The Muscle of Reinvention Building on Past Identities

reinvention

the act of transitioning from one

identity

to another is something we will all

experience at least once

if not many times throughout our lives i

grew up doing both

rhythmic gymnastics which is the one

with the ribbon and the balls and

this is me pictured at 19 years old and

ballet

and this is a picture of me at 25 years

old with the boston ballet

to be clear no i can’t do either of

these things

at this level anymore and no

doing both at the same time was not the

norm

i started ballet at the age of three and

gymnastics at the age of five

and was very quickly swept onto a track

where everything in my life became

secondary

to the pursuit of these two careers

i went through my high school years

straddling these two

distinct worlds and without explicitly

knowing it then

bringing skills from one into the other

in the gymnastics world i was known as a

poetic gymnast

and in the ballet world i was known as a

dynamic and athletic

ballerina and it wasn’t easy

growing up trying to have a normal

social life and juggle

academics while training multiple hours

a day

traveling the country and the world for

competitions and

training with the top coach and i came

very close to quitting

many many times you can just ask my

parents

but from where i stand now moving from

gymnastics to ballet to business i

wouldn’t trade

my experience growing up for anything

over the years i’ve experienced three

major transitions

and i’ve learned that the true art of

reinvention

is a muscle to develop it is a practice

that lies not in becoming something or

someone different

but in exploring and expanding more of

who you are

it is a process built on the shoulders

of past identities

and the unique lessons you’ve learned

along the way

it is my challenge to you to think about

change

as an opportunity for exploration and

expansion

as opposed to focusing on the feelings

of pain

loss and fear that we often feel at the

outset

i have been fascinated with this concept

of reinvention

since the early years of my gymnastics

career

you see athletes gymnasts dancers

we grow up in dog years and we know that

our reinvention

will come much sooner than the average

professional

as a gymnast at the age of 14

i competed in world championships in

budapest

and then i competed in world cups and

grand prix in

moscow israel japan

and so by the time i turned 17 i was

considered a

mature gymnast and looking at this photo

of my sister rosie and i

also a gymnast you can see why we don’t

push

well past the age of 20. it’s really

really hard on the body

i finished my career ranked number two

in canada and with my timing for the

olympics being off

i decided it was time to transition into

the world of ballet

when i transitioned into the world of

dancing i jumped from

one realm of dog ears into another with

a slightly longer runway

in the u.s most classical ballet dancers

reach around the age of 30. and

if you make it to the age of 30 as a

professional ballerina

that’s pretty darn good in my book i

imagined that i would dance

well into my 30s instead i enjoyed a

decade-long career with boston ballet

dancing iconic roles like the arabian

princess in the nutcracker

and fierce female roles like this one in

yorma ellos lost on slow

at the age of 27 a devastating

injury to my ankle became chronic and it

cut

my time on stage short while it was

scary

and jarring to move from being a gymnast

to being a ballet dancer

that decision was my choice it was

something i wanted

when it came time for me to hang up my

point shoes to transition entirely away

from ballet 10 years later

i wasn’t the one to call the shot and i

will always remember

the day in 2016 when the artistic

director

miko nissinin asked me into his office

i walked in the smell of rich leather

filled my nose

and there are amazing epic shots of some

of the most iconic

moments in ballet all over the office

some of which i’ve danced myself

miko welcomes me in i sit

rachel how are you doing at this point

i’m hoping to give a positive progress

report things have finally turned a

corner

the latest round of injections seems to

have worked and i think i’ll be back on

stage soon

but when i open my mouth i have to say

the truth

things are not going well i’m in a lot

of pain

and nothing seems to be working and i

feel like i’ve been trying

everything but i’m confident

that it’ll just take a few more tries

maybe a few more weeks and then i’ll be

back in the studio

and when i lift my eyes to meet miko’s

his are shining with tears something

i’ve

never in all the 10 years working with

him seen

rachel i can’t offer you a contract for

next season

you have one body and i cannot

responsibly ask you

to continue to push yourself in this way

hearing the words that i have feared for

three years hits me like a ton

of bricks the floor opens up in front of

me and i’m

falling and yet i surprise even myself

when i say

thank you thank you for doing

what i could not and in that moment i

was

in shock everything i’d sacrificed

somehow

gone in a second and then

the next year i went through this crazy

narrative of a breakup

the honeymoon phase where wow i should

have done this

years ago what freedom to denial

maybe it’s not really over maybe i

didn’t try everything

to a full-on existential crisis

who am i what

am i if not a dancer then what

and it was really strange to me because

i knew

this reinvention was coming every dancer

will have to hang up their point shoes

at some point

and i had even planned for this i had a

college degree

i had a network contacts but i had zero

idea

of where i was going next or how i would

possibly fit in

to this new world and in those moments i

wondered

if everything i had sacrificed was worth

this letting everything go

for a while seemed like the only way

forward i wasn’t going to

dance my way into my next job and if i

wasn’t going to dance at the highest

level

well i wasn’t going to dance at all

at the same time i was convinced that

i still had more to share through my

dancing

interviewing as a former professional

ballet dancer with zero office

experience

is a hoot the number of companies who

could not see the value

of having a tall swan or a fierce female

dancer in their midst

was well not surprising

i remember one fine institution in

boston said

hmm well we don’t dance here

and that was not untrue the first

nine to five that i landed was as a

development assistant in the fundraising

offices

of harvard university

talk about a change of scenery and i

will leave the feeling

of moving from dancing in a 2600 seat

theater

to being in a literal cubicle for

another time

within the first two weeks of my time as

a development associate

at harvard i started to pick up on this

dancer spidey sense that maybe the

values i’d embodied and the skills i’d

honed

were actually of value in this

non-physical arena

i remember looking around and observing

that this meeting could be made

so much more effective and dynamic if we

put in some rehearsal techniques

or this presentation that i was watching

could be made so much more engaging for

the audience

and more enjoyable for the presenter

with some professional performance

technique

to help perform under pressure what if

my past was still relevant in this new

world

what if it isn’t about the dancing but

about

the ability to articulately read an

audience or

holistically communicate a message and

perform with ease under pressure

i wondered what other businesses might

find these skills

valuable on this hunch and after having

many conversations with friends just to

make sure i wasn’t going crazy

i founded choreography for business

i started training people in the

restaurant industry how to

move in awkward spaces with grace and

deliver high-level service with body

language and presence

and then i moved these concepts into

other industries

training aspiring young female leaders

executives consultants sales teams

i was beginning to see that it was in

leaving the confines

of the opera house stage that allowed me

to unlock

a deeper impact on the world and people

around

me no one told me that my ballet

experience would be

so valuable in the ballet world in fact

the general consensus is your dancing

years

are your best years which automatically

assumes

that once you’re no longer dancing your

best years are behind you

outside of the ballet world i was able

to reframe my experience

and shed a completely different

perspective

into other industries and professions i

was able to explore and expand

more more of who i was bringing my life

to a higher level and i definitely had

my doubts

and i still do but i also had these

moments of clarity

one such moment was when i was coaching

a client who is congenitally blind

which means he’s never seen a moving

human body before

i was working with him on his tedx and

building a physical framework around

memories he’d lived out

memories of coming home and finding a

big box of lego and

sifting through a big braille binder

creating

3d lego shapes with his hands things he

would

never see but could feel

and as i watched him perform his tedx

talk

i realized this is the power

of bringing the ballet out of the opera

house

and working with individuals on their

physicality

so what’s in this for you you might not

be a dancer

but maybe you’re an athlete or an

aspiring or already dedicated

professional

maybe you’re in the throes of transition

right now

we all at some point in our lives will

have an identity taken away from us

maybe it’s the identity of a role a

responsibility a passion or

a direction in early 2020

we were all invited to reinvent

ourselves

overnight our country and our world was

thrown into a different dimension and we

all had to face a common enemy

what do you do if a job or an entire

industry

disappears overnight

early in 2020 i can speak for myself i

found myself

yet again in a position of having

everything that i’d worked towards and

everything that i was really beginning

to love

be impossible elevating the human

experience

communicating in person and like many of

you

i spent a while fretting and

wondering how could it be

that i am back in this position

and then i took a deep breath and i

realized

i’ve been here before this feels

familiar

and this time i knew what to look for

in the exact same way that dancers build

muscle memory around

intricate and complicated choreography

that at first glance seems

impossible my muscles of reinvention

kicked into high gear

i thought of the values that i have and

still hold dear

connection communication performance

were those no longer relevant

it took another reframe for me to see

that while

in-person gatherings and conversations

had been outlawed

they had not disappeared they had simply

moved into a new virtual and remote

setting and an entire language was

bestowed upon

our world and people were going to need

help figuring out

how to engage and interact with this

two-dimensional audience

again the art of reinvention

does not mean you throw away your past

skills

your past experience your past self

it is about reframing and applying

a different perspective to a part of the

world that might have been waiting for

you

all along and it takes practice

as we all face the uncertainty of a

chaotic world

what do you value and treasure is there

some

unique perspective or experience that

you have that could be

exactly what someone else is looking for

what if our best years

are still to come

as for myself i know i will be

reinventing myself again

as much as i would love to say finally

here i am made it through my transition

now

i am firmly a fill in the blank

this is a lie this is a lie

and in thinking this way we handcuff

ourselves to

a fraction of what is possible

our world demands that we think

creatively and collaboratively

our world demands that we

collectively reinvent the way we consume

the way we create

what is the world missing it could be

a future you