I found my way back into life as a full-time professional ballet dancer last fall, in late September of 2023, which somehow seems both like it was last week and also like it was forever ago.

I enjoyed SPDC’s contemporary choreography, but I did miss ballet intensely, and it was good to be able to return to my first love.

It was also scary. NEBT is a new company, and I’m the only guy who’s there full-time, so I was pretty much immediately catapulted into the principal dancer category. I don’t know if I said this at the time, but I was definitely afraid of falling short.

In the ensuing months, though, I’ve begun to find my feet both as a dancer and as a senior company member.

My AD has paired me up with two fantastic partners, and we’ve done some pretty challenging stuff together. O and I did some staggeringly hard stuff in “Silver” and worked really hard on getting Act II of Midsummer nailed down and smoothed out (Act I, by comparison, was a walk in the enchanted fores—I mean, in the park).

M and I have delved deeper and deeper into the nuance and tenderness of “Noir.” The relationships that have come out of that work mean a great deal to me.

I’ve also had both opportunity and guidance to really begin tuning up steps that are hard for me.

I love having room to learn as a ballet dancer in a place where nobody yells at me for still needing to learn. That might be the strongest lesson NEBT has offered: that ballet doesn’t need to feel like a pressure cooker; that artists flourish when artistic rigor is detached from the traditional environment of fear.

At the same time, I still love my teaching job. I love how much the kids enjoy learning the choreography I’m creating for them, and seeing that choreography come together. I love watching them master new skills. More than anything, I love seeing their love of dance grow stronger and deeper. I love just watching them be themselves.

It occurred to me tonight, while I was looking through my camera reel, that I’ve reached a point in my life that I never expected to reach.

I never expected to find a career that I love, and that feeds my soul, and yet at this point I’m lucky enough to have two—dancing and teaching—in which I’m learning and growing.

I’m happy have a bit of a break coming down the pike this summer, but I’m also very much looking forward to next season.

Back when I began this journey—back when I was still in school and just returning to class—I didn’t know what it looked like to live life as a professional dancer, but I felt called by the dance and by the structure of the dance.

I didn’t know that my working life as a danseur would help me figure out how to be a grown-up me in the world, but I do feel like that’s exactly what’s happening.

And I never imagined that this life would grant me the ineffable gift of feeling like I belong somewhere in the way that I feel I belong at NEBT: that is, I feel accepted and valued as a member of this small community of dancers in a way I’ve never quite experienced before.

I have been hesitant, in my life, to picture staying in touch with almost anyone for very long—but the thought of remaining connected to the people I know at NEBT is a lovely thought.

I know we can’t predict the future, and that all of this lies beyond our control—but at the same time, it’s nice to think about remaining part of this tapestry that Ms. Rachael and all of our mutual love of ballet has woven.

I’m not sure what else to say.

This first season has been good. Hard at times—I definitely experienced an enormous crisis of faith in myself early in the rehearsal process for Midsummer—but good. I’m leaving it with far greater confidence in my ability to learn and to live up to the brief I’ve been handed than I had when I arrived.

My ballet goals this summer are to keep improving my partnering skills, to polish my pirouettes, to nail down double saut de basque, and to upgrade my grand pirouettes from “okay” to “good” on the left and from “WTF” to “okay” on the right.

That should be plenty to keep me busy until fall.