Third Year in Review
Kathryn Rustemeyer
What? So what?
I learned many new things this year, both about myself and about the dance world that I'm immersed in. I learned what it meant to feel unsure, scared, and excited all at the same time. I learned how it felt to be a stranger in a strange land, going through the motions and absorbing what I could through the body language, movement quality, and snippets of overheard conversations of others. I learned to emulate traits I admire and swallow my pride. But at the same time I learned to be confident and trust myself through it all. I learned how to communicate better and how to be more forward about my needs and expectations. I learned how dissatisfaction in an environment is something to take seriously and to analyze with a problem-solving attitude. I learned to acknowledge feelings of being stuck and to find a solution. And I learned that it's okay to be vulnerable and to find solace in others. These realizations came about during my time in Kansas City, working with the cirque-dance company Quixotic and doing my 200-hour yoga teacher training, all while living with my boyfriend Alex for the first time. This journey was interesting and challenging, and made an impact on who I am to this day.
The most significant challenge I faced this year came in three parts: First, I realized while living in Kansas City that I needed more training than what I was receiving and that moving back to Cincinnati to train more at CCM was an essential step to take in order to push my career forward while still relatively young. Secondly, upon returning to school in January, I sprained my ankle and physically had a daily struggle to rehabilitate and dance with a slow-healing injury. I had to rewire my thinking to work through the pain in a smart way that would allow me to heal while still dancing almost every day of the week. And finally, the third part of my challenge was auditioning for dance companies in hope of securing a job for the coming season. The ballet world is brutally selective and many times I felt as if all the effort was for nothing. Some auditions had 100 people in them, fighting for space and attention, and sometimes the companies weren't even hiring but still held auditions to accrue money. I drove up to 15 hours almost every weekend to audition for companies from January through April. At my first audition in January, my car was stolen from the parking lot and was gone for 6 months, and when it was found it had a significant amount of damage done to it. The same week as the theft, I was in a car crash while driving my parent’s car and the driver who t-boned me and totaled my car had no insurance and fled the scene. With the added complexity of mild PTSD from the accident affecting my everyday life, some days I struggled to hold it all together and to put my anxiety behind me. At last, in April the light at the end of the tunnel came when Richard Steinert of Ballet Pensacola visited to audition CCM students in a master class at our school. I caught his eye and he asked me to send my resume and several videos of my dancing to his email so that his wife, the co-director of the company could see my technique and quality of dance. Three weeks later, I received the exciting news of my job offer from Ballet Pensacola! Ecstatic, I accepted the offer and moved down July 1st with my boyfriend to embark on our new journey.
Now what?
One piece of advice I have for myself as I prepare for the upcoming year is to have confidence in my own capabilities as I begin my career in dance. It's easy to doubt yourself when you dance in front of a mirror all day and are always scrutinizing and criticizing your form and technique. I also need to remember that there's no point judging myself based on other peoples abilities. It's important to make goals that are healthy and come from a good place rather than comparing myself to others and being frustrated when I feel inferior.
My thoughts about who I am and what I want to do have definitely evolved this year. I've learned to be very open-minded about the possibilities of many different scenarios. For instance, a year ago when I joined Quixotic, I was sure that my future would be almost exclusively modern and contemporary work and that I would never dance with a ballet company. A year later I see that things change organically based on our intentions at each moment in time. At this moment in time, I will be dancing in a classical company, somewhere I never expected to be, and am excited to keep evolving and finding new ways of growing and expressing myself. I've learned that I don't need to hold a rigid expectation of what my identity is or what I appear to be to others. Instead I need to focus on what serves me most for my career at each moment in time. This is the best way to avoid feeling stuck.
In order to give back to my community and society in the upcoming year, I will use my gifts and talents to enrich surrounding people's lives with dance and yoga. With Ballet Pensacola, I will be performing in many outreach shows where we will go to schools in the area and perform for students who may never be exposed to the art form of dance otherwise. In my spare time, I will continue offering my friends and acquaintances free yoga classes while working towards full certification. This will benefit them by bringing their awareness to healing and strengthening their bodies and minds. Many people I have taught and will teach have never taken yoga before, and I love introducing yoga to curious beginners.