Activity 7: 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 weightlifting, Gyrotonics, yoga, some kind of aerobic activity like swimming in the pool, cardio. Second part is getting ready for the rehearsals. And that can range from taking daily technique classes which can be ballet or modern, 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. So 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 and as my body you know starts to change. That recovery time becomes more crucial. So I started dancing around age 10, and around the age of 13 or 14, I started to develop a severe stutter. And for about a year and a half, I was 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. And around the age of 18, you know when you're in high school and you're trying to decide what you wanna do next, I thought I wanna go to college and I wanna 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. And I, as a dancer, just pushed through the pain and was like I'm gonna be fine, I'm gonna persevere and overcome all obstacles and it will 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. And to the point that I burned out. I quit. I was done. I was gonna 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, dance criticism, and I was reminded of how much I loved the dance field and the industry and especially its history. And I think that passion, the understanding for the history of dance really kind of rekindled the flame to actually have a dance career. And towards the end of my college career, I decided you know what, I'm gonna give it one more shot. I'm gonna see if I can actually make this happen.