Staying in Shape While Traveling

At home in New York, I attend yoga classes, run, and occasionally attend fitness classes at Exhale or Refine. But while traveling, without the luxury of attending a class for my workout, and without daily dance classes, it can be a little more difficult to keep in shape.

A lot of people say that running is the ideal way to workout while traveling. I disagree completely. As a young woman in a foreign country, I'm not just going to go running around through neighborhoods I'm not familiar with. I would much rather do these quick and effective workouts at home, and get on with my time off. Here are two apps that make this possible:

1. Pilates Anytime: You can subscribe to pilatesanytime.com for a mere $18 per month (less than one drop-in Pilates class in NYC) and with that subscription comes a lot of benefits, including countless mat workouts you can do on the go. I also use Pilates Anytime at home, but when traveling it is especially useful. When traveling, I select the "Mat/No Props" option, but if I have brought a tennis ball, foam roller, or theraband along, I can select a workout that uses those props. 

If you have access to any real Pilates equipment while traveling or at home (lucky you!) then the Pilates Anytime subscription is definitely worth it, because it provides hundreds of tower, reformer, and cadillac workouts as well. The subscription is, in my opinion, totally worth the price and a terrific option for dancers. 

2. Seven: This app is available for iPhone, iPad, and Android. It is my favorite way to work out when I have very little time and no equipment. The exercises are classic: push-ups, sit-ups, wall-sits, etc. It's a simple workout, and it's very effective.

How Dancers Stay Healthy

Dancers are a curious breed. Although many of us pay close attention to health trends, the larger majority of dancers have discovered ways to keep in shape and eat well through experience and through trial and error. This is why so much of what dancers do to keep well differs in surprising ways from what a health magazine or diet book will tell you. 

I interviewed several professional dancers on their health and wellness practices, and although I will not share their names, I will share their answers and how they manage wellness in an industry where health is crucial to how well you perform. 

The interesting thing about dancers is that dancing itself doesn't actually burn that many calories, but it tires you out in a very intense way. So the way that dancers keep in shape is much more applicable to the average person who wants to get healthy... only dancers have gotten it down to a science. 

Many dancers acknowledge that health and wellness is a personal matter, and differs depending on individual choice. One dancer told me she has found that "there is no one size fits all for anything." 

One dancer I spoke with responded earnestly that "it starts, at least for me, with a whole lot of peanut butter." I laughed. I am a member of a large group of dancers who would agree with this statement. There's nearly always a jar of peanut butter in my pantry, and often there's also one in my dance bag. For the dancer I spoke with, the peanut butter is all about protein. She has found that "proteins are key" because they are "a rich and filling food." 

A lot of dancers seem to go back to these kinds of basic ideas about health and wellness instead of gimmicky health trends. Many, if not all, of the dancers I spoke with told me that their top ways of staying well are eating plenty of fruits and vegetables, and drinking lots of water. But I also had some answers that were fairly new health trends. One dancer, in addition to lots of water, swears by the tea Yerba Mate for hydration and energy. 

Nearly all of the dancers I spoke with use massage to maintain balance in the body and prevent injuries. One dancer told me her massage is "monthly at a Chinese massage center, where they use a mix of techniques that really help with tension and muscle soreness." 

Exercise and cross-training are a much less universal category; every dancer I spoke with had a different preferred method of keeping in shape, during the season and the off-season. Some prefer mind-body based exercises like "gyrokinesis, yoga, pilates, and meditation," while others are more geared towards swimming and trips to the weight room and the cardio machines at the gym. Despite its bad reputation for causing injuries, a startling number of dances I spoke with run regularly. Those who do are adamant about "listening to your body... If you feel the running is too intense for your knees and ankles, then you need to back off." 

Being aware of the body's messages was a common theme among all the dancers I spoke with. One said that she learned to "decode the signals you are getting" from your body, especially after a long rehearsal. "Listen to your body!" she smiled. "It's smarter than you think!" 

Studio Mirrors: A Response

This post is a response to the post "Mirrors in the Studio: Do They Help or Do They Hinder?" which can be viewed here on the blog, The Healthy Dancer. 

Mirrors are part of what defines dance training. And yes, dancers are a little obsessed. They scrutinize those mirrors. No flaw goes unnoticed. Student dancers learn this behavior from older dancers, older dancers from professionals, and here is where the mirror debate begins: do we have to?

Certainly, there are students who rely too heavily upon the mirror. But that is a journey almost every young student goes through. It's one I went through, and I'm a better dancer because of it. I learned to think of my dancing in the context of the entire space, not just the flattened space in the mirror. Learning to pull my focus out of the mirror was an extremely important lesson as a student.

And so I agree with the conclusion that is made on The Healthy Dancer. The use of mirrors requires balance. Balance between looking in the mirror to correct yourself and pulling your eyes out of the mirror for stability and spacial awareness.

But there is one crucial concept that always pushes me to one side of this debate. One that for me, as a professional dancer and dance educator, is the bottom line, the final say on why mirrors belong in a studio.

When I was fifteen, I was cast as a Snowflake in The Nutcracker. The Snowflake choreography was a series of incredibly challenging corps work. The kind of work that required a type of precision, spacial awareness, and focus that on a level I had no experience with.

All the other snowflakes were older than I was, and they had done the Snow scene last year. Everyone but me knew the choreography, and most unfortunately for me, the spacing tricks to making sure we all danced as one.

I have terrible, gut-wrenching memories of being screamed at in the studio, "What are you doing? Get in line!"

Finally, by the very end of the rehearsals, I succeeded in getting through an entire rehearsal without getting yelled at or wanting to cry. It was a huge learning experience for me.

And I couldn't have done it without the mirror.

So here is the bottom line: the use of the mirror in class is one thing, and yes, it requires a delicate balance. But rehearsals are the reasons why every dance studio needs a mirror. They are essential to the professionalism that is dancing together, creating one clean line with a number of bodies.

True, professional dance is created with the space in mind. With unison, difference, movement, and stillness. With the overall look and focus intact. And this is impossible to achieve without a frame of reference.

It's impossible without a mirror.

Contemporary Dance on Wikipedia: Looking Back

Back in June, I wrote this post about amending the Contemporary Dance page on Wikipedia, and why it's important for dancers to share what they learn.

Thankfully, my edits are still there.

But there's one thing I'm not so thankful for. It's that no one else has contributed. And that's because adding information to Wikipedia isn't something that would occur to a dancer. But this is something that has to change, especially if we want funding for our companies. If we want people to know what our work really means when we say, "I'm a dancer."

So that's the point. Let's get to it, dancers. Not a whole lot of other people know as much, or care nearly as much as we do about dance.

Resources for Dancers in the Modern World

In a previous post, I spoke briefly about how information in the dance world is exchanged almost exclusively by word of mouth. So, as a dancer navigates the field and builds a career, the pool of resources grows. Dancers learn from teachers, from fellow dancers, from dance media like exploredance.com, and the various Dance Magazine publications, and to a surprising extent, from social media.

So I think that more experienced dancers have a responsibility, now that the internet has provided us with a more efficient way of exchanging information in a way that is so similar to the one we know and rely upon, word of mouth, to provide other dancers with information about the resources we discover.

In this post I'd like to focus on one resource that has changed my career: dancenyc.org. The Dance/NYC organization website provides a forum on which auditions, internships, and administrative opportunities are posted. This is where I got hooked, as a young Ailey school student, searching for audition opportunities. But lately, as I've started to write about dance as well (I write reviews for exploredance.com, as well as write passionately about dance, dancers and dance health here on this blog) and have begun to rely upon Dance/NYC Events as a way of meeting and hearing from leaders in the field.

From a journalistic point of view, especially in terms of travel journalism, dance is an unexplored and fascinating subject. And organization websites like Dance/NYC not only provide information about local audition opportunities, but also provide the backbone for credible research for local dance journalism. Dance/NYC has, for the last few years, begun conducting annual research on numbers that previously went unacknowledged. Numbers like audience increases, ticket sales, and number of tours; also less hopeful numbers. The number of unemployed dancers. The percentage of employed dancers who work outside of dance in order to support themselves. This information is, for the dance journalist, an invaluable resource.

It's also an important resource for dancers themselves. Because it's important to know how many of us are struggling. How many companies are struggling. It's important for us to know not only where the opportunities may be found, but also what they may entail. Because the economics of this business aren't what they used to be. And we need all the information we can get.

Why New York is a Good Place for Dancers

Of all the reasons to love New York, the vibrancy and cultural relevance of the performing arts is one that all of us, especially dancers, hold dear. We cherish the opportunity to work in such a place, a place that is the pinnacle of artistic creation and dance in the United States. After spending so much time away from the city after the end of the season, and returning for a brief few weeks, I discovered a new appreciation for how life in New York uniquely contributes to the life of a dancer. In New York you're surrounded by movement, by sound, and by art. It is a catalyst stick and immensely gratifying atmosphere for an artist.

Every day I am inspired simply by my commute, the movement of the trains and the poetic music of the wheels on the tracks. My favorite train ride is the one on the Q train, from Dekalb Avenue in Brooklyn to Canal Street in Manhattan. The train goes over the Manhattan Bridge, with a pulsing and ever-changing view of the Brooklyn Bridge and lower Manhattan. 

Here is a video I created to capture this feeling:



 

Even when getting by on a dancer's wage in one of the most expensive cities in the United States, living here as a dancer is much more than bearable. Not only can we rely on incredible organizations like Career Transition for Dancers or the vast dance community here in the city, but we may also count on a much more important and stable resource: the fact that we are surrounded constantly by movement and sound, things that drive us as artists and creators of dance.