Remy Young, from Belmont, North Carolina, is a professional dancer with American Ballet Theatre. At 16 years old, she moved by herself to New York City to train at American Ballet Theatre’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School. After training at the school for a year and a half, she joined the ABT studio company and from there ascended into the ranks of the main company.
1.To get off to an unconventional start, please write a haiku about anything that comes to mind at the moment.
The world is weird, right So it may feel For now We live like we're free
2. How did you get into dancing?
My grandma has her own ballet school in Charlotte, NC and I basically grew up there. She typically accepts students starting at age 3, but when I was 2.5, I would go through the lost and found, dress up in old ballet clothes, and sneak into class anyway! They allowed me to try as long as I wasn’t disruptive. Been dancing ever since!
3. Did dancing help you through anything difficult in your life?
Right now! This pandemic has been one of the most difficult times of many artists’ lives. While I’ve always acknowledged the absolute necessity of the arts, particularly ballet, I’m currently experiencing a need to dance on a much deeper level. I dance to share stories— to transcend an audience and connect with them on a deeply emotional level. Beauty is powerful… it inspires, it comforts. What’s more, it is much easier for me to express myself onstage through movement than any other medium in any other environment. However right now, being stripped of a stage, an audience, and a company, dancing remains a necessity; this time as a form of therapy. It’s a release, it’s meditation. Dancing serves as a way to vent without knowing what to say. I can honestly say I do not know how I would be holding up right now if it weren’t for dancing.
4. In your time as a dancer, what’s the craziest thing that has ever happened to you?
Ok…the craziest thing that has ever happened to me was definitely when my shoulder dislocated onstage during a performance of the Nutcracker. I was coming on for an entrance in the snow scene in Act 1 with this huge balancé en tournant that was supposed to travel almost halfway across the stage. I was really feeling myself and approached the step with a lot of passion…and BAM, my left arm pops out. I continued to do the next two steps holding my arm with my other hand, but then I had no choice but to run off. I came off stage freaking out. The next thing I know, I’m about to pass out into my director’s arms, while my ballet mistress is taking off my pointe shoes. Our physical therapist was by my side, trying to figure out how to reset my shoulder. The way it had dislocated, however, meant that only a doctor could reset it at a hospital. About 30 minutes later, I was in an ambulance with one of my ballet mistresses, still with a full face of stage makeup on. We got to the hospital where the doctor used straps to relocate my shoulder. Needless to say, I wasn’t able to do Act II that night!
5. If you had only one sentence to convince someone of the importance of the arts, what would you say?
I would use this quote from Dostoevsky’s The Idiot: “Beauty will save the world.”
6. If ballet had a slogan, what would it be?
Ballet is the full package- athleticism, entertainment, and art all in one!
Edited by Adelaide Clauss
Dancers Are 