Ballet with Isabella: ‘I Really Fell in Love with Helping People!’
Isabella helping a student.
At age 15, Isabella McGuire Mayes was the first British girl to join St. Petersburg’s prestigious Vaganova Ballet Academy. Four years later, she graduated top of her class and went on to dance with Mikhailovsky Ballet and Eifman Ballet, two major Russian ballet companies. She now runs “Ballet with Isabella,” a brilliant ballet coaching website, and also hosts “A Dancer’s Mindset,” an intriguing podcast that focuses on a key ingredient for a successful career in the arts: building a positive, robust mindset.
In part I of TWoA’s interview with Isabella, Isabella talked about life lessons she learned from her favourite ballet teachers. In part II, Isabella shares her thoughts about how to improve current practices in ballet training. Read on to find out about her vision for the future.
No fear of mistakes and injuries!
Looking back on her years of training, Isabella is grateful for the mentorship that shaped her both as a dancer and as a person. But there are also attitudes that she would like to see changed: “I would hope that it is changing already, because obviously I’m older, but I would like to change how young bodies are looked after. And how young students are spoken to. Young students at ballet school are already very mature, because we very much know already what we want. You can speak to them maturely. Especially when I was in this country (England), we were a little bit spoken down to. I think it could be more on a level, more open. Obviously, when someone is younger, you speak to them in a certain way. But there was a lot of fear associated with the teacher when we were younger. And I don’t think that needs to be that way. I don’t think we should be terrified to make a mistake, terrified to be injured. There was a lot of fear around injury. That’s why a lot of us dance in pain because we are so terrified of admitting that we’ve got pain and need to stop or need to take it easier. I would want that to change massively. I think it would lead to a more lasting career, with less trauma behind it, if a dancer can feel very free and open to say: ‘I’ve got pain in my ankle today, I’ve seen a physio, I can’t do jumps for a couple of days, but I’ll be back on Friday.’ And then for the teacher to go: ‘No problem. Of course, we don’t want you dancing in pain.’ But there’s a real lack of that sort of relationship and that needs to change.’
The Student’s Perspective: Advantages of Private Coaching
Isabella is giving a lot of private coaching, but especially for students who are already enrolled in a professional ballet school, the decision to opt for additional private coaching can be complex: “From a student’s perspective, you get that close one-to-one attention that you just don’t get in schools. In highly competitive schools like the Royal Ballet School, from year 7 to 9, so from age 11 to 13, it’s very stressful because at 13, they cut a lot of people from the school. Students might feel: ‘They are telling me to fix my turn out, they are telling me to fix my pirouettes, my alignment, but I am not actually being told exactly how. They are just expecting it to improve, I don’t know whether it will improve enough. I have no idea. I’m getting no other opinion on me or my dancing. Who knows what will happen, maybe I will be asked to leave, and my heart will be broken.’ People are destroyed when they get asked to leave these schools. And so, they seek outside help because they want to stay in that environment, they don’t want to get assessed out, or be asked to leave, and they also want a second opinion. I will say: that’s what I did. Because I didn’t fully trust that I would get all the attention I needed. It is not necessarily to the fault of that specific teacher. It’s very difficult to focus on fifteen girls all at once all the time. Things can slip, and then people don’t reach their fullest potential sometimes. Especially if they are the type of student like myself who needed work and then they risk being left behind.”
The Student’s Perspective: Downsides to Private Coaching
But established schools often don’t like their students to look for help elsewhere: “They want to take ownership of that student and take ownership of the technique they are learning. They don’t like it if you go elsewhere. All the students who take private lessons are doing that in secret. None of the schools know that they are doing that, but a lot of students do: they just wouldn’t tell them.” For students who are not yet at a professional school, private coaching can help them achieve their goal of getting into a professional school. But Isabella believes it is very hard to coach someone privately to the point of becoming a professional: “You are not getting all those other classes you need, like character dance, pas de deux, all this kind of stuff. So, I’d say private lessons are always going to be either a way to getting into somewhere, or an addition. But the goal should always be to be within a good institution. But I would say the cons within the institution is that that can’t offer you everything either. That’s why a lot of people end up doing both. It's hard though because you end up not really having any time off because on a Sunday, I wouldn’t be home, I’d be having my private lesson. And then the whole week begins again.”
‘Ballet with Isabella’
The aim of Isabella’s website “Ballet with Isabella” is to help students achieve their full potential: “My website is a membership platform. There are several tiers to it. We offer classes online of all levels, from beginner to professional: ballet classes, stretch classes, workouts. And then we offer something really special: in-depth courses - courses to improve your turnout, your extensions, your arabesque, your pirouettes. You are taken through several lessons worth. The other top tier also offers a strategic plan and strategy course with me, so you have a real relationship and mentoring relationship with me as well as a plan of action to help you get closer towards your goals. For me, the website is a labour of love to share with the world everything I discovered over the years of training, both through my teachers but also through serious injury. It’s a way of me helping everyone out there achieve what they want to achieve because I’ve literally done it all myself.” All classes are on demand, but there are also weekly live classes. Isabella meets with members of the mentoring plan once per month to go over their personal plan and to answer questions, but students are free to send her practice clips throughout the month for feedback.
‘Ballet with Isabella’ and the Covid Pandemic
‘Ballet with Isabella’ is a direct outcome of the Covid lockdowns. Before the pandemic, Isabella was coaching and teaching some open classes, but she wasn’t completely fulfilled and still trying to figure out what was missing: “Then Covid happened, and we were locked inside. I was living with my boyfriend and his flatmate at the time, they are both musicians. Tiny flat. And I was like, ok, I need to do something, because I definitely just can’t sit here. I immediately went on Zoom. And I started teaching classes online from their kitchen, holding on to the counter, and I was like: ‘Right. We are going to do class.’ I had maybe thirty women, a couple of men. Every morning, nine a.m. sharp, we would do class. Every day. We started with a half an hour workout, and then we’d do an hour of ballet class. As best as we could in the little space. And that really just took off. It gave me purpose throughout this lockdown. It gave the people at home purpose to get up. And that started to trigger that feeling of ‘I am really helping people here.’” Initially, all her students were students from her open class, but Isabella started to do '“free Fridays” on Instagram: “I would just put the Zoom link out and say: ‘Ok everyone, join for free class, just join me.’ Every Friday I had more people. People would come back for the rest of the classes that weren’t on Friday. I fell in love with the idea of helping others. We started and I had no idea you could do ballet online. And then I started coaching online. And then my schedule became so busy, I was literally on my laptop from dawn to dusk. And my boyfriend and his flatmate were slightly concerned. They were like: ‘Are you going to come out of that room anytime soon?’ I hadn’t worked out how to use headphones with Zoom and share the sound at this point, so it was like G-minor ALL day, driving them slightly crazy. The plinkety plonkety music. I was enjoying it. Then my boyfriend gave me the idea, because he knew musicians who had done this: ‘Why don’t you start a website that has classes and courses on it to help more people?’ I built this website with help from some developers, then launched it during the lockdown. Initially, I got several members, was really excited, but everything takes so much time, so much effort, relentless amounts of work. Because I hadn’t fully admitted to myself that this is what I was doing, it was quite hard to really gain momentum for a long time. I was learning a lot about business: in order to get stuff back you have to put a lot in. I started to get great feedback, the feedback that it was really helping people. A lot of young girls were messaging me: ‘You are so inspiring, I really want to get into this school, can you help me with this? Can you help me with my turnout?’ And then I’d say: ‘Right, I’d better plan a turnout course then. I would make these courses and I say: ‘Right, there you go! Off you go! Do that!’ I started to really fall in love with helping people and that’s when I started my podcast as well.’
The Podcast: ‘A Dancer’s Mindset’
Isabella’s approach to helping is holistic: she is not just concerned about her students’ bodies, but also about their minds. She puts a lot of emphasis on personal growth and developing a positive mindset. She has even been called a dance therapist: “It’s all from personal experience. I’m someone who’s worked really hard, but I also suffered from crippling anxiety and self-doubt. That was something that I know I’m not alone in. I know there are so many people out there suffering with that, especially dancers because we are so self-critical. We look in the mirror every day, and we are always trying to be better and the whole idea of getting better is constantly saying: ‘Oh, that’s not good enough.’ But that can affect your self-esteem. I thought, what if I just started a podcast and just started speaking into the microphone to share what I think. Now that I’m slightly older - I was thirty this year - I started doing a lot of self-growth work myself and becoming much more aware of my feelings and why I am feeling this way. What I’m learning I want to share with others.” Isabella also interviews famous dancers on her podcast (available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify).
Intense Environments and Mental Support
Isabella’s passion for helping others is deeply rooted in her own experience: “When you are trying to achieve anything of a high standard it requires so much sacrifice, dedication, hard work. I was in the Vaganova, in these companies, I had huge potential, but the thing that held me back a lot was my head, my self-doubt. I wish that on no one. I wished it was easier for young dancers to cope with, because at the time, I didn’t really have anyone to talk to about it. I feel I should have had a psychologist, a sports psychologist, some kind of therapist to talk out these feelings and cope with it better. Because it is very, very difficult to cope on your own in these very intense environments. I did cope, but it could have been a lot more of a positive experience.”
Whatever you goal, body and mind have to work together: “I want to help someone make it all the way in whatever level they are. I have a lot of adults doing ballet, they want to get to an advanced level. But if we are talking vocational students, I want to help them, give them the tools to achieve what they want. And I know that exercise alone is not enough. You need a good head on your shoulders. That’s why I created the podcast as well because I thought if I can help someone all around, then it’s my duty to do that.”
Isabella in class at the Vaganova Academy.
Isabella’s Vision for the Future
What is Isabella’s vision for the future? “I want to be known as the person you can go to, trust and know that the results will come. My dream is to help as many students as possible. I see my platform building to having thousands of members I’m helping worldwide, I see myself travelling the world, giving intensives and giving also mindset talks and little workshops about it. I would love to be able to one day do a ‘Ballet with Isabella’ world tour, going from country to country, giving master classes with a nice team. I see myself as the approachable coach, or the approachable ballet dancer. Especially in the podcast, I’m literally with you in your lounge. You hear it how it is, I am here almost as a friend, to help you get where you want to be.”
Feed your passion!
TWoA hopes to inspire young artists by offering a broad perspective on the arts. At the end of our interview, TWoA asked Isabella about the importance of developing artistry within a wider cultural context. Her response was a passionate call for feeding your passion. Without artistry, dance becomes a sport, but in order to grow as an artist, you need to stimulate your mind and soul: “When I went to Russia, they always said: ‘What are you going to do on your day off, are you going to the museum? Are you going to go and look at stuff? And I’d be like: ‘Ahhh – I was going to sleep, but yes!’ They paid huge emphasis on history, books, going to the theatre and knowing a lot about ballet and its history. My teachers would say: where is this ballet from? Do you know the music? With my students, with this generation, this is hugely lacking, especially with the whole competition culture. When they are learning a variation, they learn the variation, and I am shocked. I always ask: ‘Do you know where this variation is from?’ And they go: ‘Yes, it’s Sleeping Beauty.’ And I go: ‘OK, what section of Sleeping Beauty? Exactly what’s happening in the story right now?’ They’ve got no idea. And I say: ‘Have you watched the whole ballet? Have you ever watched a whole ballet from the beginning to the end?’ And they say: ‘Oh no, I just watch the good bits.’ That’s terrible! You need to be going to ballets! Go to the theatre, it’s important! If you can’t go to the theatre, there are cinema streams and online. I don’t feel you can be a real professional dancer and not have watched whole ballets and not really understand the story. The fact that that’s actually happening is quite terrifying. How are you supposed to really grow as an artist if you are not really feeding that passion, and feeding it artistically. If all you are focusing on is competition stuff or someone doing a variation, you are only looking at their technique. Then it is just a sport. How do you expect to really develop as an artist? I think that gap between those who are feeding that and those who are not is just going to get greater and greater. And those people will become even better and the gap between the two will just get more obvious, as this generation gets more and more absorbed on superficial things.”
So – go and feed your passion! Remember to subscribe to our newsletter or to follow us on Instagram @teenworldarts
You might also enjoy: Isabella McGuire Mayes: Life Lessons from Great Teachers