Marieke: Yeah, so that's a really funny story in a way because when I grew up, I started with gymnastics. My mom thought that I was kind of stiff, so I needed to be put in something so gymnastics. I kind of enjoyed it. But I actually especially enjoyed the parts where you do all these exercises just on the mat? Not all the stuff where you had to fly around. It was like that's too scary.

But then somehow, when I was about 11, I read this book in the library that was about ballet. And I was like, “Wow, that looks amazing. All these girls in pink leotards,” and then I wanted to check it out. So I went to ballet school. And I was like, “Yeah, cool. This is it. I just want to do this.”

So, of course, I wanted to become a ballet dancer. And, sadly, I never auditioned. Because my teacher at the time said, “Yeah, she's just not talented enough.” So I at that time, I wasn't so sure of myself. So I didn't even dare to audition. And I think my parents also weren't too excited about me auditioning anyway, so.

And so I kept dancing just once a week. And then I moved and I went to a different studio and did twice a week and three times a week … gave up and did gymnastics and all kinds of other stuff.

And then, at age 16, or so I realized I read this magazine because by that time I’d become quite crazy about ballet. And so I read this magazine and saw an ad for The Royal Ballet School. I had no idea. Where they auditioned people at 16, 17. So I was like, “Okay, why not? I'm gonna go for it.”

I really tried to organize a whole schedule for myself in different ballet schools. So I could train like four or five times a week, traveled from where I live to Amsterdam, like 45 minutes by bus and all of that stuff, and I went for it. I didn't make it in, which is very sad. But the good thing, maybe in a way afterward is that I still continued dancing. And in a way, it was freedom, because now there was no longer this pressure that I needed to be something and I needed to be good enough to make it and I could just dance.

And in that time, I also got to participate in…. I just somehow always managed to create my own performance opportunities. So I got into various competitions, where I choreographed my own solos, and I made up performances with my friends where I choreographed the thing, and you know that that kind of stuff. So over the years, I've kept dancing.

When I moved to the US for my Ph.D., I was very, very happy that there, adult ballet was way more serious than in the Netherlands, because in the Netherlands, you have the professionals on the one side, and there you have to audition, and as a mere mortal, you can’t get close to it. And then you have the amateurs and they just, you know hop around with some music. And well, I mean, not completely all schools, but most of the schools like they maybe have one adult ballet class a week. And it's more like just a social thing.

Julie: Yeah. Yeah.

Marieke: So then I in the US, I really, there were so many more serious adult ballet schools, I really got into it. And now I'm very glad that having moved back to the Netherlands, I found also a school where I dance, where I can dance every day of the week, almost if I wanted to as an adult. And yeah, just do it at a pretty decent level. So that's pretty fun.

Julie: That's awesome. I love how many opportunities you've created for yourself over this period of time. Like it's one of those things where it's definitely very easy to think there are no opportunities, and maybe there aren't any opportunities, but you can make them, you can seek them out, you can sit all your friends down and perform for them. You can make it happen if you really want it.

Marieke: Yeah, that's totally literally what I did. When I did. The last year in the US, I worked at Princeton, and there I collaborated with Princeton ballet, that's a student dance company. And I just said, “Okay, I'm gonna do a couple of numbers, and you guys do some things. And then we have a performance” and then we just invite people to studio. It was actually a pretty awesome way to celebrate my leaving Princeton going to the Netherlands. So yeah.

Julie: That's amazing.

On Mindfulness & Ballet

Julie: So we've talked, we had an episode about mindfulness A while back, and you and I talked a while about that. You've even published a paper about mindfulness and ballet. When did that come into the equation? What is when did that enter your world?

Marieke: Right? So so for the longest time, those are separate things. So even as a little girl, I remember being fascinated by meditation and I wanted to meditate even having no idea of what it was. Like I was maybe about eight or so at that time, I started to get curious into it.

Julie: How did you even know about it being an eight? Who knows about meditation at age 8? Do you read it in a book? How did you even know that was a thing you could do?

Marieke: Yeah, no, it was a mother of a friend of mine, she would practice meditation. And somehow I found that really fascinating.

So yeah, and I started really learning about it from books, as I do, and then I eventually went to a meditation center at age 17, 18, and learns it more properly. And then it was just a part of my life, which I really felt was very helpful for me to gain sanity. And also, to have something to….

Well, I think my first motivation was really well, we always are talking about, you know, you need to be nice, you need to pay attention. But you don't get to learn how you do these things, how you cultivate kindness and compassion, how you learn to pay attention. Because those are all skills and you can develop those, but you don't actually learn how to do that you just get rules. But yeah, that doesn't really help. So that's how I got fascinated by meditation, which, in the way I practice is part of a Tibetan Buddhist tradition that really helped me to cultivate those things. And then eventually also went more into the whole Tibetan Buddhist worldview, and it made a lot of sense to me.

But then, eventually, I also started to see parallels in especially also when I as a neuroscientist, so I study the human mind, which then also as a separate path, like went into this. And then I started to realize there were parallels between the way you are training your mind and body as a ballet dancer and the way I was training my mind, in my meditation practice. And I was like, “Oh, that's interesting.” Because I feel like for me ballet is, it's really interesting to try to figure out how your body works, which is part of ballet, of course.

But it's also really interesting to see how it changes your mind. How when you move with a certain intention, it makes you feel different. And also, in a way, your body can't lie. Your teacher can often tell how you're feeling from just the way you're moving. And on the other hand, this is really interesting…. it just happened yesterday... So when we were having this rehearsal, I had just taken an exam from m