My name is Ryan Lee. When I was in the fifth grade, a friend of mine urged me to come join her at her dance studio. I ended up going, and I was put in the Teen Company class even though I was an 11 year old beginner so that I could be with my friend who was much more advanced.
This was a competition studio like you see on the show Dance Moms and being in "Company" means that you take all different types of dance and compete in dance competitions. It was quite the shock to go from never really having danced before to dancing 20 hours a week, but being in an atmosphere were I had no experience but was required to do all sorts of fancy tricks really pushed me hard and I caught up to all of the older girls fairly quickly. I stayed pretty intimidated throughout this experience because I was far younger than all of the other girls (who were as old as 16) but I grew to love it. Lyrical was my favorite class to take, and the greatest irony is that I hated ballet. About a year after I joined, a Russian-style ballet school began to share the space at my studio and we began taking ballet class with them because it was convenient. At first I was terrified of the teacher--who wouldn't be when he'd frequently say, "Ryan, I kill you!" when you do something wrong? But after a little while, I realized something. Ballet is literally impossible, and a high level in competition dance is fairly attainable. Ballet gives me something that competition dance never could - a real goal to strive for. After I got pointe shoes (I was the last one in my class) and danced in The Nutcracker, I became more and more of a ballet dancer than a competition dancer. Soon, I knew that's what I wanted to do. And if I was going to pursue ballet, I needed to go to a real ballet school.
I ended up switching to one ballet school that I'd seen a poster for when I was 13, but it ended up being a toxic environment for me. They made me roll my thighs on a foam roller for 15 minutes everyday because "they were too big" and I developed severe tendinitis in both my ankles to the point where it hurt to walk. Feeling like I could never be a ballerina because I supposedly didn't have the body for it, I became very depressed and quit dancing all together. I shut myself off from everyone and everything for about three months until my mom suggested I work with one of my old teachers at the competition studio just to see how I felt. After working with her for about a month, I wanted to do ballet again.
This new place that I tried ended up changing my life--International Ballet School. It was the polar opposite of the previous school I went to; it was painted various bright colors and everyone was very friendly and it was just an overall welcoming environment. I struggled immensely my first few years there--I was very far behind everyone else and was asked to do things I'd never thought I could do before. I was only in corps de ballet pieces in all of the first shows I did (and girls younger than me were getting soloist parts) but I didn't mind, I loved it. It wasn't until I was about 16 and I started taking private lessons that I started to take off. Working one-on-one with my teacher changed my life. That year I got Arabian in The Nutcracker and for the first time, people noticed me. I competed in Youth America Grand Prix and even though I didn't place in the top 12, I wanted to give it another go the next year. I miraculously ended up getting to dance the part of the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella when the original girl quit--that was huge because I went from the near bottom of the totem pole, to much closer to the top and I was completely elated.
That summer I went to American Ballet Theater's summer intensive in NYC, and though I didn't particularly like it, it was a goal I accomplished that I didn't think I could when I was younger. Life was really picking up for me and I realized for the first time that I could actually do this--I really could become a professional ballet dancer if I worked hard enough. The next year at YAGP I got in the top 12 and received a special invitation from one of the judges to attended the finals in NYC, where I was given a scholarship to the Bolshoi Ballet Academy's summer intensive in New York. I got to be the star in the spring ballet--Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty. I got to go to a summer program in Dresden, Germany.
It really felt like the sky was the limit for me... but through all of this there was something that kept nagging me. My left hip was always in pain--it had been for a while, I just didn't want to crush my fairytale by acknowledging it. As it turned out, I had a pretty severely torn labrum and a congenital condition in which the neck on the head of my femur has extra bone that pinches it. In March of my senior year, I had to get surgery. It was devastating to me to have to sit so much of my last year out and recovery was very difficult. After struggling to regain the ability to walk and do basic everyday things like tying my shoes, I was eventually able to start taking classes and stretching again by the summer. It has been a very rough journey up to now, but I feel that all of the struggles I've been through have made me a better person. This year I'll be in the studio company at Colorado Ballet, and I couldn't be more excited to finally be in the place that my 13 year old self never believed I'd be.