Trying Rusty Ballet: Jess Grippo

The Dareful Project

Jess Grippo is a force of nature: author, a TEDx speaker and founder of Dance Again, a New York City dance studio that offers a welcoming space for rusty dancers and newbies alike. One of her most popular offerings is Rusty Ballet where, she says, “creaky joints and cranky people are welcome.” We talk about how she came up with the idea of Rusty Ballet, why rekindling creativity saves us and the one thing we can all do now to start (or start again) dancing.

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Transcript:

Debra Hotaling (00:04):

Hello and welcome to the Dareful Project. I'm Debra Hotaling. Jess Grippo is a lot of things. She's an entrepreneur, a TEDx speaker, a dancer and founder of Dance Again, a New York City and online dance space that offers dance classes for rusty dancers and newbies. In fact, she offers classes called Rusty Ballet, where “creaky joints and cranky people are welcome.” Jess, welcome!

Jess Grippo (00:38):

Thank you so much, Debra. Thanks for having me on.

Debra (00:41):

So ground us on Dance Again. Where did that start?

Jess (00:47):

Sure. Well, it started with my own personal journey back into dance after having quit when I was about 19 years old. I was very serious about ballet when I was younger, but decided to go to regular college and study and do other things through my twenties. And I found myself in my late twenties with that inner dancer calling to me being like, don't forget about me. But yet I personally was way too intimidated to just step foot into a random dance class. I lived in New York City. A lot of the classes, even if they're labeled as a beginner class, they just seem fast and advanced and just, I was not in practice at the time. And so for me at the time, I just was like, well, I'm going to figure out my own way to do this. And it started out with dancing alone in my room a lot and kind of making quirky dance videos. This was way before TikTok existed, and I just started to find my own expression and my own movement through dance. And as time went on, I was like, all right, well, I think I've nailed the alone part of dancing, so let me see if other people want to join.

Jess (02:02):

And I started to kind of put word out there, and that was the origins of Dance Again. And the intention was that while it's really easy to find at least New York, LA, the major cities, you can probably find a professional-ish adult dance class in other places. Maybe you can't even find that. You can probably find a Zumba class or something, dance cardio based. But it seems like the cardio workout focused dance classes are the more accessible things. But I was really, I didn't want to just go in and work out and sweat. I wanted to feel like a dancer again. I wanted to learn choreography and express myself and all those things. And so that was really the intention of filling in that gap of let's create a class and a studio eventually that was that middle ground. That was something where could feel like a dancer again, have a class that wasn't so technical or fast paced that they felt like, ah, I don't know how to keep up, but also not just a cardio class. And that was the birth of Dance Again. And here we are many years later.

Debra (03:21):

Love that so much. You were speaking to me because I took dance, like parks and rec dance when I was little and just loved love, loved it. And then in college I took ballet and jazz, and I loved it. Super passionate, but not great. I was a grownup person, but it was still, you were learning choreography, you were learning the correct technique. And so one year my wonderful husband gave me ballet slippers. I'm like, I'm going to go back and take a ballet class. So I called this local ballet studio, and they're like, oh yes, did you ever take classes? You should come. Okay, Jess. I got there and everyone was in the biz and just keeping in shape before their next dance video. I was so out of everybody's league that I just was like that five-year-old kid just twirling around in the corner when everybody else was doing stuff. It was so awful that it was actually really fun and hilarious. But I wish I would've known you then.

Jess (04:30):

Yeah, I wish you did too. And so wait, did you ever go back or did you take that class and you were like, I don't know.

Debra (04:36):

No, that was it. That was it. So now I sort of satisfy myself with taking Zuma classes at the gym and stuff like that. So it feels like there's a big need. So tell me who shows up for your classes?

Jess (04:52):

We have a range of people I put on the website for rusty dancers and newbies who are maybe always had the dream to dance or lightly dance in the past, but are wanting to really start as an adult. And rusty dancers, meaning those who did dance actively, not necessarily professionally, but just took classes all through high school or maybe even into college. But then when adulting gets the best of us and we have a lot of other responsibilities and we kind of phase that part of our lives out. Yeah, and I mean it's a pretty wide age range. My oldest student is 72 years old. I think the youngest probably in their twenties. I think there's still even people in their twenties who are freshly out of college but are still missing it, are still craving that space that they can belong in a dance environment and not feel like an outsider.

Debra (05:57):

I want to talk about, you talk about your Aunt Maryanne and what you learned from her about creativity, which comes into what we're talking about here of even if you have an older body or you've been away from an art that it can always welcome you back. Can you talk a little bit more about creativity and what you learned from her?

Jess (06:23):

Yeah. Well, my great aunt Marianne, she was incredible. And she was a visual artist, a painter, which she only started in her forties in her life. The big takeaway that I learned from her was self-preservation. Life is tough. Let's face it. Art can be the thing that grounds you, that saves you, that keeps you connected to something rather than getting swept up and all the things that can happen. And she was an influence on me when I was a teenager, I started to get introduced to her and she was my grandfather's sister and my grandfather was an incredible man as well. He was, after he retired, he worked for Nabisco for a long time in their New Jersey Patterson factory.

Jess (07:34):

And he decided to take up a hobby of taking railroad spikes and turning them into these statues. And the artistic spark was there in our family, but it would come out later. And my aunt was, at this point, she was actively painting and making art. And I met her at a couple of times when she came down to New Jersey from Vermont, and we became pen pals throughout my high school experience and would write each other. And I still have these letters from her that were just as someone young who was pursuing a career in dance at the time. And it was really cool to hear from someone who was like, yeah, wow, your dance is your art and that's valid and that's something that you should and can pursue. Whereas I don't think at least I didn't have a lot of that influence, even though my grandfather, like I said, was making things and doing his thing there. I don't think many people are overtly become an artist, go to college and make a lot of money doing something. So, so her influence was pretty profound on me. And as I got older, me and my mom, my mom's cousin and her daughter, we would take these trips up to Vermont to visit her, and it always just left this mark on my soul and inspired me to keep following whatever weird and wonderful path that I was on.

Debra (09:09):

But your story also brings up how we can have an effect on someone and not even realize it. Her living that way, continuing to be curious about her art that I can tell really affected the way that you now live your life. And I wonder, I'm sure she did it for her own love and because she loved you, but also art can extend beyond our immediate perimeters, right?

Jess (09:36):

Yes, exactly. And I think even talking about self-preservation, and I think there's a stigma around artists in general that it is a selfish, you have to be selfish, you need to dedicate all this time to the art. And it's like while yes, that can be true, it's like you said, the impact that your self-expression is making on other people or the world, that can be huge and it can actually really help other people.

Debra (10:07):

So those of us who sort of dance in the kitchen or we're in the car, going back to a dance class can still be super intimidating. You got to have the right look the right way, at least you feel like you do, and you got to walk in, you got to have a little attitude, and it could be scary. How can someone get started?

Jess (10:35):

Well, what I recommend is what I did way back in the day, which is start alone in your room. Don't put that pressure on yourself right away, especially if you're not familiar yet with what kind of environment you're stepping into. Because with your experience, Debra, you step into the class and you're like, oh my God, I feel like such an outsider here. And then you didn't go back. It's like, that's what we want to avoid. It's like scarring ourselves, but sometimes we can't help it. But I would say depending on your comfort level, and that's why at Dance Again, we offer Dance Alone Together. It's a series that you can do at home where every day there's a different theme. The themes are lined up with my book, and it takes you on a journey of both and getting back in your body and moving.

Jess (11:35):

You can also take classes on Zoom with us, you can access the class library. It's nice to have that option and to be like, okay, yeah, let me get comfortable. Let me start to really feel out what my body is right now, how these movements are fitting in, and what style might I like and what do I want to try and how do I feel as a dancer Now to have time to explore that and then step into a classroom, I think you can feel a lot more confident and it can make it easier. And of course, having a buddy with you is always a good thing if you can rally someone else to join you to take that dance class.

Debra (12:33):

Is there stuff that you need to do if you have an older body and you're coming back just in preparation for that movement?

Jess (12:41):

Yeah, that's a great question. I think you strengthening having practices, and I'm not an expert. I actually brought in other experts on injury prevention who have taught classes with us at dance. Again, in particular Wendy Reinert and Dana De Francesco, and working in a way where you're feeling comfortable. With us, you're not doing triple pirouettes and high kicks and splits on the floor. There's no extra fancy technical moves on purpose because, and all of our teachers know that we're making everything adaptable. If you can't stretch down this far, you're going to do this instead. There's always modifications. Every dancer should be responsible for themselves and their own body. And so things like Pilates strength training are helpful. I had a pretty intense hip injury last year and went to physical therapy and worked with Wendy and did all this stuff to try to rehabilitate myself.

Jess (14:02):

And what I learned was like, okay, before I take a ballet class, which requires turn out in your feet, that's going to affect my hip. So I need to actually do some parallel squats and leg lifts before I take or teach ballet. And it actually really helps me because it repositions my hip, it activates other muscles. So I learned that for myself, unfortunately, based on an injury. But I think that taking it easy is always good. And then in doubt, if you're feeling any aches and pains to consult with someone or to take our injury prevention class and to just learn some techniques that are going to help you ease into it and warm up before class, what has

Debra (14:47):

What’s been the reception of Rusty Ballet?

Jess (15:00):

I would love to expand to LA for sure. I’m working on ways to do that. Our classes are filling up. Whatever we're doing seems to be working. I started a teacher training. So the idea is that I am working on people who feel called to this mission and would love to not only dance again, but teach Dance Again and create these kinds of spaces. You can work with me in a training and offer your own classes, similar to how Zumba works. So part of what I do too, outside of teaching and running the studio is guiding other people into their own teaching and then also the business and creative side of how to get that up and running in different places.

Debra (15:55):

That is super, super cool. You talked about your great aunt Maryanne, and I take from you that your family is really important to you. You have another video that you shared in your TEDx about your dad. Can you talk with us about that video?

Jess (16:30):

Yeah, sure. At the time, my dad suffered a stroke at a very young age. He was 55. It caused him to be disabled, physically, mentally, and there was a time where he was just in and out of nursing homes. He broke his hip twice. It was a very intense, condensed time of a lot of just hospital nursing homes, that kind of thing. I'm the only child. I was there a lot helping my mom out with my dad. And we were at this nursing home and it was a rough patch where something emotionally was going on where he was like, get me out. He was screaming, he wanted to get out of this nursing home. He was just not having it. And I was the only one there with him. And I was like, all right, let's go for a walk.

Jess (17:21):

And he was in the wheelchair and I was just wheeling around this nursing home trying to find something to do, and we found an art room first and did a little bit of art. And then I found this, the big dining room had a CD player, and I was like, let's play a song here, dad, take my camera. And I was like, I'm going to make a dance video. That was back when I was pretty actively making dance videos wherever I could. They had a Swan Lake cd, we put it in. Swan Lake was the first dance that I did when I was 11 years old at my studio in New Jersey. It was very sentimental.

Jess (17:59):

So yeah, part of what I show in the video is the video that we made together with him taking my phone and filming the dance that I was doing with his, I love that video, his commentary of like, you go girl. And he became a director, a videographer. He was involved in the process in the ways that he could and it shifted his mood and it made the whole evening so much easier.

Debra (18:40):

No, it is an amazing moment in so many ways that it's first of all, visually raw. It's clearly in a nursing home you can see that it's the dining room and you're dancing around the empty tables. But what I love and what's lovely and heartbreaking is your dad talking behind the camera because it's like he finds his voice watching you and having that moment of creating this video with you. And it is absolutely extraordinary. And you talk about the power of art, what that meant for him to make something again, to have some control, to be able to create.

Jess (19:22):

Yeah. Yeah. It's huge. Something so small can be so profound,

Debra (19:30):

And I think that that's probably what you find every day in small ways with your own studio.

Jess (19:36):

Yeah, absolutely. I think there's like every day when you're, that's the thing too with bigger dance classes is you don't even know who is stepping into your class and what they're going through in their life. But you can feel the energy shift and you can feel the joy that comes through in the expression and all that. And there's this one story that stands out to me. I had a student, this was many years ago, and she was part of this longer program I did at the time, and she didn't really talk much in class. She kind of kept to herself, but she was there every week and seemed to enjoy it. And when I did the feedback forms at the end, one of the things she wrote was that she was like, my husband's been very ill. It's been really hard as a caretaker being so young. She was probably in her early thirties and she was like, this dance class has been so healing to me, just having a space to come and move my body. And I would've never known. I really would've never known. But yeah, I think that's the power of dance and of creating, of expressing, of being able to do that wherever you are.

Debra (21:04):

And it's easy to forget about our bodies. Maybe not you because you're a dancer, but if you've got your job that you go do every day and you got the brain going and doing all that stuff, and it's easy to forget that you need to be moving and you can feel that way too.

Jess (21:21):

Yeah, it's easy to forget, even as a trained dancer, I think sometimes even more so because with dance training comes this very disciplined way of controlling what your body's doing. So it's like, yes, there's more of a desire to move, but there's also more of an ability to tame my body in a way. All those ballet training years where it's almost like with that kind of dance when I was so serious and so technical, I was a robot at the time, being so in my head, it's easy to carry that over and get stuck in my head too. So I have to constantly remind myself and create spaces and structures where I'm regularly getting in my body in different ways.

Debra (22:18):

So what is the one step that we could take on today? And I mean lazy, tiny, small step that wouldn't feel like turning our life upside down where we could start nudging ourselves into dance or to a creative adventure.

Jess (22:39):

Okay, so I have this, I don't know what to call it, a technique or a step or a thing. You could do a thingy. I got a thingy, I call it the Dance Shuffle or the Dance Shuffle solution. And all you do is you take whatever music source you have, don't overthink it, iTunes, Spotify, whatever. Open up your full library. You're going to hit shuffle and you're going to commit to dancing to whatever song comes on first. Maybe if you have more time, the first three songs, that'll be maybe 10 minutes. But if it's the smallest step you could take, and it's one song, let the song come on and be surprised by what song it is. And maybe there's even something in the lyrics that speaks to you, but give yourself that song to commit to. I'm going to move my body to the song. Don't even have to call it dancing, but see what it evokes in you. And it can start to open up your body and your movement, but also that mystery of like, oh, what song is it going to be? Right? Which I think the mystery and the magic is so much a part of the creative process too.

Debra (23:47):

I love that. As you were saying that, I was thinking, we don't get enough surprise in our life. Not good surprise, not surprise, surprise. But that’s what you’re describing: I have no idea what's going to happen next, but I'm in.

Jess (24:00):

Yeah.

Debra (24:02):

So if we're in the New York area, we will find you because you have your studio and we will make sure that all of the links are there and folks can sign up for classes, not just ballet either, right? You have other kinds of classes?

Jess (24:19):

Yes, we have other classes. We have have an amazing hip hop teacher doing some hip hop. We have contemporary-ish, I call it contemporary-ish because contemporary is very, I don't know, open to interpret interpretation as is modern, but we do our own flair of a learning choreography in that style. More styles might be added, but those are the three right now that we focus on.

Debra (24:48):

And if we're not in the New York area, you have online classes. Describe what we might see there.

Jess (24:54):

So as of now, we we're streaming most if not all of our live classes, so you can sign up on Zoom and take class with us live. And then we also have the Dance Again digital studio, which you can join. And we have an archive of class recordings, so you can, on your own time, take any class that's in there. And not only classes, there's things like injury prevention, like I mentioned. There's more creativity focused courses that guide you on more of a getting in touch with your own creative self, not just dance moves. And there’s the 13 Day Dance Alone together series that you can just kind of go through daily on your own time.

Debra (25:48):

I love this. And you have a book, right?

Jess (25:51):

I do.

Debra (25:54):

What's that about?

Jess (25:56):

It's called Dance With this Book, and the subtitle is Start a Revolution with Your Body Alone in Your Room. And really it tracks some personal stories just for inspiration around how I got back into it, starting alone in my room, but it turns it back to you. The reader with every chapter ends with a prompt to get you moving in your own way. And again, you can bring that to life with that 13 day digital series as well. That's all kind of in theme with the book. So yeah, get us moving.

Debra (26:35):

That is a lot. And okay, we're ready to do this. I think so everybody, we're going to have links for all of her stuff. Please take one of her classes and report back. It sounds amazing and I want to hear about everything that goes on. And Jess best wishes, please expand. I'm ready for you out here.

Jess (26:56):

Okay, definitely. I would love that.

Debra (26:58):

Thanks again.

Jess (27:00):

Yeah, thank you for having me. This is great.

Debra (27:02):

Thanks for listening to the Dareful Project. Please follow, like and leave a review. It really helps. We're on all your favorite platforms, Spotify, apple Podcasts, Google Podcast, iHeartRadio, Audible. Tune in Amazon Music, Stitcher, SoundCloud, and YouTube. And to connect, you can email me at [e-mail]. That's Debra, D-E-B-R-A at Dareful one. That's with the number one.com. Thanks for listening.