Meet The Artist: Sarah Simon Wolff
A native of northern Michigan, Sarah studied at Dance Arts Academy before leaving home at the age of 13 to attend Canada’s National Ballet School. Upon graduating in 2006 she guested with The Dutch National Ballet before joining The National Ballet of Canada’s YOUdance apprentice program, the precursor to dancing as a member of NBOC through 2015. Proceeding her tenure with NBOC she pursued freelance and commercial work in NYC, which led to season dancing with BalletMet. Sarah has since pursued a freelance performance career alongside launching her teaching career as director of the ballet program for Company Dance Traverse under the directorship of Betsy Carr & Sue Buck. She has guested with New York Dance Project, Grand Rapids Ballet, Fenton Ballet Theater and more and has performed lead roles with The National Ballet of Canada, Ballet Minnesota, BalletMet, and New York Dance Project in addition to exploring commercial work in Toronto, MI, & NYC. Sarah was awarded The Cecchetti Council of America Ballet Award, The NYCDA Ballet Scholarship, NBS’ Peter Dwyer Award of Excellence, and NBOC’s Patrons’ Council Award of Merit. Sarah has had the privilege of training with Patrick Hinson, Deborah Hess, Raymond Smith, Lindsay Fischer, Nancy Bielski, Sorella Englund, Sergui Stephanschi, & Leslie Browne, and has worked with Alexei Ratmanski, Roberto Alonso, Ted Branson, Christopher Wheeldon, Jorma Elo, and Jiri Kylian to name a few. She’s a passionate teacher, mentor and choreographer with original works placing first in YAGP & NYCDA competitions. She is a yoga nidra meditation teacher and loves integrating mindfulness and recovery into her classical ballet coaching. Sarah now lives in NYC and is a rehearsal director for New York Dance Project and a faculty member at Broadway Dance Center. She continues to conduct private lessons, teach mindfulness, choreograph, and freelance perform while continuing her studies in meditation, acting, music, and dance.
Q&A With Sarah
When did you start dancing, and how did you initially get involved in danced?
I was 6 years old when I began after watching my sibling dance at Dance Arts Academy.
Where did you grow up, and where do you live now?
I grew up in.... wait for it... Traverse City! But then I moved to Toronto when I was 13 to study at Canada's National Ballet School. Now I live in NYC!
What's your favorite part about being a professional dancer?
The poverty and the injuries. Just kidding! Dancing is my lifeblood. It feels like my native language for relating to the world and it is conduit for me to find balance and feel at ease.
What companies and/or productions have you danced in?
I danced with The National Ballet of Canada for many years, BalletMet for a flash in the pan, and have guested with many other companies, like Dutch National Ballet and Grand Rapids Ballet. I've done many a production.... but my favorite thing to do is dance outside, "en plein air!"
What's something people may not know about being a professional dancer?
The culture we exist in has a certain effect on you. This is a global phenomenon. It makes one, how do you say in English... ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS. Between the high demands of the life style, the intensity and rigor of the work, the brutally honest feedback we receive with grace, the constant exhaustion, the humanness of the nature of the work, and the reality of negotiating pain, the dancer comes out the other side with a pretty darn good sense of humor. Some might call it a survival mechanism. All that said, I wouldn't trade this lifestyle for the world, and I don't think I know any dancers who would. I love how hard I still laugh with all my friends from ballet school that I met and went through intense training with over 20 years ago. We just get each other and it's easeful to connect quickly with other dancers you don't even know. Experiencing the fruits of this work is a pretty spectacular breed of gratification. Performing is the closest thing to feeling immortal. For me, it is a spiritual outlet.
Do you have a favorite role or dance work to perform?
I love it all for different reasons. Ok, I don't love everything, but I'm partial to contemporary ballet. I like to be a ballerina AND I like to break some rules.
Tell us about an onstage experience you will never forget?
When The National Ballet of Canada was on tour at Jacob's Pillow and we were performing Giselle outdoors. It was at least a million degrees celcius out and I was dancing a corps de ballet role of a "wili," which is a jilted bride who becomes a ghost in act II in solidarity with Giselle. Well, the corps has to stand on the side for FOREVER AND A DAY while Giselle and Albrecht are mournfully dancing together, commiserating over how much he wishes he hadn't caused her to die because he forgot to mention to her in Act I that he was engaged to another woman (Giselle has a heart condition and then dances herself to death when she finds out... ) WELL. I was standing on the side in a perfect line with the other many Wilis, and the girl behind me, Krista, whispers loudly "Sarah, you have a HUGE spider on your hip!" (We were outside, essentially posting up in a forest.) Well, in the corps de ballet even your eyeballs have a set direction to look in and the head angle has to be just so. Thus, I couldn't lower my gaze to check the validity of her claim. So I just stood there, perhaps a bit like Giselle in her final moments, thinking, I'd rather die of a venomous spider bite (if it could pierce through the many layers of tulle on my romantic tutu) than get reprimanded for moving my head. So I danced the rest of the ballet including the fervent, physical jumping section at the end, and then finally when the curtain came down I was able to look. Sure enough, my eight legged corps de ballet buddy was pretty enormous (NOT HUGE per se) and clung on for dear life during all those jumps and runs. I think I was able to gently whisk her away with a branch, (a forest story, true to form! Method acting!) and laugh it off in the end.
Any funny onstage stories?
See above. Oh, laugh attacks onstage are a real thing. Luckily the orchestra pit drowns out most of the noise, but when you start to lose it on stage there's no turning back... You can't even begin to imagine some of the jokes that are made on and offstage. :)
Have you been to Northern Michigan before? What are you most looking forward to this summer as part of the Traverse City Dance Project?
Born at Munson! Looking forward to breathing fresh air after my first year as a NYC resident. And can't wait explore new choreographic works and bond with the TCDP family. Really excited for all of it. Eat cherries, yada yada...
