Right now, it feels more important than ever to use this platform to broadcast and amplify POC voices—that’s one reason I’ve chosen to republish this Four Questions from a few months back. But it’s also just one of my all-time favorites. I was so thrilled to get the chance to connect with Jordana Daumec, creative tour de force and First Soloist in The National Ballet of Canada. The hour I spent chatting with her about Judaism, work, creativity, and life was a total dream come true for ballet-obsessed, Lincoln Center-dwelling me. Jordana’s just the coolest. She’s danced in dozens upon dozens of ballets in her 17 (!) years at the company, including favorites like Swan Lake, Cinderella, Romeo and Juliet, The Merry Widow, Don Quixote, and Symphony in C. And The Globe and Mail called her “so naturally charismatic that even the small parts she plays come charged with exuberance.” Are you kvelling yet?! I’ll let her take it from here:
Q
What inspired you to become a ballerina, and what does your day-to-day look like now?
A
I was born into a pretty artistic family. Actually, mom always jokes that even while she was pregnant with me, she knew I was going to be a dancer. My parents played music around the house while I was growing up, they danced Salsa together, and my mother was a modern dancer herself—so I couldn’t have asked for a better childhood in terms of my exposure to the art! For hours after school each day, I’d be in the studio with my mom while her company rehearsed, dancing around by myself. Eventually, she began noticing that I was picking up pieces of the actual choreography and pointed out how special that was. But when I suggested that I dive more seriously into ballet classes, she and my dad were both a little bit resistant to it. She knew how hard the life of a dancer could be, after all.
Eventually, they relented, and I guess it just kind of took off from there. I made my way into professional classes, and even though they were hesitant at first, my parents were so, so supportive. Every single day, they’d drive me into New York City for my classes, then later take me all the way back home to Milford, Pennsylvania.
When I was 15, one of my teachers in New York told me about the professional school program up here in Toronto. My parents were devastated about me leaving, but they also knew that this was an amazing opportunity for me. So in the middle of high school, I came up to study at the National Ballet School, which had residences, a full ballet program, and academics. And when I graduated, I was lucky enough to get a job with the company of the National Ballet of Canada.
I’ve now been at the company for 17 years, if you can believe that, and am currently a first soloist. My day-to-day is fairly intense. When we’re just rehearsing—i.e. not performing—we have a Monday through Friday workweek, and we start each day at 10 a.m. with a warm-up class. That goes until 11:30, after which we do rehearsals from 11:30 to 2:30. Our lunch break is from 2:30 to 3:30, and then we continue rehearsing until 6:30. Luckily, we’ve got weekends off to recuperate. Performing is a bit different. We work Tuesday through Sunday, and we have Mondays off. That schedule really does fluctuate depending on what we’re performing, but it’s certainly harder during the performance week. You’ve got Mondays for groceries, bills, and spouse time.
Q
Why does beauty matter—in life or in ballet?
A
Of course, in ballet, beauty matters immensely. It’s not that we’re creating “new beauty” as dancers on a stage, though; rather, it’s that the beauty we reveal on stage is a reflection of what’s already out there. Life is beautiful, our lives are beautiful, so my goal has always been simply to try and live up to that in my own art and to showcase it. It’s this unveiling and revealing in an effort to show that art and life already are beautiful—that we have all these capabilities already within us and that the human body, and people, are really beautiful.
But that still takes work and effort. A lot of ballet revolves around this idea of trying to be that extreme athlete, but doing it in a way that is effortless and graceful. Your audience doesn’t see the hard work behind the scenes, the packed schedule; they just see that effortlessness. That’s what I and others strive for on a daily basis. We repeat things over and over to make the final dance as good and as beautiful as it can be. It may be the same movement you’ve been doing since you were ten years old, but you feel that it’s never “finished.” You’re continually crafting it and changing it to be even better. Even if it’s just how you walk onto stage, how you hold your hands, how you look out at the audience…each and every little thing matters. Each thing reveals a different aspect of humanity and of beauty.
Q
What role did Judaism play in your childhood, and what role does it play now in your dance career?
A
Looking back, Judaism was just such a part of my every day. I just knew I was Jewish, and that permeated everything. We did all the holidays, and we did Shabbat depending on my ballet schedule. I went to Hebrew school, I had a Bat Mitzvah. My mother is Jewish, my grandparents are Holocaust survivors, and my mother and her sister are first generation in the United States, but my father is Catholic, so I was brought up with blended traditions with an emphasis on Judaism. It’s funny; I remember growing up that the Hebrew school I went to was the Chabad Hebrew school, and they couldn’t have been more understanding of me as a person and as a dancer. They were welcoming to us even though I was constantly rehearsing, and even though my father wasn’t Jewish, which I always thought was so beautiful. And it’s how I see the world as well. We’re all just people.
That was a good thing for me to realize and to have reinforced that way, because I’m a mixed kid from a blended family. I learned growing up that Jews come in all different colors and from all different colors; there’s no one look or place or face that defines the Jewish people, and that’s something that I’m always proud of. We’re everywhere. We’re cool like that.
Nowadays, my Judaism continues to play a huge role in my overall thought process and life in general. It’s hard, of course, because I’m up in Canada and my family is still in New York, which means I don’t get to be with them for all the holidays. But my husband and I have begun to make new traditions for ourselves. It’s so important to continue these traditions.
I also feel my Jewishness each day at work. I sort of joke around that, you know, Jews are questioners; we question everything. And that’s certainly what I do as part of my job. I’m constantly asking of myself and my fellow dancers: What can we do to make things better? How can we bring ballet to more audience members? How can we show more diversity on stage? What is ballet, anyway? I think that for me, that constant questioning stems from growing up and having those foundation stones already built in my family and just being Jewish.
Q
Favorite Jewish food?
A
Bagels! They’re just my favorite. I think part of my DNA is “bagel,” honestly. Growing up, all I ate were bagels and cream cheese. Oh, and it can pretty much be any type of bagel.
I think the other thing would have to be challah. I’m a sucker for challah. I could walk down the street with a loaf and just eat it. I guess there’s a theme here: Jewish carbohydrates.