Today on the show, I chat with Robin.

She danced a little when she was young, and then returned to it as an adult, even getting en pointe for the first time as a grownup.

We talk about the joy of the little wins in ballet, her experience on the board at her wonderful adult-only local ballet studio, and the interesting differences between home ballet and studio ballet.

Robin has a wonderfully cerebral outlook on the ballet world that you’re sure to enjoy!

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Starting Ballet

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

Robin: Thanks, Julie. I'm really excited to be here and to get to talk with you.

Julie: So fun. Well, we've been kind of following on Instagram, bonding over our pets doing funny things with us dancing. But we also dance together online, and we've talked a lot about your ballet journey. But I'm really excited to actually get to hear it beginning to end not just through the little pieces on Instagram. So I'd love to hear what got you to where you are today with ballet. you've developed a lot of really, really beautiful technique in your dancing. And so I'm really curious how you got that?

Robin: Yeah, so my cat might make an appearance. She is sitting next to me staring at me, which is a sign that she might come over and meow and beg to be up on my lap. So you might get to see her.

I danced as a kid. Not especially seriously, I quit when I was about 11, and I probably started when I was four or five taking Park District ballet classes. I was obsessed with the Angelina Ballerina picture books. So yeah, and I think I quit, and you know, my mother might have a different story, but I think I quit in part because all of the studios… I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago… all of the studios were competition-oriented. And all of the girls were taking ballet tap jazz, six or seven hours a week and I was just not down for that I just wanted to do ballet, I had no interest in pop music and dancing to the latest Britney Spears hits.

And so because the other girls were taking class so many more times a week than I was, they were improving much more quickly than I was. And so I just kind of lost interest and stopped.

I also started riding horses and that gave me a new athletic outlet.

So then as an adult, I got back to dancing I guess in 2011? I think that's right, or 2012. I studied abroad in the UK and the university that I was at had a student organizations fair. And there was a table for the Irish dance organization and it was something I'd always been interested in. I loved watching River Dance as a kid. We had a VHS tape of when it aired on PBS. And I played that many, many times. And so I went over to the table and I said, “do you teach people who have never done Irish dancing before?” They were like, “Sure, please come, here's where our meetings are.”

And I just remembered how much fun it was to dance. When I got back to the States, I was still in college, so it was hard to find a place to dance regularly. My schedule was irregular. I was moving frequently, all of that good stuff.

So I really got seriously back into dance as an adult. About six years ago now, almost six years ago, when I moved back to Chicago for graduate school. I found a studio that was conveniently located partway between my apartment and the campus, so it was easy for me to stop on my way home on a Wednesday, and I started taking this Wednesday night ballet class, with a really wonderful teacher. I still take that class — it's like the mainstay of my week in dance, the one that I am most dedicated to and make sure to make room for in my schedule.

But I got involved with a studio and I really haven't stopped, it's become kind of my home. I started taking all of the ballet classes that we offer pretty much. Got sucked into musical theater, I've done a little contemporary, a little modern. I just I love spending time with these people and the teachers there. And it's really been an important outlet for me during grad school.

Julie: And you’re still in grad school, is that right?

Robin: I am. Yeah. And I’m working on a PhD in medieval history.

Julie: So are you near the end of it?

Robin: Yes. I will probably take one more academic year to finish.

Julie: Wow, congrats. That's exciting.

Robin: Thanks. Yeah, the end is in sight.

Julie: That's a long time in school. Although I feel like the end may be a little nostalgic. Because you've been in school for so long.

Robin: Definitely. One of the things that I really love about grad school is being in the classroom and teaching students. And I think depending on what I end up doing afterward, if I don't end up…. I don't want to dwell on the realities of the academic job market here, this is not the place for that. But if I end up leaving academia, I think I will really miss being a teacher. I really love getting students excited about the past.

Julie: Well, that sounds like what I do in ballet, get students excited about the past, right? Ballet is kind of an old thing. But it's so exciting.

Okay, so six years, you've been taking this Wednesday class for like, six years? Is that..? really? That's amazing?

Robin: Yes, there was a year when I was out of the country doing research. So there, there was a year-long gap there. But other than that same class, same teacher, most of the same core students, we've obviously had people move away or lose interest or whatever, life intervenes, as it always does.

But I'm still learning from that class.

Julie: That's amazing. Oh, that's so cool. And so when did you get back on pointe? Or did you I started first time as an adult?

Robin: Yes. Okay. So I never did point as a kid. I don't know if it was ever really a big dream for me. I think I'm kind of unusual, and that I don't have huge ballet goals or hopes. I feel like I've accomplished a lot of the things like, I'm lucky that I developed my technique as a kid. And I did not have to learn how to do pirouettes as an adult, for instance, like some of these things that I think a lot of adult ballet students are working towards.

I kind of was lucky enough to already have… even though I'm absolutely working on my technique all the time. But my studio decided to start a pointe class, we had a serious enough group of women who wanted to go en pointe. And that was about a year ago, a little over a year ago. So it's been very slow but steady progress.

Julie: Yeah, well, that that's the name of this whole game, I think, slow but steady progress.

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What keeps you coming back?

Julie: I don't think you're unusual in having no goals or expectations in ballet. There are definitely a lot of people's goals and expectations, and especially in the social media community because a lot of people go there to share their goals and to share their progress.

But why do you do it? If you don't have any goals? What does it bring you? What does it bring to your life that keeps you like literally making one day happen every single week?

Robin: Yeah, yeah. I think the thing that keeps me going back is that it's a way to move my body and to get to know my body in sort of a movement sense, where I absolutely cannot think about …. I'm an academic, my mind is always it's always going and it's really hard for me to shut it off. But during ballet I have to be counting the music or remembering the combinations or thinking about the element of technique that I decide that I want to work on that class. And it's just, it's really just an hour and a half or hour or whatever of escape.

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“I’m an academic, my mind is always it’s always going and it’s really hard for me to shut it off. But during ballet I have to be counting the music or remembering the combinations or thinking about the element of technique that I decide that I want to work on that class. And it’s just, it’s really just an hour and a half or hour or whatever of escape. ”

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And I find a lot of satisfaction in just the really tiny things. And I think dancing at home has been really good for that because I don't have a mirror. I don't have other people… other people in the zoom classes, you get a sense that you're dancing with other people, but there's none of the pressure of either that you put on yourself from seeing other people dance or that you feel like others are putting on you, which usually isn't the case. Everybody's always focused on their own technique, their own issues with their tendu or whatever today. But dancing at home, yeah, has been really good in t