It can also be a time of anxiety, particularly for dancers at smaller companies or freelancers. With downtime comes a loss of income, which must be supplemented in other ways.
For a lucky few, summer is time — at least in part — for some much-needed rest from the demands of an art that takes its toll on the body. I spoke with dancers from different disciplines: ballet, modern, tap and Indian classical dance, about what they do in the summer months. Their accounts have been edited and condensed.
Sarah Hayes Harkins: A Ballerina Behind the Wheel
Sarah Hayes Harkins, 29, has been a dancer with Charlotte Ballet in North Carolina since 2008. Although the company has no official ranks, Harkins has performed most of the principal parts: Cinderella, Aurora in “Sleeping Beauty” and Sugarplum in “The Nutcracker.” The company has 20 dancers, for whom it guarantees at least 36 weeks of work. (This arrangement is not unusual, and 36 weeks is considered good in the field.) That leaves up to 16 unpaid weeks a year.
During the summer layoff, my husband — a classical guitarist — and I definitely have to hunker down and be really conscious of the money going out and coming in. My main source of other work here in Charlotte is teaching private ballet lessons.
I also drive for Lyft. I have a Volkswagen Tiguan, a little silver baby SUV. I make a solid average of $10 an hour. I’ll do it for most of the day and not take a break. If I stretch for a while after I’m done, I’m fine. It doesn’t make my body feel any worse than it already does.
To be honest, the time goes by very quickly. I’m a super social person so if they want to talk I’m totally down for that. For me it’s the perfect little side job. Last year I drove Aziz Ansari. I picked him up from Bojangles’ Coliseum where he had been doing a show. Aziz and his dad came out the back door and hopped in. He was really nice. He was watching videos of the show he had just done on his phone. At one point, his dad was trying to give me directions, and Aziz stopped him and said, dad, she’s got the thing, you don’t have to tell her how to get there!
Shantala Shivalingappa: Back to Nature
Chennai-born dancer Shantala Shivalingappa lives in Paris and spends much of the year on the road. Her training is in the Indian classical dance form kuchipudi, but just as often, she works with contemporary choreographers and theater directors. Each summer, Shivalingappa, 43, leaves her performing life behind and returns to India.
I spend almost 2 1/2 months in India, without anything related to performing. My parents have a farmhouse here [on the outskirts of Chennai] on a piece of land near the seaside, with coconut trees, a vegetable garden and a mango grove. The sea is just down the road. It gives me a lot of distance from my performing life. I have no plans, each day just happens.
For the first month and a half, I do no dancing at all. I don’t even listen to music. My day starts before sunrise. I do about 3 1/2 hours of yoga on the terrace. This has been my routine for the last two years and it has totally transformed me. It’s made my body much stronger and more fluid, at an age when I started feeling certain tensions and aches.
In the afternoon, I help with watering the garden or pulling weeds or picking fruit. Then I go to the beach, usually right before sunset. The wonderful thing about a warm country like India is that you’re so in touch with the elements. You feel the sun on your skin, you walk barefoot, you sit on the earth. It’s very grounding.
Shivalingappa will perform her kuchipudi evening “Akasha” at the Joyce Theater in New York in fall.
Lisa La Touche: The Improviser
Even with the recent resurgence of tap on Broadway and concert stages, the life of a tap dancer is a constant shuffle. La Touche, 38, has a distinguished career; she was in the original cast of “Shuffle Along,” on Broadway, and in Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards’ “Sophisticated Ladies,” at the Cotton Club, and has toured with Savion Glover and the show “STOMP.” Last November, she had a son, Langston. This summer has been a time to balance priorities while working almost nonstop. She has taken off a grand total of one week so far. When we spoke, she was leading a summer workshop in her hometown, Calgary.
Summers are typically really busy in the tap dance world. That’s when most of the festivals and workshops happen. In early July, I danced at the Tap City festival in New York. That got me back onstage after giving birth last November. It was like, wow! Remember how much stamina that takes? Postpartum is no joke.
Since then, I’ve been mostly teaching. Here in Calgary, I have a summer intensive that I started with one of my colleagues, Danny Nielsen, called Training Dayz. My son gets to spend time with grandma, and I can get some work done. It’s win-win. After that it’s back to New York, where I tend to teach private lessons or set up my own workshops through Labor Day. So if I want down time, I have to make it.
Motherhood, it’s like being shot out of a cannon. But I’m still an artist. A freelance artist. I’m working on a show with another tap dancer, Kazunori Kumagai, for 2020. In the absence of institutional support, I had to make a two-year plan so I could pay myself maternity leave. Thank god I love to improvise, because motherhood is the biggest improvisation I’ve ever done.
Michael Trusnovec: Don’t Look Back
Months before his final performance with the Paul Taylor Dance Company, at the end of June — after two decades in the company — Michael Trusnovec, 44, was cramming his schedule with projects. Idleness is not in his nature. The biggest of these is a new festival he is starting up with two of his former Taylor colleagues, Laura Halzack and Michelle Fleet, and his husband, V.J. Carbone, a film publicist. The Asbury Park Dance Festival will have its debut Sept. 14, with dancers from the Paul Taylor, Martha Graham and Doug Varone companies, as well as tapper Caleb Teicher.
I don’t think I’ve had a minute to contemplate the implications and the weight of leaving the company yet. It’s all about the art of distraction and deflection. Literally the morning after my final performance I flew to the American Dance Festival to finish staging Paul Taylor’s “Esplanade.” It wound up being the perfect thing for me to do at that moment — “Esplanade” was the first Taylor dance I ever learned.
We started planning the festival about 10 months ago. Asbury Park has changed so rapidly; there’s a lot of art, a lot of music. We have a great community of friends there, a lot of arts people. People in the dance community were really enthusiastic. We’re doing it to support a local arts organization, ArtsED New Jersey.
There’s a level of relief in not dancing as much. I needed a break from that relentless drive. I still want to perform for a bit longer, but I also want to try other things I couldn’t do before. I do have a new sense of freedom to do that.
Calvin Royal III: New Steps
For the last few years, American Ballet Theater soloist Calvin Royal III, 30, has been on the cusp of stardom. Some of his most interesting challenges have actually come during the summers, in three stints at the Vail Dance Festival. This summer, he got his first stab at one of the most desirable roles of all: the lead in George Balanchine’s “Apollo,” a ballet about a young god in training, testing his powers. At Vail, he danced with Unity Phelan, a New York City Ballet soloist.
I’ve always seen images and clips of “Apollo.” I’ve seen myself wanting to dance the role but never thought the opportunity would present itself. During the performance I just felt this sense of calm. I even forgot about the altitude. Also, dancing with Unity — we have this chemistry that makes me feel like I’m able to really be in the moment and not be afraid.
My partnership with Unity is probably the strongest I have, which is crazy, since we’re not even in the same company. We come together at this amazing festival each year and dance these iconic ballets together.
After the festival, I [went] on a road trip to the Southwest with my partner. We [wanted] to visit some national parks and be in nature. At the beginning of vacation, I don’t want to move at all. No dancing. Probably toward the end of the holiday I’ll start doing my own barre so that when I come back it’s not a complete shock. Before we left New York we had some fittings with Twyla [Tharp], who is making a ballet for us this fall. She said, “Enjoy your holiday but make sure you come back in shape!”
Royal will have his New York debut in Apollo on Oct. 17 during American Ballet Theatre’s fall season at the Lincoln Center.
This article originally appeared in
.