The last time I entered the school of the American ballet, I was not wearing a dance bag. I was wearing a white coat.
Earlier in the day, my medical school held its white coat ceremony at Alice Tully Hall of Lincoln Center – in the same block where I trained for more than a decade. After the ceremony, I stopped in the studios that I had not seen since my Sab diploma. The light was the same. The floors have grinked in familiar places. But I had changed.
There were hugs of friends and former teachers, a joyful disbelief that I was now at the medical school. We have talked about how more dancers explore academic careers next to professional dance. And for the first time for a long time, I did not feel the disappointment not to continue the ballet professionally longer. Instead, I felt proud. I learned to adopt a new identity as a future doctor – the one who has not erased my past as a dancer, but extended it.
I started the ballet when I was 2 years old, in a mom and me class. At 8 years old, I auditioned for the American ballet school. This year, dance has become my world. I missed birthday parties, vacation and dates without hesitation. I was the child who said: “Sorry, I can't – I have ballet.” And I was proud of it.
Play with the New York City Ballet like a ballet child like THE Nutcracker,, A summer night dreamAnd Cygne lakeI learned to stay concentrated under pressure, to take corrections, to fully engage in every detail. At 16, I underwent an injury that forced me to step back. Aptly at the same time, I started to explore other interests – I always liked to help people and, when I was younger, I even dreamed of becoming a veterinarian. It was like the right time to think of university.
I decided to apply an early decision at Columbia University, partly drawn by its dynamic dance scene. When I said to my high school guidance advisor that it was the only school I applied to, she raised an eyebrow and said: “You need a longer list!” I brought my shoulders and said, “If it doesn't work, I'm just going to apply for more schools during the winter holidays.” (As if it would have been so simple …) But that's what dancers do – we discover what we want, and we find a way to get there. In one way or another, it worked. I was accepted, then deferred for two years to dance professionally with Connecticut ballet And independent in New York.
Once in Columbia, I danced with all the groups I could …Columbia Collaborative BalletColumbia Repertory Ballet, The Columbia University Ballet Ensemble (where I was artistic director) and the Dance Department Columbia / Barnard. Surrounded by peers who also balanced academics with a love for dance, I started to see a new path. I did not give up the ballet; I simply reshape the way it integrates into my life.
During my first year of college, I did not know what I wanted to study. I signed up for a psychology class because the brain intrigued me, in particular in the context of the mental requirements of dance. I loved it. I took more science lessons. Then, I discovered Flexmed, the Icahn medical school of the Mount Sinai early insurance program for second -year students. It was like a perfect fit. I applied, I was accepted and a new dream started to take shape.
Since the start of the medical school, I have found countless ways of staying connected to dance. For example, I co -founded a ballet program for autistic children, created an optional dance and medicine for my classmates focused on the therapeutic advantages of the movement and I started to continue research that brings my medical interests with my ballet history. I learned that the discipline, adaptability and creativity that I have developed in studio appear every day – in patient care, problem solving, and in particular in the operating room.
When I tried to make my first surgery, it was strangely familiar – there was music game, brilliant aerial lights and a team working in synchrony, each person with a specific role. The energy reminded me of a performance. Even the preparation process – rush, dress, glat – has sewing a pair of peak shoes or putting a suit. There was something deeply familiar about this. I felt strangely at home.
I now want to become an orthopedic surgeon – something that, with hindsight, looks like a natural evolution of my ballet training. Years in the studio have taught me to understand the body in motion, to notice subtiles of the distrusts and to recover from an injury with intention. I had spent countless hours working with my own musculoskeletal system – by refanting it, testing its limits and learning how it works under pressure. One of my teachers, Kay Mazzo, told us one day: “You can make the same trend every day and go anywhere – or you can do it with intention and improve.” This state of mind – focal and deliberate effort – now guides the way I study anatomy, suture and approach to medical research. The ballet did not give me a discipline. This gave me an objective through which to understand the human body and a sense of the objective that I can now carry far beyond the studio.
I know of the first hand how difficult it can be to move away from the scene and ask: “What now?” For a while, I felt like I lost a part of myself. But over time, I realized that I did not leave the dance behind. Today, I stay there connected in a way that I did not expect – as a teacher, thanks to research exploring the therapeutic advantages of the movement and by mentoring. My younger self would probably not have imagined that I would one day be held in a white layer at Lincoln Center. But what I have learned since then is that dance is not only preparing for the scene – it prepares you for life.
