To Be a Ballerina: Rebecca Proctor On Lessons From Ballet

by Alexandra Mansilla

To Be a Ballerina: Journalist Rebecca Anne Proctor On Lessons From Years Of Ballet

12 Jul 2024

Photo: Lamya Gargash

People know Rebecca Anne Proctor as the former editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar Art and Harper's Bazaar Interiors, and a journalist whose work has been published in Frieze, The Art Newspaper, Wallpaper, Condé Nast Middle East, and Vogue Arabia, among others. She has also written a book titled "Art in Saudi Arabia: A New Creative Economy?" But Rebecca doesn't just write; she also dances. In fact, she was a ballerina with the Royal Academy of Dance.

We had a conversation with Rebecca and uncovered both sides of professional ballet: the intense pressure and competitive atmosphere and the sheer joy and love it brings.

— Rebecca, could you tell me how old you were when you started going to ballet classes?

— My mother enrolled me in my first ballet class around the age of four because I was dancing every time I heard music. I always had a lot of energy, and to channel this energy, my mother decided it was time to send me to dance classes.

When I got my first pair of ballet shoes, I wore them all around the house for everything. I was dancing so much that there were even some funny moments. One Christmas, I knocked over the Christmas tree while dancing in the living room. My brother was playing with his toys, and I accidentally kicked the tree, causing it to fall and spill water into my father's study. He was quite upset at the time.

I remember the exact moment when I realised that all I wanted to do was dance. My mother took me to see The Nutcracker in New York City. I watched every moment so attentively. Ballet soon became an obsession. After several years of dancing ballet, tap, jazz, creative dance and modern at different schools, my passion was so strong that my mother, upon encouragement from several teachers, enrolled me in a serious pre-professional ballet school.

Photo: Rebecca's personal archive

— Do you remember the specific characteristics a student needed to have to enter that school?

— The school's director was a former ballerina who had gone to The Juilliard School, a very prestigious school for performing arts in New York City. She kept the school open to everyone, giving each child a chance to attend classes with various teachers.

Specific criteria were set for entrance into the junior company. Due to the physical and mental demands, to dance in the company, one had to have arrived at an advanced technical level, as well as have strong physical resilience, flexibility, and musicality — the practice of dancing according to specific scores of music.

Dancers had to be able to handle difficult steps and have a strong stage presence. You had to be able to perform in front of a crowd and remember all the steps. People often think it is easy, but they forget that you have to remember the music, the steps, and how your body should execute the movements, like the dégagés and tendus and pirouettes.

There were some demands, but my school wasn’t as rigorous as places like the Bolshoi or the Vaganova Academy, where they scrutinise your physical traits extensively.

— How many hours did you dance?

— I went to a regular school during the day and attended ballet school in the evenings. We had four to five hours of training every day as well as every weekend when we were in the junior company.

— In movies, we always see the competitive atmosphere in ballet academies. Every ballerina wants to be the Prima. What was the atmosphere like in your ballet school?

— That is a good question. In the junior company, it was competitive, and there was an issue of eating disorders due to the intense pressure to be thin.

We were all obsessed with maintaining the perfect figure. It became a focus and an obsession, and three girls in the company became anorexic and had to be hospitalised.

Luckily, I never became anorexic, but at one point, I did become too obsessed with being thin. During high school, I cut out bread and carbohydrates completely, following the diet of other dancers in the company. I switched to eating only protein, following the Atkins diet that was popular at the time. This diet helped one lose weight quickly, but it also meant that the body forgot to process certain sugars and fibre. I lost so much weight that I lost my period for nine months. I didn’t care at the time because I was focused on dance and looking great. I was just so determined to maintain that ballet body. The only person who was worried was my mother, not me. Since then, I have learned to eat three meals a day and maintain a balanced diet at all times. It is not worth one’s health and wellbeing otherwise.

The competition in the junior company was fierce. We had to audition for summer schools, and everyone wanted to be their best. I remember going to a summer school with students from the School of American Ballet, and some girls were only eating ice cream for every meal just to stay thin.

It was a difficult environment, but there were also parts that I loved. Being chosen for a special variation, like the principal role in "Swan Lake" or "Sleeping Beauty", made me so happy. Learning and performing historical ballets with master instructors brought me so much joy.

When I moved to Rome, Italy, at 16, I left the junior company and trained with a new teacher. She wanted me to train according to a new syllabus: The Royal Academy of Dance (RAD), a UK-based examination board in dance education and training, with a focus on Classical Ballet. Back home, in the United States, I had danced according to a more Balanchine or neoclassical style, inspired by George Balanchine, one of the most influential choreographers of the 20th century considered often as “the father of American Ballet” and also the co-founder of New York City Ballet.

Enrolling in RAD meant starting from scratch with their technique and going back several levels to take exams to get to a more advanced level. It was a complete change from the faster and also more creative teaching style and technique I was used to.

I had always wanted to be a professional dancer, so much so that at one point, I was also willing to leave school to go to a school focusing just on dance. My parents insisted I complete university, which years later I believe was the right path to take, so I balanced my studies with intense ballet training in Rome, running from one end of the city for my university classes to another neighbourhood where I completed my RAD training and passed all my examinations by master trainers from abroad accredited by the Royal Academy of Dance.

It was challenging to balance everything, but I loved it. Despite difficult moments, I have unforgettable memories, like dancing the role of Lilac Fairy from Sleeping Beauty on stage in Rome. It was a lot of hard work, but those moments of performing in front of an audience made it all worth it. It is hard to describe the happiness and fulfilment you get from dancing — it is otherworldly and sublime.

Photo: Rebecca's personal archive

— And how were the teachers? It is well-known that some ballet teachers shout a lot because they truly believe it works. What was your experience?

— Some teachers were wonderful and encouraging, always telling me how much I had improved. But then there were other times when teachers would scream at you, saying things like, "You're horrible. How did you do that?" When they see talent, some teachers push you more and criticise you harshly. You must learn to continue no matter what and develop a very thick skin to withstand all sorts of critique and pressure.

It was incredibly hard but you do it because you love it. There was one day that really stood out. I was preparing for my exams for the Royal Academy of Dance, and I was paired with another girl. The trainers were comparing us in public, which was awful. It felt as if we were just bodies with no feelings. I remember crying for hours after that episode and wanting not to go back but I did.

Over time, I became stronger and learned to handle the criticism better on the outside, even if it still crushed me on the inside. In the beginning, I was very sensitive, but I toughened up. It is like Russian ballerinas who face brutal training; you endure pain from your shoes, bleeding, and harsh critiques. You have to stay calm and stoic, reminding yourself of your love for dance.

But you see, despite the hardships, I went back because of my love for the art form of ballet. I found a way to transcend the challenges and rise above the hardships and such lessons have given me much life training. I learned not to run away from challenges but to face them calmly, bravely and with love.

— Once, you mentioned that you had an experience with teachers from Russia. How was it?

— One of the notable courses I did was the Intensive from Moscow at my school in the United States. We had Russian teachers and sometimes even dancers from the Bolshoi and the Kirov (now — Mariinsky), who I absolutely admired. They were wonderful teachers but strict.

I loved the Russian style and discipline. When I was training seriously, I would spend hours in the library looking at dance books, obsessed with ballerinas such as Natalia Makarova, Rudolf Nureyev, and Anna Pavlova — just absorbing everything about these legendary dancers and the history of ballet.

— And have you had any injuries?

— No, luckily, I never had serious injuries. I did have issues with my feet, especially now after years of dancing on pointe, which has caused bunions on the sides of my feet. I did have an injury a few years ago during COVID. I went back to dancing every day in Dubai. During a contemporary dance class, which was new for me, given my background in ballet.

We were rehearsing some choreography over the weekend, and I did a jump that I was still trying to perfect, I landed so hard on my metatarsal that I immediately felt intense pain. It led to a condition called bursitis, where this soft bone-like growth developed under my foot near my toes. I went to see a doctor and had an MRI. The doctor told me no dancing and no running for six weeks. This was about three years ago, and while my foot has now healed, I remember the trauma of being told not to move.

It was my first significant injury, and I felt really down because I was so used to dancing everyday, both ballet and contemporary classes. To compensate while healing I took more yoga and Pilates classes, which I love. Nothing, however, compares to dancing.

Photo: Lamya Gargash

— Going back to the atmosphere in a ballet school, I remember a story one entrepreneur told me about his time at Yale University. He described it like this: imagine all the students, all these kids who are used to being the best, gathered in one place. It is incredible and terrifying at the same time because, suddenly, some of them aren't the best anymore since someone else is better. It is similar to ballet. You have a lot of determined girls and boys all in one place, and you can practically cut the tension in the air with a knife. The competition is so fierce. Am I right?

— Yes, it is tough, and some people are down about it. I was lucky because my family wasn’t competitive or trying to push me to become a top dancer, as I remember some did. My mother, an artist, just wanted me to dance because she saw how much I loved it. But I saw a lot of "ballerina moms" — mothers who placed extra pressure on their daughters because they hadn’t found their own careers and were trying to live through them. Many of these girls had eating disorders and other issues. I even knew some who started self-harming because of the immense pressure to be perfect.

While training in Rome, I worked with a Russian teacher I loved. She once told me, “Rebecca, in ballet, there's always going to be someone better than you and someone worse than you.” It made me realise that everyone is unique. We all have different ways of expressing ourselves and different bodies. I learned that competition shouldn't be with others but only with yourself. This is a lesson that still guides me today.

Photo: Rebecca's personal archive

— So, has ballet prepared you for various obstacles in life?

— Exactly. Going through the intense competition and pressure of ballet really prepared me for the media world. The competition and egos in the publishing industry at times don’t seem as daunting compared to what I experienced in ballet, where one experiences both physical and mental pressure. Sure, the deadlines and pressure at Harper’s Bazaar and other magazines and publications I have worked at are tough, as well as some of the personalities and egos one at times must deal with, but the discipline and stoicism I learned from years of ballet training have made me stronger and more resilient. Even so, one must learn to establish limits on how far they can mentally and physically push themselves — and this is something I am still working on.

I greatly believe in the benefits of working the mind and body in unison. While I do not dance anymore at a professional level (I still take ballet classes and plan to do so for the rest of my life), I do teach Pilates from time to time when I have a break from my travel and work schedule. I am currently completing my comprehensive Pilates teacher training certification from Balanced Body based out of California and also my training certification in Classical Pilates from Plexus in Rome, Italy.

Instead of competing with others in any discipline, I focus on being the best version of myself. Mistakes are part of the journey, but it is essential to do things out of love for the joy and beauty of the art form and not for competition.

When you are young, especially between 13 and 16, it is hard to understand this. It is a challenging time with your body changing, especially during puberty. It is difficult to make sense of the world and your place in it. Ballet, like any competitive field, can be so demanding because everyone wants to be the best. But ultimately, it is about finding your own path and doing it for something higher — for love and to create something beautiful and have others enjoy that beauty.

by Alexandra Mansilla

To Be a Ballerina: Journalist Rebecca Anne Proctor On Lessons From Years Of Ballet

12 Jul 2024

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