yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

LearnStorm Growth Mindset: Dancer on his career journey


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

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."

More Articles

View All
Collecting Animal Bones in Alaska | Best Job Ever
[Music] So here we are on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. We’re here looking for Caribou antlers and [Music] bones. We are pretty much finding bones wherever we go. What we have here is a shed bull Caribou antler, so a male, large male. This is where…
Getting Buried In Concrete To Explain How It Works
I am about to get buried in concrete. And while that’s happening, I’m going to explain everything you need to know about this substance. So the first thing that I want to clear up is the difference between cement and concrete, because people often mix the…
Do Octopuses Dream? | Deep Questions with James Cameron & Dr. Alex Schnell | National Geographic
[Music] I’ve been inspired by octopuses my whole life, just with the camouflage, with the mimicry, and just so many different ways of locomotion. Every octopus that you meet will have a different personality, and I’ve been lucky enough to build a relation…
How To Get A PERFECT Credit Score (For FREE)
What’s up you guys, it’s Grahe here. So this is absolutely unbelievable. I never thought that this would happen. I’m about to… okay, I’m not about to cry, but to my utter amazement, I was kind of shocked this morning when I checked my credit report and my…
Vintage Yellowstone Commercials Show How Much Has (and Hasn't) Changed | National Geographic
[Music] Oldest, largest, and one of our most beautiful vacation lands is Yellowstone National Park. Antelope feed peacefully on grassy slopes. Woof woof, a black bear! But don’t worry; he’s friendly; he won’t bother you. For many years, Old Faithful has…
Jeff Bezos: "Nerd of the Amazon" | 60 Minutes Archive
60 Minutes rewind. Who would have guessed that one of the hottest stocks of all time, one of the fastest growing companies in history, would be a bookstore? That’s right, books—one of the oldest products made by man. We didn’t. That’s because we didn’t pr…