To excel as a ballerina, Skylar Lippincott, 17, of Thermopolis, Wyoming said you must learn to ignore the pain and push yourself beyond your limits.
“It's a big misconception that ballet is easy,” Lippincott said. “It looks easy but it's so complex because you have to be paying attention to what your body is doing and counting your music at the same time.”
In the Cowboy State when most female athletes are in rodeo or pursuing volleyball and track, Lippincott said that being a ballerina requires nerves of steel and should not be discounted since it is a tough sport.
“A lot of people don't know how difficult it is on your body,” Lippincott said. “It's definitely a full-time commitment that you have to dedicate your entire life to.”
Athletic Competition
When Lippincott decided in her junior year of high school that she was going to get serious about ballet and make dance her life, she had to put together an audition tape and send it around to various summer intensive programs.
The resulting 10-minute video featured techniques not known to the general public such as Barre Work; Pliés, Tendu, Rond De Jambe, Fondu, and Grand Battement.
After all her hard work, Lippincott was crushed when she failed to get into her school of choice, the Oklahoma School of Dance. Instead of quitting, her mom encouraged her to keep trying and more no’s rolled in. The competition was tough, and, in the end, Lippincott was accepted into not one, but two dance programs, Ballet Chicago and a school in Anaheim, California.
She chose the school in Illinois since it was rated as one of the top 10 in the nation.
Once she was accepted, the hard work intensified. Lippincott’s instructor, Tess Williams, put together a workout plan that included private lessons, strength training at the gym and constant training. Lippincott attended an intensive in Cody that prepared her both physically and mentally for the challenges of working with other serious ballerinas.
When Lippincott attended the Chicago school over the summer, she was pushed even harder than ever as an official pre-professional ballerina.
“It was hell,” Lippincott said. “It was so much work, and I loved it.”
The dancers would practice from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. six days a week over a five-week period.
For Lippincott, a student used to the relative quiet of Wyoming, it was hard to sleep which added to the intensity of the program. Chicago with its sirens and trains kept her up at night, tossing and turning, as she tried to prepare for the next day of dance.
“There's a lot of it has blurred in my brain,” Lippincott said. “My body was fatigued, and I had to learn really intricate combinations I had never done before.”
All the hard work paid off. Towards the end of the five weeks, Lippincott was pulled out of class and given a special invitation to train at the school year-round. Elated, she now intends to spend the last semester of her senior year at the school and learn from some of the best teachers in the nation.
This moment nearly didn’t happen due to a fateful decision Lippincott had made as a very young teenager.
Fateful Choices
Lippincott found out the hard way if you stop training, it will affect you.
She had excelled in ballet from the moment she had started dancing. Dance called to Lippincott since she was 6. While she didn’t like jazz or the other dance forms, there was something about ballet that she enjoyed.
“I started dancing because I wanted to be like my older sister and friends,” Lippincott said. “Then I realized, I need to do this. I couldn’t not dance.”
Lippincott advanced quickly and by the time she was nine, her ankles were strong enough and her form well-developed that her instructor, Williams, allowed her to advance into pointe shoes from flat shoes years before it was usual to do so for ballet students.
“You are learning a whole different technique, so you have to relearn every step,” Lippincott said. “Honestly, it was so much easier when I was younger, so it didn't feel like a lot of work.”
In her seventh-grade year, most of her friends had left the dance school and Lippincott was left dancing with the younger kids.
“I was also just burnt out,” Lippincott said. “So, I quit though Tess made me finish out the season.”
Lippincott used her extensive dance background and started to excel at volleyball. However, by her junior year, she didn’t feel like that was the sport for her. That was when, after three years, she called Williams and asked if she could start taking classes again.
Williams welcomed her back and Lippincott realized that the break had affected her adversely and she had to work hard to relearn the art of ballet. One bright spot from her gap years was that Lippincott appreciated the dance even more because of how tough it now was.
“I can't take this for granted again because if I truly want to dance, I have to work hard for it,” Lippincott said. “If I’m serious about ballet, this has to be my life.”
With her acceptance into Ballet Chicago, Lippincott plans go online with school for her final semester and move to Chicago to finish out the school year there. She will come back to Thermopolis in May to graduate with her friends.
Lippincott’s next step would be another summer intensive in Chicago in between auditions for colleges with strong ballet programs.
“You have to work hard all the time and learn to ignore pain,” Lippincott said. “Ballet is a lifestyle.”
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
