Former New York Times dance critic Alastair Macaulay once characterized Isabella Boylston’s dancing as “champagne on the stage.” Such a metaphor—with its decadent effervescence and reference to a description first used for leading Ballets Russes star Lydia Lopokova—perfectly encapsulates the ballerina’s awe-inspiring performances. A principal with American Ballet Theatre (ABT) in New York since 2014 and part of the corps de ballet in the company since 2007, Boylston has also performed with the Mariinsky Ballet in Saint Petersburg, the Royal Danish Ballet in Copenhagen, and, most recently, with Ballet Concierto de Puerto Rico in San Juan.
CULTURED caught up with the star from her dressing room in Lincoln Center’s Metropolitan Opera House, the day before she took the stage in the ballet version of Romeo and Juliet (she danced Juliet, of course). Next, she will appear with the Hamptons Dance Project at Fireplace Lodge in East Hampton on August 9, 10, and 11 in a program of new commissions and classic works, before returning to Lincoln Center's stage this fall with ABT.
CULTURED: As a dancer, how do you handle the lack of separation between you and your medium? It’s not like a painter who can walk away from their canvas, or a photographer who can put down their camera. Your material is your body.
Isabella Boylston: It can be really difficult to delineate your life. First of all, there's the less glamorous aspect which is working through injuries. If something's bothering me during the day at the studio, like an ankle injury, it'll be bothering me the whole way home. Then, when I do get home, I still have to do a lot of maintenance just to be able to perform at the level that I need to. I've been having a lot of ankle issues lately, so I have to spend a lot of time dunking them in ice buckets throughout the day just to be able to go on pointe.
The other aspect of it is that it can be so immersive when you're working on a role for Swan Lake or Romeo and Juliet. I think about it all the time. I journal about it. I guess that makes me sound like an uber bunhead. The one thing my therapist tells me to do is to really make sure that I actually allow my mind to rest at night. I'll try to totally unplug and watch a movie or hang out with friends and do something that's actually restful and not ballet related, but it's harder during the season. When we're just rehearsing it's much easier for me to have a good work-life balance, but once we get into the theater, it gets really intense.
CULTURED: How do you tell stories through movement and gesture? With ballets like Romeo and Juliet and Swan Lake, you have to convey so much through physical expression alone.
Boylston: I always start the process by doing as much research as I can. With a role like Juliet, I’ll go back to the original text and watch a bunch of movies. I’ve worked with an acting coach as well. It's a combination of drawing from my own life experiences in order to empathize with the character and then using my imagination to try and feel my way into the role. Once I have that, I create words and actions for myself. For example, with Juliet, I'll be like, “Alright, what is my character’s intention in this scene?” Obviously, she's doing a beautiful dance, but what is she thinking or trying to make happen? Then I'll give myself sentences to say in my mind that the character would be saying, and I'll try to turn the sentence into a physical manifestation. It sounds corny to say that you're speaking with your body, but that really is what you're doing. And sometimes, there is such a thing as over analyzing and over planning. Sometimes you need to do less and let the music do the work.
CULTURED: What's the most rewarding part of the work for you?
Boylston: It’s really fulfilling working with other inspiring artists. With Swan Lake, I worked a lot with Susan Jaffe, [artistic director of ABT]; she actually coached me the first time I did that ballet. Right now I'm getting to work with [Italian prima ballerina] Alessandra Ferri on Juliet, which is amazing. In the studio, it can feel very experimental; you are just trying different things and seeing how it makes you feel. One cool thing she told me was that when I face the back, to imagine that I have eyes on my back, like you’re still expressive when you’re facing away. Even though ballet dancers are interpretive artists, within that there's a ton of creation that you can do on your own if you put in the effort. But honestly, nothing compares to performing. It's not always fun, but when I am able to find those performances where I'm totally free and in the moment and one with the music and my partner and the story—that's the most fulfilling thing.
CULTURED: With the increasing commodification of the arts, how do you see the future of dance? It’s not as though you can buy a ballet or a performance. It exists only in the moment.
Boylston: I think dance and ballet will always be sustainable as long as you have kids who want to dance and take ballet—that's just a self-perpetuating cycle. Obviously, funding for the arts in America is severely lacking, so it is important to constantly bring in new audiences and to pack the house as much as you can. I think bringing in more diverse voices and making the art more accessible to everybody is definitely imperative to its survival as well. But ballet will always be relevant because the people doing it—the dancers—are a product of our time. Even if we're doing these historical ballets, we still bring ourselves and our experiences and our perspectives to the stage. At the end of the day, it’s very human. That’s what keeps people coming back.
CULTURED: You have a thriving social media presence and have worked with different brands in an influencer space. It feels very savvy, like you’ve used social media to carve out a business plan that wasn’t before possible for ballet dancers.
Boylston: I've been consciously treating social media as a business for several years now. I realized that it could be a revenue stream, which might sound kind of anti-artistic, but I don’t think I’ve ever sacrificed my artistry or my commitment to my craft to do it. If anything, I've probably sacrificed more of my personal life to run a business. At the end of the day, it’s hopefully bringing in more people to my shows, but it's a lot of work. I have a manager and I actually hired someone—a talented dancer in ABT, Cy Doherty—to edit all my videos and help me run my social media. During the season, I actually delete Instagram, because I need to focus, but Cy helps me and I send him stuff to post. I think it's really important to take breaks from it.
CULTURED: You have also received backlash for being so active on social media, with detractors saying you are somehow tainting the image of the ballerina.
Boylston: I feel like most people have been supportive. If people don't like it, they can just unfollow me—I don’t care. One example was when I did a collaboration with the brand Fleur du Mal, which was a ballet-inspired lingerie collection. People were commenting, “Oh, we're so disappointed to see a ballerina like this, this is so demeaning.” Basically, it was very misogynistic. It’s strange; there are people who only want to see this image of the ballerina as very one-dimensional and girlish. I was once told by someone that I needed to “cultivate my ballerina mystique,” whatever that means. I think it's pretty outdated and I think it's hard because I’ve been doing this profession since I was so young—I've been a professional dancer since I was a teenager—and sometimes that can lead people to infantilize you. Thankfully, my director Susan Jaffe has always been super supportive of all of my pursuits.
CULTURED: Do you see yourself as purposefully redefining representation of ballerinas in this way?
Boylston: I am aware of the fact that a lot of young dancers follow me and I do take that really seriously; I want to be a good role model. I always try to be cognizant of that, but at the same time, I'm just living my life and sharing—I wouldn’t say it’s calculated in any way. I just want to be myself and if people connect with that, that's really touching to me. That transfers to the stage, too. When I go out there I just want to be honest to myself and honest to the audience. It's really cool when you have those shows where you feel such a strong connection with the audience.
I've always been a dreamer and a goal setter, and I never felt like I wanted to have to fit into a box or feel constrained by people's ideas of what I should be or how I should act. There are so many different facets to all of us—as ballerinas, as artists, as dancers, and as people. If anything, that should be celebrated and people should be encouraged to explore and nurture different sides of themselves because at the end of the day that actually makes you a better artist. The more you develop yourself as a well-rounded person, the more that will come across onstage in your artistry.
CULTURED: If you could impart one or two things about ballet that people might not know, what would they be?
Boylston: People are always shocked to learn that we rehearse for up to nine hours a day. I think the other thing again goes back to that stereotype of the uptight dancer; in reality, dancers are hilarious. When we are together, we laugh so much, despite what all the stereotypes and movies about suffering ballerinas would have you believe. I mean, yeah, it’s really hard. I'm not gonna lie about that—it's not like it’s happy and fun all the time. But we have a lot of fun, too.
