After the Applause Stops: Who Are You When You No Longer Do What You’ve Been Doing for Years?

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Who are you when you no longer do what you’ve been doing for years?

It is the big question facing anyone who retires. It is something any retiree can relate to, and any retiree could have a story here. However, I’m going to limit my stories to those of ballet dancers–top ballet dancers–because their situation is the most extreme, I think. They start younger, grow up in a rarified atmosphere, mostly see only each other, and become more and more removed from ordinary life. They also succeed, which not all dancers do, and this leaves them open to a rare experience–the feeling of complete power and control over a situation, as in a performance when everything just happens to click.

I had such an experience once. I still remember it. It occurred while I was dancing Tchaikovsky’s grand pas de deux from the Nutcracker. This pas de deux is indeed grand. When the orchestra is playing full out and you’re dancing full out, feeling every muscle in your body doing exactly as you wish, you and your partner are responding to each other, and the audience is responding to the two of you–it is a heady experience. There aren’t too many like it. So when it’s time to retire, what is it like to give this up?