Beyond the pointe: Julia Erickson’s journey from ballet to new beginnings
- Paige Shea
- Jun 9
- 5 min read
The former Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre principal reflects on a life dedicated to ballet and the hardships faced after retirement.
Blood, sweat, tears, broken bones, bruised limbs, pulled tendons and premature arthritis are masked by tutus, shiny pointe shoes, perfect turnout and beaming smiles. It’s the ballet, and it’s a battleground.
An electronic score fills the Byham Theater as a flash of long legs and blonde hair jetés to center stage. Donned in a high-neck, emerald green leotard and black tights, Julia Erickson explodes
onto the stage to William Forsythe’s iconic “In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated.”
It’s clear why Erickson was a leading female principal dancer at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre (PBT) for nine years and one of the company’s longest-tenured dancers at the end of her 17-year career.
Her long limbs appear to stretch for days, her movement is mesmerizing and her musicality is exquisite — her legs seem to be playing the percussive elements of the Thom Willems score.
“Having those moments on stage where you convert all of the work and energy and blood, sweat and tears — quite literally — into this gift that you’re ultimately giving the audience and yourself, it’s a big payoff,” said Erickson.
Erickson was one of PBT’s most visible figures during her tenure — for years, a banner of her in “Swan Lake” hung on the exterior of the PBT building, visible to any passing driver on Liberty Avenue. She danced nearly every principal role in the ballets that PBT produced during her career and was featured frequently in local Pittsburgh media.
Erickson retired from PBT on Oct. 28, 2018, at the age of 39, after a performance of Jiří Kylián’s “Petite Mort” and enough flowers on stage to fill a shop.
However, a storybook career does not always conclude with a fairytale ending.
According to Erickson: “We know, as dancers, that it’s not going to be forever.”
The life cycle of a ballerina is not a long one — nor does the profession yield an easy retirement.
Ballerinas typically begin training in elementary school and retire in their mid to late 30s or early 40s. They usually become professionals as teenagers and homeschool — beginning in high school or earlier — to accommodate ballet’s rigorous training schedule.
Erickson, a Seattle native, began taking ballet classes at Pacific Northwest Ballet at the age of seven. She estimates that she was a student there for about 12 or 13 years and did three summer intensives at San Francisco Ballet as a student.
However, she said that ballet really started to click for her when she was 12 years old.
“I really started getting good and I felt like, ‘I’m improving, and this is becoming more fun. And it kind of became exponential for me.”
Erickson managed to attend high school in-person and was applying to Ivy League universities while auditioning for ballet companies during her senior year.
“I was pretty uncomfortable with being considered like a ballerina — that was my identity. I’ve softened to it now, but I didn’t want to be pigeonholed like that,” said Erickson. “I was, and am, interested in more things than just ballet.”
Erickson signed her first professional contract with Texas Ballet Theater at the age of 19, where she danced for two years before her 17-year tenure at PBT.
However, her dedication to external endeavors was present throughout her career.
She wrote articles for the Huffington Post and Pointe Magazine. She and her husband, former PBT dancer Aaron Ingley, created their own line of nutrition bars called “Barre” in 2010, that was sold in over 170 retail outlets, including Whole Foods. The company closed in 2015.
Beginning in 2001, Erickson took night classes at the University of Pittsburgh. She completed her bachelor’s degree in political science in 2023, graduating summa cum laude.
“I think that when you are doing more things than just your craft that you can bring your experiences into the storytelling of ballet and actually have a richer dance career,” she said.
While some ballet dancers never earn college degrees and stay in the dance world, career switches are not unheard of.
Veronica Greydak is the director of mentorship at Second Act, a nonprofit organization dedicated to mentoring retiring dancers for the professional world. Like Erickson, Greydak is a former dancer, but a hip labral tear prevented her from dancing professionally.
Now, Greydak is a global corporate banking analyst at J.P. Morgan and mentors dancers through Second Act — the organization that mentored her.
She said that much of the mentoring at Second Act involves helping dancers to find transferable skills from their dance background to apply to other fields.
“It’s translating some of the skills that you’ve learned — for example, working with a choreographer, how you can compare that to working on a deal in finance?” said Greydak.
“I can relate to a lot of the mentees in that you focus so heavily on pursuing dance, and that becomes your identity — it’s hearing what people did to shift the narratives,” she said. “Okay, I
was very successful in the dance world, but how can I bring it to a new field and love?”
Besides the identity shift, low pay, injuries, early retirement and lack of a college education are barriers for ballerinas to switch careers.
“Ballerinas give so much of their life and energy for such a small amount of compensation in return,” said Erickson. “That ratio is entirely skewed, but dancers are willing to dance for less than.”
Mental health problems also plague ballet.
Kathleen McGuire Gaines, a former San Francisco Ballet and PBT dancer, founded the nonprofit organization Minding the Gap, dedicated to mental health research and programming for dancers.
After training for almost two decades, Gaines left ballet due to a mental health crisis.
In a study completed with Point Park University, Gaines found that ballet dancers scored more poorly in mental health benchmarks than every other type of dancer.
“This idea of the disposable dancer that can be replaced in ten minutes is detrimental to mental health, but it’s also detrimental to ballet’s sustainability,” Gaines said. “I don’t go to as many ballets as I would like to because, frankly, it doesn’t always feel good to be there.”
Ballet is far more traditional than other forms of dance — many customs have never changed, and dancers are still fighting for diversity and a cultural shift.
“Ballet in particular can be very oppressive because it has been exclusionary, historically,” Erickson said. “I really didn’t think I wanted to be in the ballet world because of exactly that — I even wanted to do an exposé about it when I was young.”
Erickson did not retire after she left PBT. After her farewell performance, she toured with Barak Ballet and performed internationally as a guest artist with Alonzo King LINES Ballet, where she is their rehearsal director and former ballet master. Like many dancers, she taught at her former company in between performances.
Now 45 years old, Erickson is an assistant professor of dance and pointe at Point Park University on the tenure track. She has not danced on stage in over two years, but still dances every day.
“It’s one of my languages so I love that I still get to exercise that muscle, even if it’s not as full out as it used to be,” she said. “And it’s in a different capacity because the products of my dancing are not the most important part of me dancing now.”
In the future, she is interested in using her political science degree to influence policy for arts funding.
“It’s all about education — it’s the pathway towards understanding. I’m hoping that because I’m kind of a renaissance person, that I can bring the rest of the world into the dance world,” Erickson said.
“I do believe that: once a dancer, always a dancer.”
Julia Erickson
Former principal dancer at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre,
assistant professor at Point Park University,
rehearsal director and former ballet master at Alonzo King LINES Ballet.
Veronica Greydak
Director of mentorship and board member at Second Act
Global corporate banking analyst at J.P. Morgan
Kathleen McGuire Gaines
Founder of Minding the Gap
Contributing writer at Dance Magazine.
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