LA Times: How the Align Method has redefined classical ballet for Angelenos like me

Susan Vishmid, a professional dancer who Cornell refers to as his “secret weapon” because of her attention to detail and emphasis on flawless technique, teaches beginner, intermediate and pointe classes on Tuesday nights at the Pico location. She studied at several acclaimed companies like Pacific Northwest Ballet and San Francisco Ballet, going on to dance professionally for a number of years at the Pennsylvania Ballet. She is currently the artistic director and choreographer of the L.A.-based dance company Freaks With Lines, whose mission is “to produce work that subverts traditional norms often associated with the ballet world.” They are holding a gala performance in Pasadena on Saturday.

“I enjoy teaching adults because they’re serious about learning,” Vishmid tells me. “Align focusing on adult ballet is great because people feel intimidated going to places like Westside Ballet, which is an institution and my home studio. But everybody’s capable of learning ballet technique, I truly believe that. And why not? There’s a momentum, a cadence to class. It’s procedural and logical. There are rules. Nobody becomes an artist before they become a technician, and proper technique is the greatest equalizer.”

Thanks to the influx of social media, the heightened visibility of icons like Misty Copeland, and celebrities like Chris Pine who proudly practice ballet and praise its benefits, the field is more welcoming than ever. But ballet is historically unwelcoming, especially in terms of race, age and physique. Gelsey Kirkland, who was invited by messianic choreographer George Balanchine to join the New York City Ballet in 1968 at 15, quickly joined the annals of ballet royalty, partnering with — both on and off the dance floor — the famed Mikhail Baryshnikov. But her meteoric rise ravaged her body and mind.

“You were pushed to the limits in terms of what your body can take,” she told Diane Sawyer in 1986 during a revealing “60 Minutes” interview. In the same interview, she says that Balanchine emphasized the aesthetic importance of seeing bones through one’s skin. While she dazzled in the spotlight, the pressures of the industry hurled her into an abyss of cocaine addiction, anorexia and bulimia, she later said. At one point she weighed only 80 pounds. Disordered and restrictive eating, as well as the rail-thin ballerina archetype, are pervasive facets of ballet lore, as depicted in films such as “Center Stage,” “Black Swan” and “Dying to Dance.”

“Insecurity is a major impediment to almost anyone stepping into the ballet studio,” Cornell says. “It’s an intimidating environment because there are all these preconceived notions. The identity of a ballerina is such an unattainable ethereal concept.”

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