LearnStorm Growth Mindset: Dancer on his career journey

My name is Michael Novak. I'm 34 years old, and I'm a dancer with the Paul Taylor Dance Company in New York City. I have what I call "the recipe," which is something that I've built over a number of years of dancing.

The first is a cross-training program, and that can involve weight lifting, Gyrotonics, yoga, and some kind of aerobic activity like swimming in the pool, cardio. The second part is getting ready for the rehearsals, and that can range from taking daily technique classes, which can be ballet or modern, to going over all the dances that I have to do in a given day, which can range from one dance to six or seven dances.

The third one is performances. Performance day is a bit different because we have what's called a tech rehearsal, where we basically run the entire show before the show. So I tend to not do weight training or any kind of intense physical preparation before a show because it's about the show. I try to save as much energy for the performance.

The fourth thing is recovery time, and this is something that I've been implementing as I get older. As my body starts to change, that recovery time becomes more crucial. I started dancing around age 10, and around the age of 13 or 14, I started to develop a severe stutter. For about a year and a half, I was in intense speech therapy to regain my ability to speak because I couldn't talk. Dance became a way for me to communicate and to get out all the frustrations and all the feelings that I had inside that I couldn't get out.

Around the age of 18, you know, when you're in high school and you're trying to decide what you want to do next, I thought, "I want to go to college, and I want to get a degree in dance." I was accepted to the University of the Arts in Philadelphia on a full-ride scholarship. I started to develop shin splints pretty close to when I started taking ballet classes because of improper technique. As a dancer, I just pushed through the pain, thinking, "I'm going to be fine. I'm going to persevere and overcome all obstacles, and it'll be great."

The shin splints kept getting worse, and I ended up developing stress fractures in both shins. The combination of the stress fractures and being on my feet, you know, 80 hours a week, and not really making a lot of money at the time, was really hard on me emotionally—so much so that I burned out. I quit. I was done. I was going to go back to school.

But while I was at Columbia, I started to get this itch to dance again. I studied a lot of dance history, dance theory, and dance criticism. I was reminded of how much I loved the dance field and the industry, and especially its history. I think that passion, that understanding for the history of dance, really rekindled the flame to actually have a dance career. Towards the end of my college career, I decided, "You know what? I'm going to give it one more shot. I want to see if I can actually make this happen."