Interview with Natalia Pasiut, dancer with the Polish National Ballet
Paradoxically, opening up to other arts, to the world around her, to other solutions has made her even more perfect at dancing. Ballet is a difficult profession that is very limiting and requires total dedication. First an injury, then a time of pandemic forced her to stop and look at her work, her life, from a new, broader perspective.
MW: Sometimes we need to stop for a moment and look at our lives. Lately the whole world has been forced to stop like that….
NP: Yes, this time of pandemic opened my eyes to the reality outside of work, convinced me to develop in other directions as well. Classical dance is a difficult profession that limits us a lot. We have to adapt our whole life to it. And it’s often the case that we don’t have free time or even the strength to do something else.
MW: But doesn’t development outside of work really affect work too? Isn’t it connected?
NP: Exactly! I, for one, discovered yoga this season, just in the midst of pandemonium, when I didn’t even have the opportunity to do my daily ballet exercises at the bar. I didn’t have a bar or a good floor, so I decided to find another form of movement to keep in shape.
At first I was sceptical about yoga, but then it fascinated me. After returning to work, I saw that there was something different about my dancing. I saw that my body works differently, I feel more stretched out, I have a better vertical. In yoga, among other things, you stand on your head, and that also verticalises you. Thanks to yoga, I already treat my body completely differently. I treat it with respect first of all. I don’t feel as much need (as before) to stretch hard before a classical dance class. I can do a variety of yoga positions (asanas), and my body feels much better during a classical dance lesson than before. It is not tired, it is not strained, nothing hurts me.
Besides the physical aspect, yoga also gives us peace of mind, and this peace of mind is something we dancers really lack. We are usually highly stressed, so we need a tool to calm and soothe our mind. I have recently started practising guided meditation. These are like affirmations, good words for the day ahead. After practising meditation and affirmations, I feel that my body, my mind relaxes and I am more positive about life.
Our profession is difficult, we are judged every day. Every day we strive for perfection, which we know is impossible to achieve. But all the time we have it in our heads that we have to be what others want us to be. And yet, above all, we have to like ourselves. And to love ourselves. That’s what I’m learning, that’s what I’m striving for and that’s what motivates me.
MW: Let’s go back to the beginning for a moment. Was it always your dream to be a dancer?
NP: It’s hard to say if it was my dream because I feel like I’ve been dancing all my life! I was six years old when my mum took me to the Ballet Studio at the Ballet School on Molier Street in Warsaw. My mother has always motivated me to try my hand at various things, be it sport or art. I appreciate her a lot for that and I thank her a lot for that. I think it’s great – to show a child different possibilities, because through this experience, they will verify and choose for themselves what they like and what they want to do in life. My mum first took me to a ballet studio. I went there for a month and unfortunately I didn’t like it. The ballet movement was fine, but the lady who ran the classes was unpleasant and I will honestly admit that I was a bit scared of her. As a result, we gave up attending these classes.
Then my mother encouraged me to do artistic gymnastics and took me to the Palace of Culture. So there was artistic gymnastics, then the baton. I loved it on the trampoline – anyone would want to jump that high! But after a while, we also gave up, because we lived quite far away – the commute after kindergarten, then after school, made me very tired. After a couple of years, my mum suggested I join the Metro studio at the Buffo Theatre, where there were dance and theatre classes. I really enjoyed it there. There were lots of kids, lots of fun, performances. One day, a professor from the Warsaw Ballet School came to our classes looking for children for the first class. She spotted me in the crowd, called me over and said: “You are invited to go to ballet school. If you decide, you don’t have to do an exam like the rest of the kids. I can see what kind of appeal you have, your sense of rhythm. As far as I’m concerned, you’re most suitable.” It was the beginning of the year, so I had already bought all the books for the primary school I was going to… but, my mother, because she had always thought I would be a dancer – suggested: “Why don’t you try it though, why not? It’s something new, you move well when you hear music. Try it.” Now that I think about it, I’m delighted that she wanted to do it, because it was quite a cost – you had to change textbooks, buy ballet shoes, pointe, costumes, tights – the school didn’t always have the funds to do it, so financially it wasn’t that easy. Anyway, my parents agreed.
I changed all of my textbooks and started my education at the National Ballet School in Warsaw. I was very well received. I studied there from first to ninth grade. The school was fine for me, although I regret that our classical dance teachers kept changing. It’s good to have different teachers because you can learn something different from everyone – they give different comments, different insights, but changing too often is not beneficial. But in spite of everything, I am happy that I was at this school for the whole nine years, because I know that it was not an easy path for every child and some people stopped their education after a few years. Now working in theatre, I am still learning a lot.
MW: Learning ballet never seems to end, you are improving all the time….
NP: Yes, it’s true. I’m still discovering so much! Of course everything comes with experience, but also with our willingness, with our curiosity. And that’s the thing. I think that’s the key word – that curiosity. This is the most important thing for me. If you have curiosity in you, you will see everything, you will learn everything and if you want to, you will really get a lot out of it. So I am constantly curious and I still want to develop, because dance has so much beauty, so much depth and so much to discover… and I believe it is also a tool so that we can discover ourselves. Through dance I discover my life, my desires. This is wonderful – to notice it. Sometimes we are locked up like in a bubble that is difficult to pierce and open our eyes to other things. And this is where I once again return to experiencing life outside of work, to see the world. Finally. A world that is also beautiful and interesting. All this then translates into our profession.
MW: And did you ever have moments of doubt, did you ever want to give up?
NP: Yes. All the time. Even yesterday before the performance, on the occasion of my debut as Countess Marie Larisch in the ballet Mayerling. There are a lot of moments like that. I think everyone has moments like that in their lives. This profession is so stressful that sometimes I think I can’t cope anymore. There are days before a performance when I go to bed in the evening and fall asleep with a strong heartbeat, and I dream of the music and choreography of the ballet we have recently prepared. A lot of stress gathers in me before I go on stage, but once I’m on stage, something magical happens – the stress goes away and all that’s left is the pleasure and happiness of being in a place I love and being able to do what I love and what I’m passionate about.
This time of pause, this time of pandemic, has given me an understanding of how I can see my work differently. How to deal with stress. After all, these moments are all so fleeting… they are literally the ‘moments’ of our lives and we don’t have to worry about them so much when something doesn’t go our way. We are doing this for ourselves, for no one else, so why stress so much? It’s important to put it in your head and keep saying it to yourself. Sometimes it automatically comes back to me that feeling from years ago when I thought: ” Gosh, am I going to do this well, am I going to please the director and all the ballet masters, am I going to please myself?”. However, now I know how to deal with that feeling and I know that I am doing it for myself.
Meditation, yoga and talking to people help me a lot. I have a lot of support in my family. Also my boyfriend Kristóf supports me tremendously. He always watches my dancing and gives different comments. He is my kind of professor who always sees everything. I know I can get good comments and corrections from him. I have friends in the theatre, very dear to me – they are always supportive, they always lift me up – I value that a lot. It also helps me to get away from work, from dancing – going to the park, getting in touch with nature, watching a film, going to a museum – it opens my eyes to the world and I’m very happy that I’ve finally recognised that.
MW: What do you value most in life? What do you value most?
NP: Now I’m overflowing with gratitude… I think it’s worth taking at least a moment every day to think about what we are grateful for in life – and then we can see that there is quite a lot. I am very grateful for my family, because they are always there for me. My mum, who is a huge inspiration to me, taught me that even if something goes wrong, when something doesn’t go our way, you have to say to yourself ‘it’s okay, we’ll make it better’. Also, she has taught me that we need to enjoy every moment of life and especially value what we have between us. I am immensely grateful to her for that. I appreciate everything that’s around me now and the fact that I’m healthy, that I have supportive people around me, my family – that’s the most important thing for me and I’m soaking it all up now, that’s what I want to enjoy.
MW: Gratitude is a very important topic. Gratitude even in difficult situations, seeing good things and giving thanks for them. This attitude frees us…
NP: Yes, it is that release, that freedom! We get that freedom and that’s what I understood when I came back to movement after my ankle injury. I decided to go to Amsterdam to take a class in a wonderful movement technique called Gyrotonic. This class was taught by a former dancer who had suffered a serious accident and did not return to her profession afterwards. She took up Gyrotonic and yoga. Thanks to this amazing person, the conversations and our work together to bring me back to health, I felt freedom. Before, I felt constrained in my work all the time, I thought I had to submit to everything the management expected of me, what all the ballet masters expected, the whole company, the audience… but why should I feel that way? We talked a lot and it helped me a lot. It helped me to free myself from all these expectations. I am very grateful to her for that.
MW: This release that takes place in the mind certainly also has a positive effect on the dance itself….
NP: Exactly! It’s very interesting, but when I came back to work after my injury, everyone around me started saying: “Natalia, somehow you dance differently, you’ve changed a lot and you’ve become more beautiful.” And also I myself felt that I was beautiful – beautiful in dance. Maybe it wasn’t visible to some people, but I felt it that way. It’s important to love yourself, to accept yourself. I used to not feel that. Because of being judged and having to have a certain look, a certain behaviour, it made me feel limited, closed off. But why? After all, I’m completely different to any of the people who are in the team, who are around me. I am unique, I just need to embrace it, accept it, accept it. It’s important to bring out the best in yourself. Just to not be so hard on yourself. For dancers, especially the female part of the company, it’s hard to accept the body because we are all different. Our bodies change, we won’t always look the same. Some have more muscular bodies, some are slimmer. Unfortunately, not everyone accepts themselves. However, each of us is beautiful in our own way and it is worth showing this beauty and not hiding it. Therefore, my goal is to give the people around me comfort and reassure them that they are unique and that they are special.
MW: I see you as a warm, courageous woman who sees beauty in the world, in other people, and wants to bring that out into the world. How do you see yourself? What do you value most in yourself?
NP: What I value most about myself is that I am real, I never lie and I don’t even know how to do it very well! I’ve never been able to and I think I get that from my parents because they can’t pretend to do something either. That’s important to me and I expect that from other people too. I also value respect for others. If we respect each other, it is much easier for us to live together. We won’t say bad words to each other when we respect each other.
I also value openness and energy in myself. I feel I can brighten people’s day a bit – smile, say something funny. I’m changing all the time. This process fascinates me a lot. In retrospect, I can see that I am a completely different person than I was before. I’m very happy about that, because I feel I’m getting better as a person.
MW: What would you advise someone just starting out in life with ballet?
NP: I would recommend just being curious and having an open mind to the world, to other schools, going to different workshops, with different teachers. I once went to a workshop in Berlin. It was two weeks of daily classes with different teachers. They developed me incredibly. I was exhausted afterwards, but it was my first experience abroad where I was doing something different from the Ballet School in Warsaw. It’s worth watching, listening, being interested, being open to new things. Don’t limit yourself only to classical dance, folk dance, contemporary dance. Go to piano lessons, watch a film or a performance in a dramatic theatre, maybe go to another city, another country to watch a ballet performance performed by another company. We can gain a lot from this and get a lot of inspiration. Just trying everything – our body and our mind will gain from it for sure. I wish I had done more of this as a teenager, but now I’m happy to make up for it.
MW: During the pandemic, a unique place for individual art classes and workshops was created in Warsaw. Can you tell us a bit about SZTUKstudio? Where did the idea come from and how does it function? How do you find yourself in this new role?
NP: The idea for this place was born during the pandemic when we had no place to practice. I was agonising in the living room by the sofa doing my daily ballet exercises, pouring water on the wooden floor. I didn’t even have my ballet shoes with me because everything was left in the theatre. Then, during the pandemic, we went to Masuria. And there we got the idea that maybe we would do something new after all. It would also be good to have a place where we can work out for ourselves when we don’t have the opportunity to practise in the ballet room in the theatre.
We wanted to do something new, fresh. But most of all I wanted to have my own space to do something different and to help the dancers, and not just think about working in the theatre. We found a beautiful flat and a separate room in Old Ochota, which we immediately fell in love with and decided to open SZTUKstudio there.
I am finding myself in this new role wonderfully! People of all ages and levels come to me: for classical dance, yoga, stretching and body strengthening classes.
MW: So it’s not just ballet classes?
NP: At SZTUKstudio I give classical dance classes, I practise repertoire with children – variations (short solos) from selected ballet repertoire if they need working on them, but I also do body balance and stretch training. I have developed my own original training. It is a combination of yoga, Pilates, classical dance, strength training – all brought together into one workout. Our classes are for everyone. We tailor the classes individually, so I always try to look at the person coming in first, talk to them, see what they like, what they don’t like. I always need to know if our guest has had any injuries or pains in their body. It’s very important to think about the workout and tailor it to the person’s ability and level, so that the class is safe for the body. And clients really appreciate this. A lot of women come, but men come too. Everyone is welcome here! A 13-year-old girl comes and a lady dean from the university comes. This is beautiful for me – to observe my clients and hear from them that after a few classes they feel much better!
We were also invited to ‘Dzień dobry TVN’ to talk about the fact that men can also dance classical dance, and that it is not at all unmanly. The stereotype of a dancer in – colloquially called – “tights” (or “leotards”) overshadows what the life of a professional ballet dancer is really like. First and foremost is the strength-based preparation of the body. It’s not just jumping around in tights, but the whole backstory of how a man has to prepare his body for work. With these workouts we want to show that it’s not at all as easy as it seems. There are a lot of things we have to do outside of the lesson, outside of the performance. We want to make people aware of what our profession is really like. I am very happy that there are more and more people willing to try it for themselves. Ballet is treated very elitist, with a distance, and we want to open up to people. The idea of our studio is also to meet artists, because we want to get closer to our audience. We want to talk about our art openly, without any cover-ups, so as not to create such a bubble of our world. That’s why we want to open up the studio to the audience, to people who are interested in our art, the history of ballet and classical dance. We would also like to organise lectures before performances. We want to promote different artists and organise different kinds of artistic meetings. We would very much like to create a kind of ‘bohemia’ of artistic meetings, so that artists inspire each other.
MW: How do you see yourself in five, ten years’ time?
NP: I don’t know where I will see myself in five or ten years, because I know from experience that everything can change in a second. However, I see myself as a happy, mature person who helps others and is fulfilled.
I have plans, my little goals, but it’s hard to plan anything in our new present. I would very, very much like to continue to develop myself in various movement techniques, but not only that. I would also like to start a family and have children sometime in the future, but I know that time will come for that too. It’s hard to say how I see myself in a few years. Everything changes so quickly that, at the moment, I’m enjoying every moment and don’t think as much about the future as I did before.
I think that whatever happens, I can still cope with everything. After so many experiences, positive but also very unpleasant, I try to draw out the good. And that’s what makes me stronger and gives me more and more positive energy to live!
MW: Thank you very much for the interview and the encouragement to look at the world broadly. There is a task set before each of us, and often by focusing too much on completing it, we miss the opportunity to look wider, deeper, from a different perspective. Thank you for the inspiration to draw unreservedly from the world around us, to seize those moments that surprise us, that force us to stop. We don’t have to passively surrender to these moments, but use them to spread our wings even further.
Interviewed by Monika Węgrzyn
President of the Dance to Be Foundation
The interview appeared in the quarterly “Taniec” nr 1/2022 (38)
