Behind the Curtain: The Inside of a Dancer’s Mind
My palms pool with sweat as a lump forms in my throat. I pull at the neckline of my leotard feeling suffocated by the collar across my chest. My heart starts to beat faster and I try to focus on what my ballet teacher is saying. Thump, thump. “Feel your energy going up through your head as you press down into the floor.” Thump, thump, thump, thump “Tendu one close two” thump thump thump thump. It’s getting harder to breathe, I shake my hands out and rub my palms against my tights hoping to dry the sweat off. Thump thump thump thump thump thump. My head feels fuzzy and my chest is turning red from how much I’ve been scratching at it. I ask my teacher if I can go get a tissue and I exit the studio as my eyes fill with tears. I was having a panic attack. In the middle of ballet class. At my dance studio— my safe space.
Dance has always been a constant in my life. My mom is a former ballet teacher and before I was old enough to take my own dance classes, I would accompany her to the studio while she taught. I’d sit in my play pen and distract her students tracking her movements with my eyes. I took my first dance class when I was two and never looked back. By the time I started high school I was dancing 16 hours a week. Dance gave me space to escape the stress of school and drama with friends. During ballet class, my mind would go quiet focusing only on the combination at hand. I felt free during contemporary class, releasing my emotions through movement. Despite being an anxious kid, I was calm at the studio. Until my anxiety got to the clinical level, where it interfered with my daily life— with my dancing.
The National Institute of Mental Health defines Generalized Anxiety disorder as “a persistent feeling of anxiety or dread, which can interfere with daily life.” I had definitely reached a point where anxious thoughts interrupted my day, inhibiting my ability to live like I was used to. While dance didn’t trigger my anxiety it wasn’t helping in the way I needed it to. I had grown accustomed to leaving my stress outside of the studio, but when I started high school my anxiety penetrated through the wall I put up when I went to dance class.
Rachel Daly is a dancer, dance teacher, and social worker in the New York City area.
“I grew up a competition dancer and really struggled with my mental health” Daly said. “When I started teaching dance, I noticed some of my students were dealing with things that were very similar to what I dealt with.”
In 2020 Daly crated a Tiktok account focused on dancer mental health. At the time of writing, Daly has 13.2K followers on Tiktok. On her platform, Daly discusses the importance of taking care of one’s mental health as a dancer.
“It didn’t feel like anyone was talking about dancer mental health online so I wanted to create a space where I could both share my social work knowledge and connect with dancers” Daly said.
At the time of reporting there are over 600 videos under the #dancermentalhealth on Tiktok. Daly created a portion of the videos under that tag sharing advice for dancers struggling with anxiety. The rest of the videos come from the dance community as a whole sharing their experience with mental health as a dancer. This number is still relatively low, indicating how little mental health is discussed in the dance world.
Dance studios are equipped with a wall of mirrors. The ballet barres are adhered to the wall opposite the mirrors. When dancers are in a ballet class they line up against the ballet barres looking at their side profile in the mirror. The mirrors are intended to be used as a tool for dancers to check their alignment and to self-correct. But like a lot of things, mirrors aren’t always utilized in the way they’re intended to be. Many dancers will end up using the mirrors to criticize their bodies. Dressed in tight clothing at a time when their bodies are changing, many dancers begin to hate the mirror instead of appreciating it.
When Daly was in eighth grade she became more aware of her own body. She had a few peers make rude comments about the way her body looked and it sent her down a spiral.
“The combination of standing next to my peers in very tight clothing and my ballet teachers constantly telling us what a ballet body looks like lead me to develop some really bad habits around eating” Daly said.
Maeve Corcoran started dancing when she was five at a ballet focused studio in Baltimore, Maryland.
“This was a really toxic environment. We would have to sit on each other’s feet to improve our arches and I injured my back when I was eight because I was so overworked” Corcoran said. “The teachers would often compare us to each other saying things like “look how long this person’s legs are everyone should try to look like this.””
When Corcoran started middle school, she transitioned to a different studio where she could train in many different styles of dance. Corcoran and I met at this second studio.
“Compared to my first studio, the second studio was a breath of fresh air” Corcoran said.
“Teachers weren’t constantly comparing us to each other, it felt like I could be myself.”
Like Daly, Corcoran struggled with her body image and looking at herself in the mirror every day, beginning around eight grade.
“I was always a tall and lanky kid but when I hit puberty and started growing into my body, I spiraled into some really bad habits around food and movement. I would run several miles a day, barely eat, and then go to dance for several hours a night. It got to a point where I would be so dizzy I’d have to sit out and observe class” Corcoran said.
Although dance isn’t always the catalyst for anxiety, dancers suffer from anxiety disorders at higher rates than the general population. The study titled “Behind the Curtain: Prevalence of Symptoms of Depression, Generalized Anxiety and Eating Disorders in 147 Professional Dancers from six Opera Houses or State theatres” conducted by Astrid Junge and Anja Hauschild compared dancers to the general population to determine if dancers are more likely to struggle with a mental illness. The study examined dancers in their twenties and the results showed “the prevalence of symptoms of generalized anxiety and eating disorders was higher in professional dancers than in the general population of similar age and same gender. One in five dancers (20.8%) had moderate or severe symptoms of either depression, generalized anxiety, or eating disorders.” This percentage can be attributed to a myriad of factors including the pressure to be perfect within the dance world.
The music coming from the computer radiates across the basement as Claire Norman practices her turns. It’s 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic has closed all dance studios, forcing dancers to resort to virtual classes for their training. Instead of standing with her peers in a studio in front of her teacher, Norman is alone in her basement, her teacher and a few other classmates are on zoom.
Norman grew up dancing at a large competition dance studio in Virginia. Through most of Norman’s training, the studio was in the public eye having been featured on the Lifetime show “Dance Moms.” While Norman was younger than the students being featured on the show, the pressures radiate down through all age groups in the studio, the teachers expecting perfection.
“It was a very competitive environment and there were a lot of studio politics happening behind the scenes” Norman said.
At competitions, many of the dances in each category came from Norman’s studio, meaning they were essentially competing against themselves rather than against other studios.
“The studio politics were very parent driven and some dancers definitely got special treatment because of what their parents were willing to pay” Norman said. “As someone who worked really hard but didn’t have parents willing to pay for extra privates, I never got any special parts and it felt like nothing I did was ever good enough.”
This lead Norman to decrease her time at the studio from seven days to two days a week during her freshman and sophomore years of high school. When the studio shut down due to COVID-19, Norman began taking virtual classes in her basement, away from the studio politics.
“I was really depressed when I wasn’t dancing every day. I didn’t realize it then but despite the studio politics, I really needed dance in my life” Norman said. “When we switched to virtual classes it was only the people who really wanted to dance that showed up. A lot of the comparison stopped because we were on zoom so it was actually about the art form not the politics.”
Despite the pressures of the dance world, dance is an artform that many return to day after day. A study conducted by Dan Tao, Yang Gao, Alistair Cole and others titled “The Physiological and Psychological Benefits of Dance and its Effects on Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review” examines the benefits of dance. The study shows “dance develops relationships, connects people, and increases feelings of joy and togetherness.” The study advocates for dance as an alternative to other forms of physical activity.
Kayte Hughes, LPC, CMAC, NCC, works with dancers at Savannah College of Art and Design. Hughes refers to dancers as “artist, athletes” because dance requires both the physical athleticism of athletes and the performance abilities of an artist.
Hughes grew up a dancer and is now a dance mom. These experiences have shown her the importance of taking care of one’s mental health as a dancer.
“I work with dancers to develop a strong foundation so they have something to return to if they go through a rough spot. It’s easier to get help when you don’t need it than when you do” Hughes said.
Dancers will often face both internal and external pressures.
“There is a certain personality that thrives in the dance world so many dancers are high performing driven individuals who place pressures upon themselves” Hughes said. “Additionally, when a young dancer shows potential, their parents often make large investments into their training and expect to see immediate return on these investments.”
To prevent dancers from losing the joy that omes from dance, Daly works with dancers to center their why, asking “Why do you dance?.”
“I like to set an intention and really focus on the present moment before class. The intention could be anything from focusing on breath to just showing up” Daly said.
In a class she taught recently, Daly used an Anna Halprin quote as the intention for the day. Throughout the class she would bring attention back to the quote, “Every experience I’ve had in my life is a resource in my body.”
“Our body is our vessel both inside and out of dance” Daly said.
Now age 21, Norman is also a dance teacher.
“I talk a lot at the beginning of my classes to break down the wall between teacher and student” Norman said. “It’s also a nice time to check in with your brain and body and find out what you need to do for your body today.”
This past summer, Norman spent time developing her teaching philosophy, something that will continue to grow as she does.
“My whole teaching philosophy is really new but I often come back to the phrase ‘space is not meant to be stolen it is meant to be shared’,” Norman said. “I want people to walk away from my class feeling good about themselves. You want to feel good from dance because at the end of the day dance is a feeling.”
Across all of her platforms, Daly focuses on the feelings associated with dance. In 2022, Daly released an Ebook titled “Dance to Heal.” The book is full of improvisational and movement prompts that are supportive of someone’s self-care and mental health. It is designed to get you to experience movement in the body. Each prompt has a short blurb explaining the prompt and lists things to consider when doing it and then there is a space to reflect on the experience.
“As a society we are so wrapped up in technology that we are often disconnected from our body. It can sometimes be helpful to translate what we are feeling into movement to help us process it” Daly said. “The process of creating it was really healing for me which is why I named it dance to heal. It’s a personal journey you go on at your own pace.”
