Voices From the Mirror: GM Ballet Dancers Reveal What Happens Before the Curtain

The lobby at intermission is a place of compliments. Patrons in their finest mention the lift in Act One, the lightness of the feet, the shimmer of the costumes. What they never see is the small room upstairs where those same dancers sat, minutes before the overture, whispering to a mirror.

We asked GM Ballet company members to share, anonymously and honestly, what they never say at stage door. Their answers ranged from hilarious to heartbreaking. What follows is a portrait of the company as it actually exists — not in the program notes, but in the margins.

The Rituals No One Teaches You in Conservatory

Every dancer has a pre-show routine, and almost none of them appear in any training syllabus.

"I eat exactly one peanut butter sandwich, crusts off, ninety minutes before curtain," one principal dancer admitted. "If the theater is out of peanut butter, I genuinely believe the performance will suffer."

Another corps member confessed to a superstition inherited from a dancer she met at a summer intensive in Chicago: "I tap the left side of the dressing room doorframe twice. I don't know what happens if I don't. I've never had the courage to find out."

A male soloist described a quieter habit. "I stand in the wings during the orchestra tuning and I say the name of my grandmother, who never saw me dance. Then I stop being that person and become the character. It takes about eight seconds. It's the most private eight seconds of my life."

The Roles They Secretly Dreaded

Audiences assume every role on a dancer's résumé is a prize. Not quite.

"I played a courtier for three seasons straight," one dancer wrote. "Ninety-eight shows of standing in a line, smiling, while the principals got everything. I loved the company more than I loved that part, and some nights that was the only thing that got me through."

A female soloist was more blunt about a dream role turned burden: "Everyone assumes the Sugar Plum Fairy is the highlight of your year. My hips would like a word. By the final Nutcracker, I was doing the variation while mentally furnishing an apartment I don't own."

And then there was the confession that stopped us: "I dreaded the roles I loved the most. The parts that meant something scared me so badly I'd get nauseous in the dressing room. Grief on stage, real grief — you can't fake your way through it, and I never figured out how to do it without it costing me something."

Panic, Managed

Performance anxiety is the profession's open secret. What differs is how each dancer metabolizes it.

"My hands go numb before every opening night," one dancer said. "I used to think I was broken. Then I asked around and realized half the company is backstage doing breathing exercises and pretending they're checking their shoe ribbons."

Another described panic as a collaborator rather than an enemy: "The fear shows up, I let it sit in the dressing room, and then I leave it there when I walk to the wings. It has never once followed me past the curtain."

A veteran company member offered the long view: "Twenty years ago I'd be sick in a bathroom before every show. Now I get a flutter and I think, good, you still care. The day the flutter stops, I retire."

The Things They Wish Patrons Knew

We ended each conversation with the same question: if you could say one thing to the audience, without consequence, what would it be?

"We can hear you," one wrote. "The cough drop wrapper, the phone that buzzes during the adagio — we hear all of it, mid-pirouette, and we keep going anyway."

Another wanted the opposite: "I wish people knew how much the applause in a mid-sized American city means. We're not in New York. We don't need to be. When this house rises to its feet, it means everything."

And one answer, from a dancer nearing retirement, deserves to be printed in every program: "The lobby version of me is polite and grateful, and that's real. But the mirror version of me is the one who decided, at fourteen, in a studio in Ohio, that this life was worth every bruise. If you enjoyed the show tonight, you met us both."

Why We Share This

GM Ballet believes audiences deserve more than polish. The dancers who fill our stages are students of fear, managers of doubt, and keepers of strange and wonderful rituals. The next time you find yourself at intermission, consider the mirror upstairs. Someone in that room is doing something ridiculous, or brave, or both — and in twenty minutes, they will make it look like magic.