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Living Every Little Girl's Dream:
Courtney Lutz, ballerina extraordinaire...
Though her career as a ballet dancer has had its share of ups and downs, Courtney Lutz wouldn't trade it for the world.
It's easy to imagine Courtney Lutz at two-and-a-half years old, her dark eyes wide with concentration as she watches her older sisters from the sidelines of their ballet class, attempting to mimic their every move. Though she begs and pleads to join the girls in their black leotards, pink tights and, best of all, frothy tutus, the teacher remains firm: "Not until she's out of diapers!"
Two weeks later, Lutz was out of diapers, and she's been dancing ever since.
The 22-year-old Vancouver native, who currently trains and dances with two Toronto-based companies - the Ontario Ballet Theatre and the Opera Atelier - says for most it isn't necessary to begin ballet so "ridiculously" young. "Most people usually start when they're four or five, taking classes and doing little shows just for their parents," Lutz says. "Serious training doesn't start until you're nine or 10."
"Serious" training means hours a day spent in dance class, which often disrupts a normal teenaged life, particularly in terms of school. "I was in public school until the ninth grade," Lutz recalls. "At that point my [dance] schedule got so crazy I had to switch schools and enter a super achievers program, where I did school until lunch and then went and danced from noon on. In Grade 12, I think I only went to four English classes the whole year. I was hardly at school at all. I'd take morning ballet classes, afternoon classes - as many as I could. And I had private coaching. It added up to a lot."
Every day from Grade 9 on, Lutz commuted to the Goh Ballet Academy in downtown Vancouver, where she was trained in classical ballet. A serious dancer with a strong work ethic, she became increasingly successful in national and international competitions and exams. "I think I was really lucky," she says modestly. "I worked hard and, for that reason, was given a lot of attention from my instructors. I didn't really have a natural talent or anything, I was just really lucky."
According to Lutz, the idea of becoming a professional dancer always appealed to her. Though her sisters eventually quit ballet, unyielding support from her mother ("I tried to quit when my sisters did; my mom flat-out said no") and instinct pressed her forward. "There are always points where you start to doubt yourself and you don't think you can do it anymore. I still go through that. But I think I always knew ballet was what I wanted to do. I didn't always know I could do it, but I always wanted to."
After high school, Lutz was accepted into the National Ballet of Canada, perhaps the most prestigious ballet company in the country. Excited, she couldn't have guessed the transition to life in Toronto would be tougher than she'd expected. "I got very depressed. It was really, really hard," she says. "I'm still not sure exactly what went wrong. I know it was partly the move away from my family and friends, but there were other factors, too. Everyone except me who joined that year was from the National Ballet School, so they'd all been friends for years. The other thing is, when you first join a company, you're not their top priority. I went from a situation where I was dancing so much to one where I was watching others dance, and it was a bit of a shock. Now, I'd be much more prepared to be in that environment, but at the time I lost it. I wasn't happy."
Besides moving thousands of miles away from home and having to adjust to living alone in a new city, young ballerinas often must also adjust to a new, and often difficult, financial situation. "The first year I was apprenticing I made about $500 a week, which really isn't a lot of money when you consider all your expenses," Lutz explains. "You're basically living paycheck-to-paycheck. And you're off in the summer, so there are these chunks of time when you're not making any money."
Lutz doesn't mince words when it comes to her initial experience as a paid professional. "It was two years of crap," she says. "It was awful. So I left." She packed her bags and moved to New York, where she took dance classes, waited tables and joined a small company, the American Contemporary Ballet. "Part of the reason I left [Toronto] was because I was depressed and my weight really began to fluctuate. My director at the National said, 'You need to get your shit together. I'd really like you to stay in my company, but I need you to be OK.'"
"Disordered eating," as Lutz calls it, has recently been publicized as a major issue within the dancing community by popular films like 2000's Center Stage. You can only get a true sense of the problem, though, from the perspective of a professional. While Lutz admits her own battle with weight and body image was partly based on comparisons she made between herself and fellow dancers, she also stresses the general public may only understand half of the problem. "Sure, you see the girl next to you and the girl next to her and you feel you need to look thinner," she says. "But it's also that people are lifting you so, realistically, you need to be smaller and leaner than the average person."
Lutz, however, is by no means disillusioned. "I think many companies take it to an extreme and some directors have too thin a vision. In my case, it really was a battle between my body and what I was putting it through. Once I got a little thick I'd stop eating and, when I started eating again, my metabolism was totally out of whack. At that point, I needed to get out of Toronto, to be away. My sister was living in New York, too, so I had more support there to get through my issues."
New York, however, proved a similar struggle, financially, so eventually Lutz moved back to Toronto, the city where her childhood role model, Karen Kain, principal dancer with the National Ballet of Canada, had danced. Since the ballet community is so tightly knit, Lutz has actually had the opportunity to meet Kain. "Growing up, Karen was a big inspiration to me; now that I know her, not so much. You always think your role models are perfect; then you meet them and it's never the case. I actually think it's unfair - no one's ever going to be what you expect them to be. I wouldn't say I idolize anyone now, but I do admire a lot of people for their dancing ability."
Improving her own ability is something that's always been a priority for Lutz, and that means dancing as much as possible. She just finished touring Korea, filming a documentary for the Opera Atelier. "I've been doing a lot of work for them, but it's not challenging," she says. "With them it's more fun. But, I'm also doing the Nutcracker through the Ontario Ballet Theatre, touring Ontario and the U.S. in 42 shows."
Dancing for two companies means extra-long days for Lutz. "I'm usually up at 5:30 and off to the gym. By 10:00 AM I'm in class and then the rest of the day is either rehearsals or actual performances. If I was just rehearsing right now, my day would end at 6:30 PM. But performing means I'm up dancing until 11:30 at night."
Few would find such long hours appealing but, then again, this career isn't for everyone. In fact, to become a professional ballerina, says Lutz, you really have to start dancing at a very young age. "It's not really possible to start late in ballet," she explains. "In contemporary dance you can get away with it if you're graceful, because it's more about movement and you don't need as much technique and training. In ballet there's a lot of specific placement involved, and it's hard to get your body to do those things when you're older."
Though a dancer begins her career younger than most professionals, Lutz knows ballet most often means early retirement: "You usually start in the corps de ballet, dancing in a group, as an ensemble. If you stay at that level, your career typically ends in your late 20s or early 30s, when you're injured, married or decide to pursue other interests because you've done all you can as a dancer. If you're lucky, you get promoted from corps to soloist and then, if you're really lucky, to principal. As a soloist or principal dancer, 30 is usually retirement age. That's when your body just starts breaking."
Retirement from dancing doesn't mean retirement from work and, according to Lutz, many dancers go on to apply their ballet skills in other ways, as physiotherapists, massage therapists, teachers or coaches. "Of course, there are people who are just done with dancing," she says. "But, no matter what you decide, for most dancers it's really terrifying when their career stops. They've never thought about school and many even sacrificed high school to dance. There's an incredible place in Toronto called the Dancer Transition Resource Centre, founded to help these people by showing them their options, giving them money to go back to school or helping them get computer skills."
Though her career is far from over, Lutz has been using the Resource Centre to help her figure out what her next step will be. "I've decided to audition for several companies in the States, because there aren't many in Canada. There's lots of freelance and contract work, like I'm doing now, but that means you have to continue waiting tables or whatever else you can do to make ends meet, and I find that gets too hard. You can't keep yourself in good enough shape and you can't focus on advancing your career."
Lutz's goal is to become a principal dancer, like her once-idol Kain. "I think performing as a soloist embodies more of my strengths," she says. "Everyone's trained differently, and I was trained as a soloist at the Goh school. Unlike the National Ballet School, where ballerinas are trained to be corps dancers to feed the Company, each dancer in my small class was taught to be the best they could be."
The thought of quitting ballet altogether has occurred to Lutz in the past, but it's never an idea that sticks. "I've recently been asking myself if there's anything else I could or should be doing," she says. "But right now I don't think I'm ready for that. I mostly think about that when I haven't performed in a while, but once I get back on stage, dancing is the only thing I can think of. I know in my heart it's absolutely what I'm meant to be doing right now. It's everything to me." ¤ Noa